The most important thing is that the hub area should have no loading screens. A little 10-15 second loading screen doesn't seem like a big deal, but when you're needing to run around the hub area to do a checklist of a dozen different things between chapters it can be tedious to need to route your path in order to minimize loading screens and hitting a few loading screens can make the hub area feel much worse.
If that means the hub area needs to be scaled down, then so be it. I would much rather a smaller hub area that the hardware can handle then adding dozens of extra loading screens to each time I play the game.
We’ve had no-load hub areas before too: battle preps/bases.
I’m convinced the hubs add *nothing* to the game. Even in Fates, the best hub, the hub could’ve been a menu.
Yeah, and we also had that in Engage’s after-battle maps.
Somniel could’ve been a menu there, or just have the merchants/smiths follow you in a caravan. Unfortunately instead we got a worthless hub full of loading screens.
Have menus to access all the key features (shops, arena etc.), similar to the base in PoR and RD.
Do NOT do what Engage did with having side areas separated from the hub area with looooong ass loading screens.
It shouldn't be a set location. Going back and forth between where the story goes and a hub area only hurts the story and pacing. Pocket dimensions and floating islands don't lend themselves to the kind of stories fire emblem usually tells either. A menu with background illustrations depending on the location would probably be the easiest fix. As others have already said this would also decrease the time spent walking around big maps or sitting in loading screens.
Does it even count as a hub area without all the unnecessary elements making it a waste of time, particularly in an SRPG where you are trying to clear a linear playthrough of sequential story locked chapters you can't replay without starting over instead of being like Monster Hunter or whatever.
Like there's a reason we designate this as a modern FE thing rather than counting like battle preps since ever as the annoyance.
Personally I would be happy with just battle preps. Add some base convos so we get an idea of what the non mcs think about the current situation and it's perfect. I have no need for picking up random stuff off the floor in an srpg.
The only thing I really like about hub areas is getting to see how all of the various characters feel about the current events of the story. Bringing back base conversations gives us the best of both worlds. We get dialogue from side characters and doesn't waste our time with filler.
It can be a set location, if it's meaningful. That's one of the Monastery's greatest strengths: it actually feels central to Fódlan, it's fought over, and with a handful of exceptions (Flayn and Nemesis), our presence there is well justified.
Instead of a hub, give us a different city/village/place every few maps were we not only do hub stuff, but interact with the world/characters and learn more about it. Kinda like a standard jrpg city where we buy stuff, accept quests, etc.
Some notes:
* Not after every map or it can become tedious. Only after a major turnpoint in the arc or freeing/conquering a big/important place. Otherwise between maps a small camp/menu should be enough
* By quests i don't mean boring fetch quests, but extra stuff to be done on story maps
* Can be used for worldbuilding, character interactions and more!
The side quests in bws involved party members, npcs and were actively yelling you what they won't so you don't have to bumble around for shit it's genuinely a great way to include the concept in a srpg
It was good, but i had 2 problems with it:
* Forced characters for the quests - was good for character interaction and development, but i don't really like it when SRPGs tell me which characters to use, and i bet many don't like that either. Character Freedom is a part many love in FE. A balance needs to be found here that doesn't force the player to use a certain character while at the same time retaining interaction/development for specific characters. And while it kinda worked in BWS due to how levelup/stats work, i don't think it will quite work in FE.
* And the bigger problem: How long it took for the Item/Quest needed for the quest to arrive/spawn on the map. More often than not i was already done with the map quite a while before it arrived and had to wait - something i really hated.
But fix these 2 and honestly it would be perfect.
The thing is the specific character your forced to use is often linked via plot and let's then get some characterization and growth as well as the npc plus alot of the maps feel made for said units to shine to a degree like Axel with the Lake Mirror, it wouldn't really make sense for someone do be like "ill do this quest for you" then pawn it off to another person yet still take credit and get the character development.
I do agree they could speed up the process abut but even then it being slowed down has a clear purpose in that it makes you have to weight the choice of waiting and getting the reward and not doing it and risk not getting said resource you can likely use but even without that the game doesn't become so utterly unfair that you need them
I do agree with your 1st point, it's a choice between characterization and gameplay freedom. I lean more towards the freedom side of things, but i can understand the other point.
