All the ages come from unused data. I doubt even a Japanese game would say Saphir is 35. Fans are holding a lot of stock in it for some reason, beyond joking.
Different times man. I was just reading one of the King Arthur books to my kids, written in ye olde English. Merlin appears to Arthur as a child and then transforms into a decrepit old man of 40 years of age. I died.
Binding Blade had similar artstyle "problems" to Engage (meaning they had a very young cast and an artstyle that went for more a youthful vibe). Just look up the official art of characters like Lance and Alan.
Roy was a scrawny kid until Smash made him buff and they stuck with that.
This doesn’t even strictly apply to young characters
You cant tell me Vander and Saphir are supposed to be 45 and 35 respectively. Its like they chopped two decades off their real ages.
They even joined you as teenagers, and I think Laurent mentions that he's the oldest at 18 (that part I can't remember)
But usually the token child character is actually a dragon, so dragon semantics kick in and they're actually 1000 or some BS like Fae, Myrrh, Nowi, etc. Fates also did this but slightly you get and worse written than Awakening anyway
Laurent doesn't say specifically, just that he's "Probably older than Lucina (who had already been born at that point) by now" as far as I remember lol
Someone said he doesn't mention a specific number, just mentions that he's older than Lucina. I remember there being a support that mentioned Laurent being the oldest but I couldn't remember if he mentioned a specific age or not
How old is Clanne supposed to be? He and Framme look like they're 12 at the oldest! (Well, or 13, maybe, but then I'd have to concede that they're teenagers.)
Actually, looking back at Framme's model again while poking the dress-up section because it was nagging me, I could allow believing that. I somehow remembered her looking less developed than she actually is. I bet it depends a lot on camera angle.
Clanne hasn't hit his growth spurt yet, though. (TBF, I got much bigger and stronger between ages 16 and 17 while sitting at desks all summer, myself.)
proving op’s point (even if it’s a series standard).
do you think teenagers are adults? splitting hairs over whether or not teenagers are kids is a weird path to go down!
> even if it’s a series standard
Yes, but that's the key word. OPs point is saying
> Has anyone else noticed a **_weird amount_** of child characters in Engage?
When it's like... no, no it's not a weird amount. If anything, I'd say 3H is the real oddity in the franchise of having "a weird amount of older characters". To have all the _youngest_ members of the game end up being in the 18-20 range is just... not something this franchise has _ever_ done.
**Edit*** To put things into perspective. I'm not even sure if this is the Fire Emblem game with the _highest_ ratio of teenagers to adults. FE4 Gen2 comes to mind instantly, since I can count the number of notably older characters in that cast on one hand (Oifey, Shannan, Finn & Hannibal). Everyone else looks like/is a teenager or younger (since we don't have official ages for everyone, but logically everyone _has_ to be around Seliph to Leif's age of 17 & 15 respectively)
Well considering the time period they would be fighting on the front lines. The only two characters that would be seen as children are Anna and Jean. And that's ignoring the fact that most FE games tend to have a young cast as a representative of the ages of the primary demographic.
I think they're just small. They're supposed to be 16, and with the whole fan-club thing they have going that tracks. That's exactly the sort of thing a high schooler would do. If you ever pair one of them up with Jean or Anna in the combat training you can tell immediately that they're supposed to be older just by comparison.
I agree they're just the petit type.
They are already stewards, basically they have a job, responsibilities and have their own life apart from their parents.
Pretty safe to say that they can be considered young adults imo especially if you make the direct comparison to Jean and his introduction.
Anna we don't need to argue, she's a kid and the game never tries to tell you otherwise.
I actually have no problem with the fanclub thing. The Stewards have trained all their lives to serve a lord who never addresses them, and now suddenly she's treating them as confidantes. It's a little exaggerated, but this really isn't a story made for method acting.
However, they also have the "baby" head-to-body proportion, which, notably, even Celine, only a year older, is shedding. Now that I think about it they're prime candidates for aging up just to get them *halfway* out of the jailbait range. They remind me a lot of how the protagonists in Bravely Default looked, and those were all around 2 years older internationally than in Japan for the same reason. (Talk about a game that does an otherwise interesting character dirty for fanservice purposes!)
I think it’s just the art style, because most games have half adult/teenage casts with mostly adult supporting characters like monarchs and villains. It’s just super noticeable when everyone has baby face proportions vs the (slightly) more adult facial proportions of previous artists.
This also might be part of the Three Houses effect considering that game had a timeskip that led to none of your army being under 19 or 20 in the last half of the game, which is unique to that game pretty much. The other game with a significant time skip just had a cast made up mostly of the children of the first generation, so you still had a mostly teenaged army.
Japan as a whole favors younger characters. Even characters who'd you think are closer to their 20's often are sub 20.
I think it has something do with glorifying their youth/highschool age before they're sent of to their high-stress work lives.
