#even the thigh straps dont match... infuriating... but perfect

[gorematchala]

So I wish I had the full body artwork to go off of but I've been staring at what they showed for like 6 hours total by now and I need to ramble about Fire Emblem designs.

Let me start by establishing my position on this series. I played Awakening and I dont care about any of the gameplay or plots of any of the games at all. My opinions are about the character designs and nothing else. Other than I think the child soldier void and the incest shit in Fates is kinda really fucked up. But anyway.

I'm okay with protags all looking like Marth. It really doesnt bother me. The Breath of Fire series has a blue haired dragony hero man and a blonde angel girl as the protagonists of every game and thats fine. I think its neat to have reoccuring character concepts like that sometimes. And I think that Marth, Sigurd, Ike, ect. are cool individual designs. Blue haired Lord class protagonist. Love it, totally fine.

Other weirder designs are also welcome. Robin being a weird dragon cult wizard clone thing was awesome. Corrin being a metal deer dragon, fantastic. Beyond the protagonists I dont even hate the non functional boob armor and such like Camilla in fates. Its a video game it doesnt have to be practical. But whats important about any design is about its functionality in terms of action. That the costume is cool to look at and consistent with what the character does or how theyre themed. You wouldnt give a thief character Black Knight armor, and the Black Knight would look weird fighting with a rapier. But Lucina wants sweater armor? Fine, shes supposed to be agile and she fights with a straight sword. Shes cute, let her be. HOWEVER.

While Robin is really great, and Corrin is extremely interesting, and Alm/Celica are absolutely perfect in their redesigns, FE3H introduced some of the worst character designs maybe in video games as a whole. I'm not just talking about Byleth but I could write a book about how bad Byleth's costumes are. I wont cuz I'm gonna do that for the new one. But the long and short is you've got monotone grey costumes that are half batman armor half cutist robes, with weird desaturated pink trim which doesnt match anything else on the design, with grey blue hair, and a neon purple dagger. The color theory alone is infuriating. Then the models in game make it worse by looking horrific in their own right. My complaints about their amor are too specific to explain without me pointing at them and gesturing wildly so suffice it to say there is a way that armor should be shaped to create a nice visual flow and theirs does not do that.

Now with Alear... I'll start this one by establishing that on a base level theyre better than Byleth. I think in terms of hair the female Alear looks less like a yugioh zexel character which is good. The split color isnt the biggest problem for me but it is *too* saturated and kinda obnoxious to look at, and the heterochromia throws it over the top into being fully annoying. Female Alear has the giant eyeball problem that female Byleth had. I dont get why her tiara is grey when every other accent on both of them is gold. The guys hair would be fine if it wasnt glued together in the front creating this bizarre forehead window. They both have confusing bowtie/ scarf/ neck tie things going on. His disappears under his vest but of course her is suctioned between her balloon tits because of course. I like her skort thing but I dont get why they created visual lines that travel down to become the skirt pleats, bu then they have a belt creating a hard horizontal break in that flow, and why they decided to make the skirt blue because it wouldve looked better white? It wouldve been the same blue to white ratio as the male version because of her thigh strap things. And speaking of straps!! This guy has a strap attached from the end of his jacket to the knee guard on his greaves, and then his belt has a weird cross shaped offshoot that is like sewn to the back of the boot jacket strap??? The gold trim on their arms is kinda meandering and formless, it looks like they should have some kind of gauntlet covering the stuff on the forearm.

Like it isnt as awful as Byleth in terms of it being nothing, but now its too much, and whats there is kind of stupid. Additionally once again whoever is doing the modelling and animations is not doing the game any favors because they all look like mid quality porn models. Something about the placement of the eyes and mouth on all the female characters screams 3d hentai to me. It's also weird how much higher detail their heads are from the rest of their bodies.

I dont really have a point or a conclusion here but I'm just baffled as to why this series has had such a drop off with their character designs since 3H and its been eating my brain for a day now so here is your peak into my psychosis.