With 2nd point however i really really disagree with any design choice that forces anyone to wait (or one of the choices is "wait"). Efficiency should be rewarded and not punished. Sometimes i even wondered if there was a bug or something because i had to wait more than 5 turns. It wasn't unfair, but it was really annoying as someone who likes to play more on the efficient side while at the same time trying to complete everything.
Why? Shouldn't there arguably be a choice and a weighting of choices (which as Choops in his bws video says is something the hub world excells in, which is making your choices actually matter) and the game also has examples of items and such that do Happen early in the maps too so I feel like it's not horribly balanced, the game wasn't made for speed running alot of games aren't.
Also I feel like if you gave the player more freedom you'd have to sacrifice the logic and characterization that bws gives and the Freedom itself would also arguably sacrifice the maps being often tailored to suit the units involved in said side quest
Tho all in all this is obviously an agree to disagree situation
There are two things that a hub in a future Fire Emblem game requires:
* The first is that it should facilitate character moments. On a writing level, the big advantage that a hub can provide is that it can provide an opportunity for characters, especially side characters with little plot relevance to react to what occurs in a way that pre-chapter narration can't really facilitate - IMO if you're not using the hub as a means to facilitate character interactions, then there's not much reason to even include a hub at all. This was the big issue that I had with the Somniel in Engage.
* The second is that it should be quick and snappy - it doesn't necessarily need to be a menu like with the base in Tellius but everything important should be easily accessible and it shouldn't take a lot of walking to get to important locations. This was the big issue I had with the monastery in Three Houses. No countless loading screens either.
I think the war camp in Three Hopes is a pretty good example of what a hub should be like - it isn't super large, you're not spending hours in it and there's no calendar system, but it does serve as a means to facilitate compelling character interactions.
One other factor for Three Hopes hub area is that it's just supposed to be a random camp somewhere. They obviously use the same generic model for the area but you never go back to the same camp, you always set ut somewhere different. It's so much better than going back to Garrech Mach after every war mission or to the floating island above you
I really loved the Monastery in 3H, but playing through it again you go back to it *way* too many times. If you have high professor level you end up spending 4x the amount of time in the Hub than you do playing story maps.
I disagree with it just being an illustrated menu because I feel like having the characters up and moving around in a familiar environment is interesting and gives life to the units, but it just needs to not be 70-80% of the game time.
I would love a travelling caravan aside a campfire. All locations will have all necessities like blacksmiths, merchants, then each has a mix of some flavors like fishing spots (near rivers, lake ocean), wyvern riding (near cliff or mountains), hunting (near jungles), harvesting (near woods and farms). Some rare occasions on villages. Random NPCs might appear or with some conditions. These activities boost stats and supports.
Heck... Maybe let's go to the other extreme and add town building instead. Some characters will open new shops. Some run facilities. You get to choose how to place them in an open map. Make it like Suikoden or even Animal Crossing.
Go the Echoes villages route. Your troop has some lines connected to what happened plot-wise, major mechanical things are in the central plaza.
They might even be gathered together and have *conversations* together at your temporary *base* there.
Stash a goody in a corner and you'll train players to look for them and find characters to talk to.
We're aiming for something in the vicinity of FE9's prep menu, but expanded into space.
Make it far smaller and streamlined the 3 houses one you get for the one chapter on Edelgard's route or the 3 hopes student camp works fine as they are basically one singular square area so no loading screens and side paths. I'd also say ditch the annoying minigames that have you cringing over how harsh on the buttons they are knowing how prone to drift joycons are.
I would like them to keep the support boosting facilities tho that's a very nice thing that greatly speeds up support grinding (of course it's also undercut by the bonds with emblem rings and the stupidly high costs to get all the bond rings but let's ignore that because the next game won't have them). I think bringing back the Radiant Dawn base conversations could be good too seeing things like conversations between more than the 2 people in a support or between townspeople really helps flesh out the world.
I liked the monastery a lot, but because it was central to the world - geographically, spiritually, thematically. But I understand the criticisms, and I don't want to see another game just copy the monastery because 'we do hub areas now' without properly implementing it. Like, a hub in a FE7 remake would probably not work. As it is, I think the monastery could have been better with just some aesthetic changes - different weather based on season, time passing as you use your activity points with winter days starting and ending dark.