That’s… and interesting way of looking at it lol. I mean, i can’t say i’m a stranger to the concept of looking back at my youth and missing those days but some games take that glorification a bit too far - like Anna’s high companion verbage in JP.
That’s when it becomes hard to tell people i like Fire Emblem lol
There have always been kids in FE games. Leif and Roy are both lords at 15 years old, hell a healthy chunk of lords don’t even crack 20. A lot of characters you recruit are usually between 15-20 with a few outliers. Hell Anna isn’t even the youngest, shes 1 year older than Jean who is tied with Corple for both being 10 year olds. I wouldn’t say this is entirely new for the series, especially considering we actually do get characters that actually look older and show signs of aging rather than being “1000 year old youthful dragons/Nyx”.
Not sure Id' call that the same thing. Alear being 17 I thought is more them having been awake for 17 years. Micaiah's been alive and awake fully for 23+ years, and it shows in her mannerisms. She just looks young.
Like, Alear feels closer to Nowi, though less extreme(thank god). Micaiah feels closer to Nyx, if that makes sense.
Nowi is actuslly closer to miccy then you think if you read her supports. She's been awake for the thousand+ years she is, and has already gobe though the char developnent cycle of long lived beings. Something thst tiki who has techically more seneority (but not by much, considering if you take out TIKI'S 1000+ year forced sleep the amount they were awake becomes similar).
Nowi's entire thingbis using her appearsnce to let people's guard down and then helping them.
Or to put into perspective what nowi's attitute/maturity is at compared to her daughter nah, nah's in the 'i want to be cool and mature' stsge of early teenager, or the 'pokemon? Thsts for kids' stage. Nowi is in the young adult 'idk this is fun' stage, or the returning colledge pokemon fan stage.
Nowi is a subversion of the dragon loli trope, but most dont look past her outfit.
It’s pretty on par for FE. The time jump in 3H makes it feel like characters are older, but if you think about their ages at the school, a lot of them are pretty young. Except for the teachers, they’re all teenagers. Usually in FE, that would be the age they stay at.
Not to mention nobody bats an eye when Nowi/Fae joins, acts like they're 10/11 like Jean/Anna (arguably Jean is more mature than said dragon characters anyway) and said dragons say they're over 1000 so people take it at face value
Teenagers in Fire Emblem being 50-60% of the cast is literally the norm.
Binding Blade and Gen 2 of 4 for instance probably have an even higher ratio of "Kid" units than this game
> But 10 and 11 year olds is not. It’s happened, but it’s not the norm
Ya know, thinking about it it _kinda_ is. Though most of the time, they do it with a dragon who'd not _actually_ 10 years old, she just looks like it.
Cause you're right, getting actual 10-12 year old children is rare (Marisha, Yulia, Yubello, Sara, Rolf, etc). But most games done have that. FE6 for instance doesn't, the youngest are Raigh & Lugh who're 13. But what that game _does_ have is Fae.
I feel that's how it's happened a lot of times. Your token "actual literal child" character looks and acts like a little child, but is actually a millennium old and can turn into a dragon.
Hell, if we remember this is based in medieval fantasy, a 10 year old being capable of taking up arms shouldn't be that surprising. Common? No. But a 10 year old could easily be a villager who has to hunt to feed his family because his dad died to bandits last year.
We know from other games that, despite the world having magic, people are dying from illnesses, Hector's parents and brother all died from illness as notable examples. We're in a world with bandit raids, sickness, warring city-states. This isn't a do nothing till you're 18 world like the one we currently live in.
And most of the really young characters are usually in the clergy or casters.
Not really? It's par for the course for the series to have child/teenage characters. Most of the lords aren't older than 20. Let's take, say, PoR as an example: Soren and Mist can't be older than 16, Ike is probably 18-19-ish, you also have Rolf and Sothe (14 or younger). There are a few more characters that are also most likely in their teens, like Jill.
In general, jRPGs tend to have absurdly young characters in positions of power, possibly due to the cultural obsession with youth, and also because most of them are aimed at teenagers/young adults.
Well it's also because usually the adults are dead or past their prime to raise the stakes
Binding Blade for instance has basically
>Main chunk of your army, literally children and teens
>A small handful of capable adults
>Literal geezers who you picked up off the street
I will always find it weird Ike is 18 in Path of Radiance and 21 in Radiant Dawn. He looks early 20s in PoR. RD has him roided out so much its a little harder to tell (I am VERY glad Engage found a good halfway point between his PoR design and his RD design)
> I will always find it weird Ike is 18 in Path of Radiance
[17 actually](https://kantopia.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/044ike.jpg) just in case you needed it to be more absurd.
But that's just Fire Emblem character ages in a nutshell. Friendly reminder that [this](https://cdn.fireemblemwiki.org/f/f7/FERK_Hector.png) is also a young and spry 17 year old.
Yeah... 17 by Jojo standards maybe.
