HylianSwordsman said:
I think Tomodachi may have been a part of it, but for Fire Emblem in particular, it seems like Nintendo is starting to get more in touch with a certain Western culture around anime that enjoys the shipping and fanservice end of things. Try looking up fan fiction for anime-style games sometime. For some IPs, it becomes actually difficult to find heterosexual relationships in fan fiction, because the culture around these games loves to ship same sex relationships. I'm not part of the LGBTQ community, so I won't get much out of this unless I were to make a female avatar for the hell of it, but I do like the shipping and fanservice end of Fire Emblem, so I appreciate the dating sim-like elements that have become standard for the modern FE games. As such, I'd get more enjoyment out of NPC-NPC same sex pairings than Avatar-NPC same sex pairings. If Nintendo ever starts that, our part of the FE fandom's takeover of the series will be complete, muahaha. That said, I imagine the LGBTQ community makes up a larger portion of FE's audience than they do of the general population, so I'm not surprised if Nintendo is trying to cater to them a bit with this. |
Yeah, I'm thinking that fanservice and a cross-pollination of tropes due to the series merging with anime are the main driving factors here, more than any political considerations.
I'm not gay either, or even inclined to buy the game to be honest, (it's just not my cup of tea) but if its inclusion makes some people happy, then it's a good thing in my book.