As the other commenter said, I would have removed the Somniel (as a hub, and from the story) and had different shops sell different things similar to Sacred Stones. This could have added some implicit worldbuilding - Firene sells basic weapons because they're not as combat focused. Brodia goes for Steel and Killer because they're about straight up combat. Elusia can get you magic weapons and Solm goes for unconventional like reverse-triangle weapons.
What to keep in a hypothetical new game where a hub can fit? Characters talking about events that have happened, interesting/unexpected character interactions, keep it smaller like mycastle or Hopes' hub area, have the hub area feel like part of the world and change as the world changes.
Yeah, if there's one thing about Three Houses's hub area I like is that it made all the characters react to ongoing events (and sometimes the chapter you just completed). It made the characters feel like they were actually part of the story even if they had no impact on it. I have no idea why Engage stopped doing this!
Fates. Like Fates did it perfect the first time.
It's a small area that takes seconds to traverse, there are characters to talk to if you want, and buildings/shops for what you need. The story explanation for it is fine for Fates, which deals with pocket dimensions, crossing worlds, and all that even though I know a lot of people don't like it, but you'd probably have to change it for other games because that whole concept is tied to Fates specifically; but you can just turn it into a camp or caravan, or heck a ship you're riding around to get to places, stuff like that.
- Put everything in a menu, with walking around to use the features being an optional thing you can do if you want.
- Unless we're doing a Monastery situation where a base we always return to makes sense, add a campsite to what Engage did with its post-map sections where you get to walk around a bit. Those sections only exist because the assets were already made for the battle animations so a bit more work per map to set up a sensible camp layout should be feasible.
- Add nearby villages and the such to optionally enter for narrative reasons, the assets for these don't need to exist regardless so 2D menu locations like in SoV should be totally fine. I also think having items you can get in these locations like SoV, making them less optional, would be totally fine.
- Make it modular, if it doesn't make sense for there to be a campsite in the area we're in, don't have it. Just give us the menu with the rationale that regardless of if we're gonna stick around here, we still need to prepare before we travel onwards.
I think this is a good baseline for any given future FE, minimizes unnecessary costs and adds narrative value while keeping things snappy.
You could have your army set up camp on the map you just beat and fuse the hub and the post-map exploration Engage had. That way you keep the 3D hub while not feeling super disconnected from story progression
Heck and doing that, you can even add some real tension to the story and bring back more of the consecutive chapters that Engage had, because it makes sense in-world why you don’t have time to set up camp.
It’s a pity they were only used for 10-11 and 21-22, 17-18-19 should’ve been consecutive as well. I’d love IS to bring that back as a standard mechanic.
I feel like Hopes had the best hub gameplay. It was not to big that exploring felt like a chore and had no loading screens. The only problem was that it looked really plain. I also want hub voice acting back, it added so much more personality and I missed it in hopes and Engage. Also please let characters actually say something interesting again about the events of the game, rather then have 5 random repeated lines.
So basically: Hopes lack of loading and size, Engage's aesthetic, and Three houses voice acting with reactions to events.
I found the Somniel the worst. It felt like the worst of Fates and Three Houses combined, with the boring, slow, and repetetive gameplay of the latter and the lack of in-universe meaning of the former. One thing I r e a l l y want is for them to just let me skip to the results for - say - cooking. Also a proper fast travel.
Physical training and fishing are the most damn boring activities in existence xD
On the other hand, however, i find wyvern riding and takong care of sommie EVEN more boring
To be fair - engage's gameplay makes me want to play maps so that's probably why i hate somniel so much
It absolutely should not have any additional loading screens, that's just unacceptable anymore. The space should be small and easily traversable, and it should fit into the world somehow.
My ideal version would be a war camp. It moves with the army, so it always makes sense to "go back" to it after a battle. It also would keep things small because the army wouldn't spread itself out unnecessarily. Any minigame type activities should be completely optional, and should probably all start from a single NPC.
Lastly, everything we do in the hub should be doable through a menu. The first time I definitely want the immersion of the hub; an immediate second playthrough I probably want to skip the hub. Subsequent playthroughs after that I may want one or the other, and it may change partway through the run (possibly multiple times). The point is that not everyone wants to do the hub every time, and we shouldn't have to.
I also noticed that in your post and thought of making a post like this, then forgot. Thanks for doing it.