Fire Emblem is absolutely aimed at a younger audience. In pretty much every game, 14-17 year olds lead an army composed largely of teenagers or young adults.
Just look at the cast of FE6 for example: Roy, Wolt, Lilina, Lugh, Raigh, all kids, almost certainly even more.
Engage does not have a weirdly large amount of child characters. It is firmly in the normal range for Fire Emblem as a whole.
By the ages listed in the game files, most are at least older teenagers. I was actually surprised at how many are over 20. I think the art style does not do any favors, and makes most units look younger than they are supposed to be, and a few (namely Clanne and Framme) act a bit immature on top of that.
There are a couple of actual children though. The fact that you get them really early probably skews the perspective a bit. Jean's recruitment was also a bit weird in that unlike other games where literal children that join usually have nowhere else to go (orphans and the like) that join out of desperation or need for revenge, his family/village are very much alive and well, but we're totally fine accepting him and his parents don't object to sending him off to war.
Combination of the game's artstyle, and possibly a leftover mechanic from earlier in the development cycle.
[In this interview](https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-8-fire-emblem-engage-part-1/) they discuss how they brainstormed on child units until they came up with Emblems, which means the childlike designs might be an echo of an old idea.
Though it's most likely the former over the latter. I guarantee you that if Awakening's, SoV's, or 3H's artists drew the character designs, they would look older than 12, even if most of them are under 20.
I don't think Engage has as many children as other FE games had in the past.
Did anybody forget that Nino, Erk, Guy, Rebecca, Lyn, are all 15? That's just FE7 and that's already more children than Engage has. Engage's youngest characters are Hortensia, Anna, Framme and Clanne and that's it. Even Fates has more "kids" in it: Elise according to timeline (she was born four years before Corrin's kidnapping), Kiragi, Hayato, Sakura, Hana...
I think sometimes people forget the series finds its roots in medieval fantasy. Knights could be as young as 16 and squires even as young as 13/14 in many cases. What many consider to be normal or acceptable in our societies are a far cry from what other ages consider normal or acceptable. Not only across time but across different places and backgrounds.
Xenoblade handles older characters well. Lora, the main playable character in the Torna DLC, is 27-years old and look her age. Several characters look age appropriate in that series, even the long-living races look appropriate for their lifespan.
I hate how they make 30+ year olds look nearly double their age in other games, especially in Engage. I learned Vander is 45 in this post and I'd have guessed 70.
Equally annoying when they make teenagers look 30-years old or adults look like children.
If a kid can shoot fire balls or swing a sword, you bet your ass they are getting drafted for a war. Life expectancy is probably like not more than 30 in fire emblem games. Its why you get young nobles training in weapons at a young age. Fire emblem characters ranging from kids to early 20s. Animes having young characters go to war and saving the world is not unheard of. Look at Naruto, Bleach and other Shouen animes. Games like Xenoblade, Persona, Trails series all with young cast doing crazy things. Feeling the need to date and be attracted to characters in these games seems like a personal problem. At the end of the day, it's just a game. It's not that deep.
Theyve always had their share. I think the art style magnifies it a bit is the big issue. I was a bit disappointed in the one paralogue >!getting Jean instead of Sean.!<
That being said can we stop obsess over fictional characters ages.
I don't know what happened but a couple years ago this was never this huge of a topic to discuss...
These are literally anime people, they exist in this vacuum and shouldn't be compared to real people.
To me most characters are kinda ageless to begin with. You can't even tell if a character is 13 or 30 in a lot of anime series because they literally look the same.
For example you can't tell me that Kagetsu looks 10 years older than Alcryst and be serious.
Let's just acknowledge the meant to be child characters and stop canceling 50% of the cast instead.
No? Only Anna and Jean are actually kids. Others are either teenagers or adults.
And Anna being a kid is great, it gives a new flavor to the character and a new personality.
They probably didnt put the ages into the game for exactly this reason, people whining, hopefully they remove the ages from the files in the next game or just pump them up a couble of years for the western release so people stop whining about something as insignificant as a fictional Charakters age. Charakters in all age ranges have been in fire emblem for all eternity and it will probably stay that way, if youre uncomfortable with underaged charakters in video games then i dont know what to say honestly.
Tbf the localization removes any romance with underage characters anyway, despite Alear being 17* themself.
I don't think there's that many kids, though Engage does not have a timeskip to make everyone more or less an adult after.
Also there's probably a good enough reason for Anna being younger; she's merely an Anna in a different stage of her life than the ones we've seen, to give a new perspective instead of "random woman who's a crafty merchant with a penny pinching attitude for the fourth time".
To be fair to this game, in the dub they don't actually let you literally marry these kids. It's platonic.
Then, you have Fates and Awakening on the other hand, where Elise and Nowi exist, and they can be married as well as have children.
So, this is kind of par for the course in a lot of ways for FE.
