Elemental Affinities as Personality Types in Tellius

[etrangere]

I thought it would be interesting to look at characters’ affinities and see what it tells us about them and about the writers’ intention about them. While Affinities have a direct effect on gameplay via the support bonus and some of them are probably picked based on game balance (see the amount of Earth Affinity people in the Dawn’s Brigade),

Comments

[shimizu_hitomi]

... And Tellius is the one universe I haven't played myself. XD (Other than Awakening)

I don't remember the elements very clearly in the other games other than one small note in... I think it was FE7? There's a very brief implication that the elements are related to the calendar (like Western horoscopes). But it's a throwaway line. (That and the fact that your choice of birthday affects the insert character's affinity)

On the other hand there's a different hint in FE6 that indicates it's related to the way magic works -- but that goes into worldbuilding stuff that has its roots in the Kaga-era games (FE1-5) which I'm not actually sure applies to the later games.

[etrangere]

haha yeah I thought so (sadly I don't yet have any idea for any big FE4 meta posts).

Oh? Wikipedia led to believe there were elemental affinities in several games; but it could just happen not to be one you played with, or it overstated things.

picking birthdays for your characters sounds kinda fun in a completely superfluous detail way XD

Well it's obvious the different sorts of magic kinds are represented as elemental affinities (which makes you wonder why there's no Water, Earth or Heaven magics though).

[shimizu_hitomi]

Oh, the affinities are there for all the post-Kaga games for sure. (I don't remember if it was FE5 or FE6 that introduced them, but probably FE6.) I don't think they had support bonuses back then though (except in FE7 when it was related to your self-insert XD and I think stat growth) -- or maybe I just never noticed. Supports worked very differently in the GBA era at any rate.

Yeah the magic types I think are a relic of older worldbuilding from Archanea that may or may not have gotten scrapped. The least spoilery way I can explain is that it has to do with the origin of magic. From your list it seems like Tellius added some elements though. Heaven at least doesn't seem familiar. And I think Water used to be Ice.

[etrangere]

Just started playing FE7 (and posting about it on tumblr) and all player characters do have elemental affinities so far, although the list of elements is slightly different. Not sure what they do gameplay wise, though it seems to have to do with support as well.

[i_llbedammned]

I think the fact that you added in Heaven is an interesting choice because I don't see that too often with elemental affinities.

[etrangere]

Oh, it's not me who added "Heaven", the Elements of the affiliations are part of the game canon.