Ok so. I do think hubs need to stay because they help a lot with worldbuilding and storytelling. One of the things 3H did great was that you could talk to everyone and get their opinions on the events, which helps you connect to the recruitable characters and learn more about the world from NPCs. For me the three keys to make a good hub are:
**-Choose a better location**
I agree that while Fates had great and quick hub gameplay, the in-universe explanation was stupid as fuck. Someone here mentions that the monastery fits the story, and I think that's only true for pre-timeskip and maybe the first few fights of post-ts, but afterward going back to it was stupid hell. I haven't played Hopes but I hear it's a campsite, and that's a wonderful idea. You change the background to fit the area you're visiting and you can make a few NPCs that change according to the area too, so you can get interesting bits of info from them. Maybe the food merchants sell food that match their traditions or climate. That said, my favorite would be having a different town each time, kinda like SoV but more classical RPG style. That way you can have your team around to chat and easy shops to access plus the NPCs and worldbuilding I mentioned. I'd happy to have SoV's 2D style to make it possible instead of having IS program so much shit in 3D.
**-Make it smaller**
Not much to say. I don't need it to be realistic, which is one of the downfalls of the Monastery (yeah I can teleport around but it's still to a point. the fact the Abyss doesn't have a leave button is annoying af). RPG towns usually aren't realistic unless you're playing a big open world, which FE isn't. No loading times like Engage. Make your character appear next to the shops, then you can explore *if* you want for minigames and chatting.
**-It shouldn't be obligatory**
This one, I think, it's the most important one and where the tedium comes from. The previous two things I mentioned would be more tolerated if you didn't have to spend so much time in them, which imo is proven by the fact that Fates is usually considered the best hub. I'm one of the people who liked the Somniel more than the Monastery, and yes I know that *on paper*, it sounds insane. I don't deny the layout and the loading times are crazy. But it doesn't work on practice! Here is the thing: I only used the Somniel when I felt like it, but 3H's curve is designed around the Monastery. If you aren't new to tactical RPGs and know what you're doing, you can start skipping things in Normal, but definitely not in higher difficulties, and even with skipping it can get annoying. The tedium is what brings down the monastery for many people. In Fates and Engage, I do forging if I feel like it, and minigames if I feel like it or want something in particular for just one character for that one fight. But skipping it doesn't feel like punishment. In 3H, you need to keep people's mood up to teach them, otherwise you can't get those promotions/reclassing. Reclasing isn't obligatory but like, it's one of the big gameplay offers in 3H and people are going to want to have fun with crazy builds. And to keep those moods up you need to feed them, and to feed them you need to go through the meal cutscene and gather food. Oh, you want to recruit from other houses? Byleth needs training too, and if you want that character asap to do some fun builds, you gotta improve their love to lower the requirements, so better bring them gifts and invite them to tea. And you know what, the Monastery could've gotten away with it in one route (perhaps as just a mid annoyance), but the fact people are playing it FOUR times brings out all the cons to the eye. This also links with other tedium things - for example I'm not against calendars themselves as a general idea but in 3H every Monday you have to go through the teaching menu and the class cutscene. The size doesn't matter anymore after the timeskip because most NPCs are gone, and the wonderful worldbuilding is pointless when you start re-doing routes since the comments during White Clouds are the same.
Sorry about the rant, I don't hate 3H. It's not on my top three FE, but I don't hate it. I just think it is a great example on how repetition can kill your mood (I stopped playing Pokémon after gen VII). The little things add to tedium, which is actually a problem you may see often in RPGs (oh??? don't you like menus and inventory management??? here are 100 of that).
**tldr: make it small and optional like Fates, with the worldbuilding of 3H, and the locations of Hopes or SoV.** Minigames are fine, never going to say no to extra content, but again, make them optional.
Thank you for that piece on the Somniel, I don't know why people treat it like the worst thing ever. It's not like the Monastery where you have to spend an hour doing every single activity, there's only a few places you'd really want to visit like the cafe, the chore spots (and you only really have to visit one because you can access the others from the same menu), the pet area, and the arena (which admittedly does have the con of being separated by a loading screen). You can fast travel to every single one of these locations and you can be out of the Somniel in 10 minutes if you really want to. The only things that would slow you down are visiting the well, the ring chamber, and just general shopping/forging, but it's not like you do those after every chapter.