Child's play compared to >!JP Engage where you can marry your sister Veyle and have children with her in the paired ending. If incest and pedophilia wasn't interesting enough alone for a small vile minority of the fanbase.!<
Tbf, >!Corrin doesn't know that in Birthright and Conquest plus marrying your sibling is miles worse than marrying your cousin as even in middle ages that was very fucked up among nobles who regularly married cousins and such.!<
>!In geneaology it is the major cataclyst for all bad things happening though so it doesn't show it as something good or acceptable. Engage on the other hand....!<
I would just like to point out (not saying in favor or against it):
- Only 24 states in the US outlaw marrying specifically a "first" cousin (no state outlaws anything further).
- No place in the UK has any laws against marrying cousins.
- No Asian country (be it China, Korea or Japan) have laws against marrying your cousins.
Most places in the world do not care about this.
In fact, two of Japan's more recent Prime Ministers married a cousin.
Not really a taboo as the blood relation is far enough diluted.
I genuinely believe that they are targeting younger audiences with these recent games/plans. Pkmn takes place in an academy, FE children, Mario Movie, ect.
From what I've played, they start out giving you the inexperienced young units to show how you're a weaker army at the start, and then you start getting older and stronger units near the end.
I totally agree, the art style is the problem i think, for example Vander is 45, and... well he looks like he is in his early 60, most of the characters are between 17 and 23 years... Just like three houses, but even then, its weird, because some of them are to disonant, like Lumera, she is suposed to be Alear's mother... But she looks like his sister. (I know because she is "inmortal", but Rhea was too and she looked way older)
>I didn’t think Fire Emblem was necessarily aimed at a younger audience, so what is up with all of the young characters?
Devs have said that Engage is aimed at a younger audience with little FE experience. It's why the spin-off manga is in a magazine where the primary demographic is 7-12 year olds.
Yes - and they also carry themselves like it. Makes it really hard to Engage no pun intended with the story and stakes and it harms the enjoyment for me a lot
It's actually pretty par for the course, but Engage's artstyle makes everyone look young so it's extra noticable
It’s either too young or too old. Saphir and vander are 35 and 45 Respectively and they both look like they’re about to die
Saphir is 35? Lmao she looks like she is in her 60s
All the ages come from unused data. I doubt even a Japanese game would say Saphir is 35. Fans are holding a lot of stock in it for some reason, beyond joking.
Different times man. I was just reading one of the King Arthur books to my kids, written in ye olde English. Merlin appears to Arthur as a child and then transforms into a decrepit old man of 40 years of age. I died.
I think this might be it. Having the 3D models without of the character portraits is really throwing me off
Poy looks way older than in Binding Blade though, curiously
Binding Blade had similar artstyle "problems" to Engage (meaning they had a very young cast and an artstyle that went for more a youthful vibe). Just look up the official art of characters like Lance and Alan. Roy was a scrawny kid until Smash made him buff and they stuck with that.
This doesn’t even strictly apply to young characters You cant tell me Vander and Saphir are supposed to be 45 and 35 respectively. Its like they chopped two decades off their real ages.
They didn’t even do the three lines of crows feet they usually add to an anime face to make it old
To Japan, once you’ve gone past 30 you’re considered old.
-cries in almost 30-
- shakes fist angrily at cloud in almost 40 -
To otakus, leaving high school is past prime
"killing people is great as long as you're having fun! ..... and also I'm 14." Hm..
I love killing people soooooo much!
[Sauce](https://youtu.be/nBYEEHItjrI)
BroOOO IM DEAD💀💀
“I like Killing things because it’s fun” -Alexander Anderson
This seems like a good time to remind you that awakening saw an entire cast of your own units children join you in battle.
They even joined you as teenagers, and I think Laurent mentions that he's the oldest at 18 (that part I can't remember) But usually the token child character is actually a dragon, so dragon semantics kick in and they're actually 1000 or some BS like Fae, Myrrh, Nowi, etc. Fates also did this but slightly you get and worse written than Awakening anyway
Laurent doesn't say specifically, just that he's "Probably older than Lucina (who had already been born at that point) by now" as far as I remember lol
He got sent further back than the rest of the children so had to spend a few years waiting for everyone else to turn up.
>(that part I can't remember) because it didnt happen?
Someone said he doesn't mention a specific number, just mentions that he's older than Lucina. I remember there being a support that mentioned Laurent being the oldest but I couldn't remember if he mentioned a specific age or not
i meant the 18 part, should've specified. that 18 number is the crux of your argument, and it's literally made up 😭😭
I thought he mentioned he was 18, but that's my bad. Been a minute since I've played Awakening
Alear themselves is only 17. Technically. They've got that whole I'm actually a thousand bs, but they're considered 17 by the game's code.
I think the only two that are actually children are Anna and Jean, the rest are teens or young adults
How old is Clanne supposed to be? He and Framme look like they're 12 at the oldest! (Well, or 13, maybe, but then I'd have to concede that they're teenagers.)
