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Regulus

Sir Knightbot
Yeah... the character designs look very bad. Not that FE is a stranger to bad character design. Fem Byleth's outfit is a travesty and Fates has some really awful stuff, too.

The leak seems a little suspect at this point. Supposedly the game has been finished for a long time and was originally developed for FE's 30th Anniversary. The released screenshots appear to be entirely in Chinese (so a localization version?), but are alleged by the leaker to be "very old". There's too much there for it to be wholly fabricated, but I could see it being some in development FE knock-off being passed off as an upcoming FE game. It being a real FE game is not terribly implausible, though. *shrug*
 

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
Categorically disbelieve all alleged leaks until corroborated by a verifiable source.
 

RT-55J

space hero for hire
(He/Him + RT/artee)
I don't know if this leak is true, but I always love entertaining the possibility of any alleged screenshot leak.
 
Granted, but “A new entry in a popular series is forthcoming” doesn’t really strain credibility

also honestly i don't think that the divisive character design even looks particularly outlandish for modern Fire Emblem

it could be a fake, but i would not be at all shocked by it being real at all
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Yusuke Kozaki's character design work for Awakening and Fates to me was a series low point for its outlandish excesses for a series that had a codified an aesthetic out of a sort of attractive mundane simplicity. Hidari's take on the adapted designs in Shadows of Valentia was a big step up in compellingly modernizing those vintage stylings, but it wasn't really until Chinatsu Kurahana and Three Houses that I felt like there was a spark of something really new and exciting to the series's look. She has a background in otome game character design and it shows, and was a big motivating factor in getting me to stick with a genre that I usually struggle maintaining sustained interest in.

That being said, I also expected that Three Houses despite its mass success would be an anomaly for the series as to what appealed to me about it, aesthetically and otherwise. I'm honestly kinda into the clownish vtuber-looking supposed lead in these leaks, but I'm grading that on a disassociated curve. There's plenty to fret about in the glimpses seen if so inclined.
 

Regulus

Sir Knightbot
Placing the blame squarely on Kozaki for the weirder stuff in Awakening and Fates is a little unfair, because, although he did design most of the characters inhabiting the costumes, it was actually art director Toshiyuki Kusakihara who did the bulk of the costume design. Kozaki did fully design some of the key characters (like Lucina), but as far as I'm aware he's not the one responsible for toilet bowl cavaliers, UFO armor knights, bodystocking dark mages, or pantsless... everyone.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
It's not a statement dealt in a vacuum, but based also on all his other work in the medium across the years, which I typically also haven't liked for similar reasons. That perception walked hand in hand with the writing direction of the series resurrection on 3DS where the art direction did its utmost to meet the written material on its exploitative wavelength. Everything was in creative sync for that stuff, much like how things improved in concert when Three Houses happened.
 
I think the character designs in Awakening are great! Surprised to hear otherwise.

It was the first time Fire Emblem seemed to catch on. I saw a bunch of FE cosplay at Magfest the few years afterwards, which would have boggled the mind in the GBA/DS era.
 

Regulus

Sir Knightbot
Thracia 776 gets big points from me. Almost everyone has pants, for one. And it was the first main series game that Wada Sachiko worked on -- she did the portraits, which pretty much set the style for the series for most of the 2000s.

She eventually did the character design (and was director) for The Sacred Stones, which is my personal favorite as far as character art goes.
 

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
So a Klonoa demo is live on the Japanese eShop. It has english language options so presumably the demo is dropping in the North American eShop at some point.

My initial impressions are keep your graphical expectations in check. It's had some touch ups over the Wii remake, but it's still in that general ballpark visually. It does look to have original difficulty options at least.
 

Lokii

(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
It'd be nice to see some stuff from SE. I'm hungry for more footage of DQIII2D
 

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
The rumor mill is saying there is going to be a separate Ubisoft event Wednesday for Mario & Rabbids 2, so that potentially takes the main thing I was expecting to see in tomorrow's direct out of the picture.
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
So a Klonoa demo is live on the Japanese eShop. It has english language options so presumably the demo is dropping in the North American eShop at some point.

My initial impressions are keep your graphical expectations in check. It's had some touch ups over the Wii remake, but it's still in that general ballpark visually. It does look to have original difficulty options at least.

Can I interject here? (No? Well, I'm doing it anyway.)

I played through the Playstation version of Klonoa at the turn of the century, because a friend recommended it and loaned his copy to me. Years later, I bought the Wii version of the game but didn't play that one much. I mean, it's fine. It looks better than the Playstation version, because of course it does, but watching the footage on YouTube reminds me of a creative liberty which doesn't ruin the game outright, but does blunt its narrative.

Basically, Klonoa was aged up in the Wii game. They've made him roughly sixteen, he's got longer limbs, and he looks and acts a lot like Sonic... confident, cocky, headstrong, kind of puerile in a teenage way. He even sounds like Sonic if you turn on the English language option. Playstation Klonoa was not like this. He was probably eight, with a squat build and a squeaky voice and a youthful exuberance and a child-like innocence. He doesn't know the harsh realities of life... but he's about to find out.

The ending of Klonoa is harsh and traumatic. It wrings a tear out of your eye even as an adult, but for a CHILD, what happens would hit with the force of a wrecking ball. Making Klonoa older diminishes its narrative impact. A sixteen year old would be moderately affected by the loss, but for an eight year old, it would be seismic. It would change how they saw the world, forever leaving their perspective tarnished and cracked. That ending represents a loss of innocence and wonder, and at sixteen you'd have a lot less of both to lose.

Recently, I watched the demo of the new Klonoa remake. It looks a lot like the Wii version with sharper, shinier graphics, but they also used the eight year old version of Klonoa, which comes as a relief. The game just doesn't work as well with an older Klonoa.
 

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
Guybrush Threepwood's new voice sounding like (being?) Mr. Monkey the Monkey Mechanic is on the nose Return to Monkey Island.
 
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