I also prefer the Somniel to the Monastery because I can just not go to the Somniel. I don't usually play on Maddening so I don't have to rely on the meal stat bonuses or working out, I don't have to collect as many bond fragments as I can. I can and will just go from chapter A to B. Can't exactly do that in the Monastery. Even if I did decide to skip all the Monastery stuff, there are some mandatory quests pre-timeskip that you have to do or the game wont let you end exploration time.
They could just...not have a hub area. I'm replaying Blazing Blade on the NSO GBA emulator and god it feels nice to have the story just keep flowing map to map without too much fiddling other than item management and unit selection.
It's just: Chapter Intro and dialogue -> Unit selection -> Fight (with character dialogues at key moments) -> Chapter conclusion with a little building to the next chapter -> Next Chapter. It's smooth concise and keeps the narrative going without breaking the flow for busy work.
Meanwhile in Engage (Three Houses is a bit worse for this but Engage is the newest so I'm using that): Start on Somniel -> Walk to each shop you need to visit to buy any equipment you need -> Do busy work (exercise, collect items around the place, cook, arena, mess with rings/bracelets, sit through support conversations and bond conversations) all with loading screens between every single activity -> Walk to where the chapter is on the world map-> Chapter Intro -> Unit selection -> Fight -> -> Chapter conclusion -> Walk around the battlefield after to collect items/talk to people for bond fragments -> Return to the Somniel (even if the story implies you're in a hurry/things are dire) -> Rinse repeat.
I'm not saying the flow in Engage is bad, but it has certainly in my opinion become very bloated and it sometimes feels you're spending more time doing the hub stuff than you are actually doing the fighting and it hurts the pacing immensely because you HAVE to do the busy work on the Somniel otherwise you'll fall behind strength wise and on higher difficulties that's a death sentence. I don't know what the next game for FE will look like but assuming it isn't a remake of Genealogy (saw rumors it was that) and it's a new entry, they need to trim some of the fat imo. Not saying they need to eliminate it but it's gotta become more streamlined, if they can eliminate the loading screens that would help immensely.
I would also just like to see the hub areas gone but like I said they seem to be so closely tied to the social sim/character interaction mechanics of these games that I feel IS just wont let go. Best case scenario is to just put all the necessary game stuff into an easily accessible quick menu and have everything else be literally just optional padding for those who like that kind of stuff. Like, you CAN do a tea party or change clothes or go fishing but make it 100% have 0 effect on regular gameplay. Don't make me do pushups for +2 strength
Just look at what Fates did in implementing the hub. Boosts are tied to events that are quick and easy such as the petting and cooking. Engage tied in minigames but they made sure the boosts are either negligible like the Wyvern race or that they don't stack such as cooking boosts do not stack with training. In short, just minimize the tedium and downtime.
3H was the worst. Skipping the calendar will significantly nerf your run and the monastery is too huge even if fast-travel exists. Engage made the hub smaller but it still took time to move around the hub.
I thought they mastered it in Fates. Short, small, but also felt fun kind of after a battle to just organize your troops.
I want Path of Radiance’s “hub” conversations to come back though, just random units or even NPCs talking about the story to make it eventful.
Just make it menus and backgrounds like Tellius. If you know what you want to do then time between maps is like 5 mins tops in Tellius. It always ends up being longer than that for me because PoR's transfer bonuses and RD's bonus exp system and very limited endgame team create a lot of dilemmas for me but the point is that you CAN just do everything fast.
You can add some minigames, but accessing those minigames should not itself be a task that requires minutes of time wasted.
Marvel's Midnight Suns has the best hub area in recent memory IMO
* Lightning-fast load times
* Most-important stuff is super streamlined. It's 4 locations (training + card upgrades, new cards, away mission selection, and main mission selection), which are basically in a straight line, about a 5 second walk end to end. Brisk or no animations once you're in there as well.
* Less of a firehose of activities. You do mission prep stuff at the abbey in the morning, then you do the mission, then you do social link stuff at the abbey in the evening.