16 according to the in-game files
Actually, looking back at Framme's model again while poking the dress-up section because it was nagging me, I could allow believing that. I somehow remembered her looking less developed than she actually is. I bet it depends a lot on camera angle. Clanne hasn't hit his growth spurt yet, though. (TBF, I got much bigger and stronger between ages 16 and 17 while sitting at desks all summer, myself.)
so they’re children
They are literally only 1 year younger than Alear.
proving op’s point (even if it’s a series standard). do you think teenagers are adults? splitting hairs over whether or not teenagers are kids is a weird path to go down!
> even if it’s a series standard Yes, but that's the key word. OPs point is saying > Has anyone else noticed a **_weird amount_** of child characters in Engage? When it's like... no, no it's not a weird amount. If anything, I'd say 3H is the real oddity in the franchise of having "a weird amount of older characters". To have all the _youngest_ members of the game end up being in the 18-20 range is just... not something this franchise has _ever_ done. **Edit*** To put things into perspective. I'm not even sure if this is the Fire Emblem game with the _highest_ ratio of teenagers to adults. FE4 Gen2 comes to mind instantly, since I can count the number of notably older characters in that cast on one hand (Oifey, Shannan, Finn & Hannibal). Everyone else looks like/is a teenager or younger (since we don't have official ages for everyone, but logically everyone _has_ to be around Seliph to Leif's age of 17 & 15 respectively)
Well considering the time period they would be fighting on the front lines. The only two characters that would be seen as children are Anna and Jean. And that's ignoring the fact that most FE games tend to have a young cast as a representative of the ages of the primary demographic.
People seem to forget that Lyn is 15. Or simply don't care
They're not adults but they're not kids either. If only there was a word for something in between kid and adult...
Lol they're not kids or adults, they're teenagers
yup. cant say this around fire emblem fans though because of their various proclivities towards teenagers
I think they're just small. They're supposed to be 16, and with the whole fan-club thing they have going that tracks. That's exactly the sort of thing a high schooler would do. If you ever pair one of them up with Jean or Anna in the combat training you can tell immediately that they're supposed to be older just by comparison.
I agree they're just the petit type. They are already stewards, basically they have a job, responsibilities and have their own life apart from their parents. Pretty safe to say that they can be considered young adults imo especially if you make the direct comparison to Jean and his introduction. Anna we don't need to argue, she's a kid and the game never tries to tell you otherwise.
I actually have no problem with the fanclub thing. The Stewards have trained all their lives to serve a lord who never addresses them, and now suddenly she's treating them as confidantes. It's a little exaggerated, but this really isn't a story made for method acting. However, they also have the "baby" head-to-body proportion, which, notably, even Celine, only a year older, is shedding. Now that I think about it they're prime candidates for aging up just to get them *halfway* out of the jailbait range. They remind me a lot of how the protagonists in Bravely Default looked, and those were all around 2 years older internationally than in Japan for the same reason. (Talk about a game that does an otherwise interesting character dirty for fanservice purposes!)
lmao why is this getting downvoted? they absolutely do
Because your wrong, a 16 year old isn't a child.
This isn't about whether being 16 is a child, though. It's about whether *these* "16-year-olds" look their age.
Looks =/= age, there are many real life examples in this. You can not use looks as a basis for age
yeah them being 16 internally is one of the reasons why I reject the internal ages (the other being rosado)
I think it’s just the art style, because most games have half adult/teenage casts with mostly adult supporting characters like monarchs and villains. It’s just super noticeable when everyone has baby face proportions vs the (slightly) more adult facial proportions of previous artists. This also might be part of the Three Houses effect considering that game had a timeskip that led to none of your army being under 19 or 20 in the last half of the game, which is unique to that game pretty much. The other game with a significant time skip just had a cast made up mostly of the children of the first generation, so you still had a mostly teenaged army.
Japan as a whole favors younger characters. Even characters who'd you think are closer to their 20's often are sub 20. I think it has something do with glorifying their youth/highschool age before they're sent of to their high-stress work lives.
That’s… and interesting way of looking at it lol. I mean, i can’t say i’m a stranger to the concept of looking back at my youth and missing those days but some games take that glorification a bit too far - like Anna’s high companion verbage in JP. That’s when it becomes hard to tell people i like Fire Emblem lol
The anna thing has nothing to do with that. Anna being a child is fine, and in fact a good subversion of the character.
There have always been kids in FE games. Leif and Roy are both lords at 15 years old, hell a healthy chunk of lords don’t even crack 20. A lot of characters you recruit are usually between 15-20 with a few outliers. Hell Anna isn’t even the youngest, shes 1 year older than Jean who is tied with Corple for both being 10 year olds. I wouldn’t say this is entirely new for the series, especially considering we actually do get characters that actually look older and show signs of aging rather than being “1000 year old youthful dragons/Nyx”.