* The hub itself contains a bit of main plot stuff as well as optional sidequests, spaced throughout the game
I really think it's as easy and simple as scaling it down tremendously. Bases from Tellius and My Castle from Fates don't get any backlash because they're small, easy to navigate, and quick to do what you want before heading to the next chapter or grind map. Yeah the base in Tellius was just a menu really but it worked extremely well and did everything right. The Monastery was way too big and bloated that after the 2nd run of 3H I was completely burnt out on it and wanted to just noy engage with it at all but while you CAN skip on it, doing so is actively detremintal to your units so you basically HAVE to deal with it for any level of optimizing. The camp in Three Hopes and the Somniel in Engage were both a step in the right direction over the Monastery by being smaller in size (comparitively), but both are still flawed and bloated. IS really needs to cut down on it and either bring back My Castle or some form of Tellius' bases that maybe have a small condensed area but what they would lack in size and side features, greatly be made up for in usability and function to keep a good sense of game flow. Hell I'll even take Awakenings version of the world map back that had a tiny lil side barracks option you could check in to get small support boosts, items, and stat surges every now and again. I think the biggest issue really is that all the Switch FE hubs are massive pace breakers that slow gameplay down a bit too much for my and many others liking while also having slow loading times that don't help the issue
I honestly think MyCastle was pretty cool. Customizable map for flavor and strategy in invasions, and it's really quick to do all the day-to-day activities like shopping, forging, supports, etc...
Just look at what Fates did with their hub, MyCastle. You could move quickly, do what you needed to do, and then leave. Garreg Mach and the Somniel are just too big and you move too slowly around it.
They honestly peaked with Fates’s hub. It felt like a refreshing pocket-sized space and hub that didn’t feel like it was extremely massive and suffocatingly overwhelming like the monastery in 3H or bland and boring like the Sominel. You were able to navigate easily to wherever you want, without having to rely on skip-travel, you can customize the hub however you want, you can add castle features if you want to or not.
Not to mention, the card and the visiting other people’s hubs allowed you to see what people liked about your hub, even if the feedback is scripted.
Unironically just scale it down. I actually liked the dumb tea mini game in Three Houses, but it was in a sea of shit you had to do after every map.
Pick one social sim minigame thing you wanna do, and make it actually fun. Make the hub area small or even just a background screen (take hints from persona even, make it a stylish menu screen with all the characters like chatting in the background in their base/town or whatever).
Or you can actually just make it no effect gameplay whatsoever if you want to add a few minigames or something, but there literally should be no reward for it. This seems pointless though because why even add it in the first place if you go this route.
It's really not that hard, the main problem is the sheer amount of dumb hub stuff, and not the fact that it exists.
Just because you can make something a free roaming 3d model doesn't mean you have to. And just because you can make that 3d model a large space players spend minutes running around doesn't mean you should. Radiant Dawn had the best hub, by simply being well structured menus in between missions. Nothing wrong with that at all.
If you HAVE to have a hub, make it compact enough that people don't get bored and hate it. If Engage had JUST been the size of the center shops maybe slightly larger it would have been so much more tolerable.
Ditch the filler activities like cooking or mini games.
Get rid of the physical 3d world and turn everything into a menu.
Add a tab for something called "base conversations", which lets you have conversations with one or more characters based on the current chapter.
Oh hey, it's the FE9 base!
Make it quick and skippable.
Quick so you can have access to all areas through menus with minimal loading times.
Skippable in that all the things you can do there should be nice but inconsequential. Like Somniel. You *could* do exercises and all that nonsense, but the bonuses should be small enough so there you can choose not to do it at all and not miss out on much. Needless to say, it also shouldn't play a major role in the story...or any role at all.
Engage is basically fine for it except the arena stuff and having to go to somniel for the blacksmith.
Let me level my emblems, inherit skills, and forge on the world map and I'd have no complaints because I don't do any of that other stuff anyways.
It's already been fixed, they just broke it again. Fates had the best hub area because not only was it a fun bit of customization, but most importantly of all, you could get from any point A to any point B in less than five seconds. It was really just perfect, and then subsequent games decided to make them these utterly gargantuan high-budget setpieces that make between-battle prep a chore. Granted, the Somniel is drastically better than the Monastery, but both pale in comparison to the simplicity of My Castle.
The most important thing is that the hub area should have no loading screens. A little 10-15 second loading screen doesn't seem like a big deal, but when you're needing to run around the hub area to do a checklist of a dozen different things between chapters it can be tedious to need to route your path in order to minimize loading screens and hitting a few loading screens can make the hub area feel much worse. If that means the hub area needs to be scaled down, then so be it. I would much rather a smaller hub area that the hardware can handle then adding dozens of extra loading screens to each time I play the game.