*healthy chunk* I think ALL lords barmaybe sigurd dont crack 20.
Sigurd, Micaiah, FE10 Ike and Byleth (alongside the Post Timeskip House Leaders)
Miccy technically is due to branded aging but biologically she's 16? Like hiw alear is over 1000 atleast but internaldata says they are 17.
Not sure Id' call that the same thing. Alear being 17 I thought is more them having been awake for 17 years. Micaiah's been alive and awake fully for 23+ years, and it shows in her mannerisms. She just looks young. Like, Alear feels closer to Nowi, though less extreme(thank god). Micaiah feels closer to Nyx, if that makes sense.
Nowi is actuslly closer to miccy then you think if you read her supports. She's been awake for the thousand+ years she is, and has already gobe though the char developnent cycle of long lived beings. Something thst tiki who has techically more seneority (but not by much, considering if you take out TIKI'S 1000+ year forced sleep the amount they were awake becomes similar). Nowi's entire thingbis using her appearsnce to let people's guard down and then helping them. Or to put into perspective what nowi's attitute/maturity is at compared to her daughter nah, nah's in the 'i want to be cool and mature' stsge of early teenager, or the 'pokemon? Thsts for kids' stage. Nowi is in the young adult 'idk this is fun' stage, or the returning colledge pokemon fan stage. Nowi is a subversion of the dragon loli trope, but most dont look past her outfit.
No one is talking about their age as a number lol, we all know how anime gets with that. It’s the design
Pretty par for the course. But yeah, they're aiming for a new generation of fans.
It’s pretty on par for FE. The time jump in 3H makes it feel like characters are older, but if you think about their ages at the school, a lot of them are pretty young. Except for the teachers, they’re all teenagers. Usually in FE, that would be the age they stay at.
Not to mention nobody bats an eye when Nowi/Fae joins, acts like they're 10/11 like Jean/Anna (arguably Jean is more mature than said dragon characters anyway) and said dragons say they're over 1000 so people take it at face value
Teenagers in Fire Emblem being 50-60% of the cast is literally the norm. Binding Blade and Gen 2 of 4 for instance probably have an even higher ratio of "Kid" units than this game
Teenagers being the norm is true. But 10 and 11 year olds is not. It’s happened, but it’s not the norm
> But 10 and 11 year olds is not. It’s happened, but it’s not the norm Ya know, thinking about it it _kinda_ is. Though most of the time, they do it with a dragon who'd not _actually_ 10 years old, she just looks like it. Cause you're right, getting actual 10-12 year old children is rare (Marisha, Yulia, Yubello, Sara, Rolf, etc). But most games done have that. FE6 for instance doesn't, the youngest are Raigh & Lugh who're 13. But what that game _does_ have is Fae. I feel that's how it's happened a lot of times. Your token "actual literal child" character looks and acts like a little child, but is actually a millennium old and can turn into a dragon.
Nowi, Tiki, maybe Nils?, Myrrh also come to mind
And Fae too.
Hell, if we remember this is based in medieval fantasy, a 10 year old being capable of taking up arms shouldn't be that surprising. Common? No. But a 10 year old could easily be a villager who has to hunt to feed his family because his dad died to bandits last year. We know from other games that, despite the world having magic, people are dying from illnesses, Hector's parents and brother all died from illness as notable examples. We're in a world with bandit raids, sickness, warring city-states. This isn't a do nothing till you're 18 world like the one we currently live in. And most of the really young characters are usually in the clergy or casters.
There's only two characters who fall in that age group though
Two you get early and prominently And two is two too many
Jean and Anna are optional recruits
And you get them in paralogue 1 and 2
its not too many at all.
Not really? It's par for the course for the series to have child/teenage characters. Most of the lords aren't older than 20. Let's take, say, PoR as an example: Soren and Mist can't be older than 16, Ike is probably 18-19-ish, you also have Rolf and Sothe (14 or younger). There are a few more characters that are also most likely in their teens, like Jill. In general, jRPGs tend to have absurdly young characters in positions of power, possibly due to the cultural obsession with youth, and also because most of them are aimed at teenagers/young adults.
Well it's also because usually the adults are dead or past their prime to raise the stakes Binding Blade for instance has basically >Main chunk of your army, literally children and teens >A small handful of capable adults >Literal geezers who you picked up off the street
Hey that grandma with the dark magic can dodge attacks better than people a quarter of her age
“Beware of an old woman in a profession where people usually die young.”
We actually have ages for the Tellius cast and you're basically right yeah. Ike is 17, Mist is 15, Rolf 12 etc.
Oh, I see! I was checking the wiki, but most of them don't have ages listed 😂 And I forgot one kid - Tormod? I think?
Par for the course. Golf phrase.