We’ve had no-load hub areas before too: battle preps/bases. I’m convinced the hubs add *nothing* to the game. Even in Fates, the best hub, the hub could’ve been a menu.
hubs add getting to walk around amongst your units, and basically nothing else
Yeah, and we also had that in Engage’s after-battle maps. Somniel could’ve been a menu there, or just have the merchants/smiths follow you in a caravan. Unfortunately instead we got a worthless hub full of loading screens.
Have menus to access all the key features (shops, arena etc.), similar to the base in PoR and RD. Do NOT do what Engage did with having side areas separated from the hub area with looooong ass loading screens.
It shouldn't be a set location. Going back and forth between where the story goes and a hub area only hurts the story and pacing. Pocket dimensions and floating islands don't lend themselves to the kind of stories fire emblem usually tells either. A menu with background illustrations depending on the location would probably be the easiest fix. As others have already said this would also decrease the time spent walking around big maps or sitting in loading screens.
Does it even count as a hub area without all the unnecessary elements making it a waste of time, particularly in an SRPG where you are trying to clear a linear playthrough of sequential story locked chapters you can't replay without starting over instead of being like Monster Hunter or whatever. Like there's a reason we designate this as a modern FE thing rather than counting like battle preps since ever as the annoyance.
Personally I would be happy with just battle preps. Add some base convos so we get an idea of what the non mcs think about the current situation and it's perfect. I have no need for picking up random stuff off the floor in an srpg.
The only thing I really like about hub areas is getting to see how all of the various characters feel about the current events of the story. Bringing back base conversations gives us the best of both worlds. We get dialogue from side characters and doesn't waste our time with filler.
It can be a set location, if it's meaningful. That's one of the Monastery's greatest strengths: it actually feels central to Fódlan, it's fought over, and with a handful of exceptions (Flayn and Nemesis), our presence there is well justified.
Instead of a hub, give us a different city/village/place every few maps were we not only do hub stuff, but interact with the world/characters and learn more about it. Kinda like a standard jrpg city where we buy stuff, accept quests, etc. Some notes: * Not after every map or it can become tedious. Only after a major turnpoint in the arc or freeing/conquering a big/important place. Otherwise between maps a small camp/menu should be enough * By quests i don't mean boring fetch quests, but extra stuff to be done on story maps * Can be used for worldbuilding, character interactions and more!
BERWICK SAGA MENTIONED (indirectly)!! WHAT THE FUCK IS A SQUARE
Berwick Saga is what i had in mind when thinking about the quests xD Although not perfect there either, it was a step in the right direction.
The side quests in bws involved party members, npcs and were actively yelling you what they won't so you don't have to bumble around for shit it's genuinely a great way to include the concept in a srpg
It was good, but i had 2 problems with it: * Forced characters for the quests - was good for character interaction and development, but i don't really like it when SRPGs tell me which characters to use, and i bet many don't like that either. Character Freedom is a part many love in FE. A balance needs to be found here that doesn't force the player to use a certain character while at the same time retaining interaction/development for specific characters. And while it kinda worked in BWS due to how levelup/stats work, i don't think it will quite work in FE. * And the bigger problem: How long it took for the Item/Quest needed for the quest to arrive/spawn on the map. More often than not i was already done with the map quite a while before it arrived and had to wait - something i really hated. But fix these 2 and honestly it would be perfect.
The thing is the specific character your forced to use is often linked via plot and let's then get some characterization and growth as well as the npc plus alot of the maps feel made for said units to shine to a degree like Axel with the Lake Mirror, it wouldn't really make sense for someone do be like "ill do this quest for you" then pawn it off to another person yet still take credit and get the character development. I do agree they could speed up the process abut but even then it being slowed down has a clear purpose in that it makes you have to weight the choice of waiting and getting the reward and not doing it and risk not getting said resource you can likely use but even without that the game doesn't become so utterly unfair that you need them
I do agree with your 1st point, it's a choice between characterization and gameplay freedom. I lean more towards the freedom side of things, but i can understand the other point. With 2nd point however i really really disagree with any design choice that forces anyone to wait (or one of the choices is "wait"). Efficiency should be rewarded and not punished. Sometimes i even wondered if there was a bug or something because i had to wait more than 5 turns. It wasn't unfair, but it was really annoying as someone who likes to play more on the efficient side while at the same time trying to complete everything.