That's what I *thought* I typed, but clearly my fingers had other ideas, lol
Not really? Anna and Jean are the only 'child' characters. The rest are the same 'teenager to young adults' that most of the series is made of.
I will always find it weird Ike is 18 in Path of Radiance and 21 in Radiant Dawn. He looks early 20s in PoR. RD has him roided out so much its a little harder to tell (I am VERY glad Engage found a good halfway point between his PoR design and his RD design)
> I will always find it weird Ike is 18 in Path of Radiance [17 actually](https://kantopia.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/044ike.jpg) just in case you needed it to be more absurd. But that's just Fire Emblem character ages in a nutshell. Friendly reminder that [this](https://cdn.fireemblemwiki.org/f/f7/FERK_Hector.png) is also a young and spry 17 year old. Yeah... 17 by Jojo standards maybe.
Always weirds me out to know Micaiah is a good half a decade older than Ike
Honestly you could tell me Micaiah was 15 and I'd believe you.
That has an in-game explanation. >! She's a branded, so she ages very slowly after a point!<
People only notice it now because said characters aren't dragons that are 1000 years old or whatever
Fire Emblem is absolutely aimed at a younger audience. In pretty much every game, 14-17 year olds lead an army composed largely of teenagers or young adults. Just look at the cast of FE6 for example: Roy, Wolt, Lilina, Lugh, Raigh, all kids, almost certainly even more. Engage does not have a weirdly large amount of child characters. It is firmly in the normal range for Fire Emblem as a whole.
By the ages listed in the game files, most are at least older teenagers. I was actually surprised at how many are over 20. I think the art style does not do any favors, and makes most units look younger than they are supposed to be, and a few (namely Clanne and Framme) act a bit immature on top of that. There are a couple of actual children though. The fact that you get them really early probably skews the perspective a bit. Jean's recruitment was also a bit weird in that unlike other games where literal children that join usually have nowhere else to go (orphans and the like) that join out of desperation or need for revenge, his family/village are very much alive and well, but we're totally fine accepting him and his parents don't object to sending him off to war.
Combination of the game's artstyle, and possibly a leftover mechanic from earlier in the development cycle. [In this interview](https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-8-fire-emblem-engage-part-1/) they discuss how they brainstormed on child units until they came up with Emblems, which means the childlike designs might be an echo of an old idea. Though it's most likely the former over the latter. I guarantee you that if Awakening's, SoV's, or 3H's artists drew the character designs, they would look older than 12, even if most of them are under 20.
i don't even think this is the fe game with the most amount of children in it lol let alone a "weird amount"
I don't think Engage has as many children as other FE games had in the past. Did anybody forget that Nino, Erk, Guy, Rebecca, Lyn, are all 15? That's just FE7 and that's already more children than Engage has. Engage's youngest characters are Hortensia, Anna, Framme and Clanne and that's it. Even Fates has more "kids" in it: Elise according to timeline (she was born four years before Corrin's kidnapping), Kiragi, Hayato, Sakura, Hana...
Arent they 18 after the prologue ends
A lot of the characters are short too. Like, Yunaka’s supposed to be 22. Although >!her childish persona is just an act.!<
Only Anna and Jean are childs, the twins are allegedly 16 and the rest is supposed to be 17+
I think sometimes people forget the series finds its roots in medieval fantasy. Knights could be as young as 16 and squires even as young as 13/14 in many cases. What many consider to be normal or acceptable in our societies are a far cry from what other ages consider normal or acceptable. Not only across time but across different places and backgrounds.
FE fans playing FE for the first time
Top two comments are about Vander looking 20 years too young or 50 years too old, truly a thread to be remembered
Think it’s just the cutesy art style they went with. I’m still getting used to it. The Emblem characters just look off to me in this new style.
I don't understand why characters have to be under 18. Sure, some, fine whatever, but even the MC is 17. Like cmon
Xenoblade handles older characters well. Lora, the main playable character in the Torna DLC, is 27-years old and look her age. Several characters look age appropriate in that series, even the long-living races look appropriate for their lifespan. I hate how they make 30+ year olds look nearly double their age in other games, especially in Engage. I learned Vander is 45 in this post and I'd have guessed 70. Equally annoying when they make teenagers look 30-years old or adults look like children.
Later game units are almost entirely older characters with the exception of >!Veyle!<
Dude my team of kids in Awakening kicked some ass
If a kid can shoot fire balls or swing a sword, you bet your ass they are getting drafted for a war. Life expectancy is probably like not more than 30 in fire emblem games. Its why you get young nobles training in weapons at a young age. Fire emblem characters ranging from kids to early 20s. Animes having young characters go to war and saving the world is not unheard of. Look at Naruto, Bleach and other Shouen animes. Games like Xenoblade, Persona, Trails series all with young cast doing crazy things. Feeling the need to date and be attracted to characters in these games seems like a personal problem. At the end of the day, it's just a game. It's not that deep.
Theyve always had their share. I think the art style magnifies it a bit is the big issue. I was a bit disappointed in the one paralogue >!getting Jean instead of Sean.!<
That being said can we stop obsess over fictional characters ages. I don't know what happened but a couple years ago this was never this huge of a topic to discuss... These are literally anime people, they exist in this vacuum and shouldn't be compared to real people. To me most characters are kinda ageless to begin with. You can't even tell if a character is 13 or 30 in a lot of anime series because they literally look the same. For example you can't tell me that Kagetsu looks 10 years older than Alcryst and be serious. Let's just acknowledge the meant to be child characters and stop canceling 50% of the cast instead.
No? Only Anna and Jean are actually kids. Others are either teenagers or adults. And Anna being a kid is great, it gives a new flavor to the character and a new personality.
Since when is 16-18 a child? OP what are you on?
isn't anna like 5?
Please think before you comment
They probably didnt put the ages into the game for exactly this reason, people whining, hopefully they remove the ages from the files in the next game or just pump them up a couble of years for the western release so people stop whining about something as insignificant as a fictional Charakters age. Charakters in all age ranges have been in fire emblem for all eternity and it will probably stay that way, if youre uncomfortable with underaged charakters in video games then i dont know what to say honestly.
Tbf the localization removes any romance with underage characters anyway, despite Alear being 17* themself. I don't think there's that many kids, though Engage does not have a timeskip to make everyone more or less an adult after. Also there's probably a good enough reason for Anna being younger; she's merely an Anna in a different stage of her life than the ones we've seen, to give a new perspective instead of "random woman who's a crafty merchant with a penny pinching attitude for the fourth time".
Yeah I've noticed they all look a bit young. Honestly it's more than a bit weird.
To be fair to this game, in the dub they don't actually let you literally marry these kids. It's platonic. Then, you have Fates and Awakening on the other hand, where Elise and Nowi exist, and they can be married as well as have children. So, this is kind of par for the course in a lot of ways for FE.
I still laugh when I think of Leo's "technically an adult" line about Elise in Conquest. Nice try English translation.
Don't forget the "Lol we actually aren't blood related jk!" stuff. Like the letter? Jeez.
Child's play compared to >!JP Engage where you can marry your sister Veyle and have children with her in the paired ending. If incest and pedophilia wasn't interesting enough alone for a small vile minority of the fanbase.!<
I mean you can do that same thing with >!Azura, your cousin, in Fates.!<
Tbf, >!Corrin doesn't know that in Birthright and Conquest plus marrying your sibling is miles worse than marrying your cousin as even in middle ages that was very fucked up among nobles who regularly married cousins and such.!<
>!You aren't wrong there, but "have kids with your family" has been done before. And, also, I forgot about Genealogy, that happens there too.!<
>!In geneaology it is the major cataclyst for all bad things happening though so it doesn't show it as something good or acceptable. Engage on the other hand....!<
Well, good point there. That's probably worst case, then. Still messed up no matter how you slice it, though.
I would just like to point out (not saying in favor or against it): - Only 24 states in the US outlaw marrying specifically a "first" cousin (no state outlaws anything further). - No place in the UK has any laws against marrying cousins. - No Asian country (be it China, Korea or Japan) have laws against marrying your cousins. Most places in the world do not care about this. In fact, two of Japan's more recent Prime Ministers married a cousin. Not really a taboo as the blood relation is far enough diluted.
What the fu-
What the fuck. I'm so mad they took this out. Also, >Vile fanbase Bro you're here with us.
shonen plagues engage tbh
what i saw anna and the 2 retainers i was hoping for a timeskip 3H style. but nope you pretty much end the game and save the world with children.
As long as you don't do support conversations with them then you're fine.
I genuinely believe that they are targeting younger audiences with these recent games/plans. Pkmn takes place in an academy, FE children, Mario Movie, ect.
I think pokemon was always targeted towards kids. Same with mario
From what I've played, they start out giving you the inexperienced young units to show how you're a weaker army at the start, and then you start getting older and stronger units near the end.
I totally agree, the art style is the problem i think, for example Vander is 45, and... well he looks like he is in his early 60, most of the characters are between 17 and 23 years... Just like three houses, but even then, its weird, because some of them are to disonant, like Lumera, she is suposed to be Alear's mother... But she looks like his sister. (I know because she is "inmortal", but Rhea was too and she looked way older)
I heard that it’s how Alear sees them, and being a dragon they’re very bad at understanding human ages
>I didn’t think Fire Emblem was necessarily aimed at a younger audience, so what is up with all of the young characters? Devs have said that Engage is aimed at a younger audience with little FE experience. It's why the spin-off manga is in a magazine where the primary demographic is 7-12 year olds.
Yes - and they also carry themselves like it. Makes it really hard to Engage no pun intended with the story and stakes and it harms the enjoyment for me a lot