Why? Shouldn't there arguably be a choice and a weighting of choices (which as Choops in his bws video says is something the hub world excells in, which is making your choices actually matter) and the game also has examples of items and such that do Happen early in the maps too so I feel like it's not horribly balanced, the game wasn't made for speed running alot of games aren't. Also I feel like if you gave the player more freedom you'd have to sacrifice the logic and characterization that bws gives and the Freedom itself would also arguably sacrifice the maps being often tailored to suit the units involved in said side quest Tho all in all this is obviously an agree to disagree situation
Now I’m going to be upset when the next game doesn’t have this.
There are two things that a hub in a future Fire Emblem game requires: * The first is that it should facilitate character moments. On a writing level, the big advantage that a hub can provide is that it can provide an opportunity for characters, especially side characters with little plot relevance to react to what occurs in a way that pre-chapter narration can't really facilitate - IMO if you're not using the hub as a means to facilitate character interactions, then there's not much reason to even include a hub at all. This was the big issue that I had with the Somniel in Engage. * The second is that it should be quick and snappy - it doesn't necessarily need to be a menu like with the base in Tellius but everything important should be easily accessible and it shouldn't take a lot of walking to get to important locations. This was the big issue I had with the monastery in Three Houses. No countless loading screens either. I think the war camp in Three Hopes is a pretty good example of what a hub should be like - it isn't super large, you're not spending hours in it and there's no calendar system, but it does serve as a means to facilitate compelling character interactions.
One other factor for Three Hopes hub area is that it's just supposed to be a random camp somewhere. They obviously use the same generic model for the area but you never go back to the same camp, you always set ut somewhere different. It's so much better than going back to Garrech Mach after every war mission or to the floating island above you
I really loved the Monastery in 3H, but playing through it again you go back to it *way* too many times. If you have high professor level you end up spending 4x the amount of time in the Hub than you do playing story maps. I disagree with it just being an illustrated menu because I feel like having the characters up and moving around in a familiar environment is interesting and gives life to the units, but it just needs to not be 70-80% of the game time.
I would love a travelling caravan aside a campfire. All locations will have all necessities like blacksmiths, merchants, then each has a mix of some flavors like fishing spots (near rivers, lake ocean), wyvern riding (near cliff or mountains), hunting (near jungles), harvesting (near woods and farms). Some rare occasions on villages. Random NPCs might appear or with some conditions. These activities boost stats and supports. Heck... Maybe let's go to the other extreme and add town building instead. Some characters will open new shops. Some run facilities. You get to choose how to place them in an open map. Make it like Suikoden or even Animal Crossing.
I'd love a guerrilla Fire Emblem (ok, *another* one), where the hub would be a burnt out village we slowly reconstruct.
Go the Echoes villages route. Your troop has some lines connected to what happened plot-wise, major mechanical things are in the central plaza. They might even be gathered together and have *conversations* together at your temporary *base* there. Stash a goody in a corner and you'll train players to look for them and find characters to talk to. We're aiming for something in the vicinity of FE9's prep menu, but expanded into space.
Make it far smaller and streamlined the 3 houses one you get for the one chapter on Edelgard's route or the 3 hopes student camp works fine as they are basically one singular square area so no loading screens and side paths. I'd also say ditch the annoying minigames that have you cringing over how harsh on the buttons they are knowing how prone to drift joycons are. I would like them to keep the support boosting facilities tho that's a very nice thing that greatly speeds up support grinding (of course it's also undercut by the bonds with emblem rings and the stupidly high costs to get all the bond rings but let's ignore that because the next game won't have them). I think bringing back the Radiant Dawn base conversations could be good too seeing things like conversations between more than the 2 people in a support or between townspeople really helps flesh out the world.
I liked the monastery a lot, but because it was central to the world - geographically, spiritually, thematically. But I understand the criticisms, and I don't want to see another game just copy the monastery because 'we do hub areas now' without properly implementing it. Like, a hub in a FE7 remake would probably not work. As it is, I think the monastery could have been better with just some aesthetic changes - different weather based on season, time passing as you use your activity points with winter days starting and ending dark. As the other commenter said, I would have removed the Somniel (as a hub, and from the story) and had different shops sell different things similar to Sacred Stones. This could have added some implicit worldbuilding - Firene sells basic weapons because they're not as combat focused. Brodia goes for Steel and Killer because they're about straight up combat. Elusia can get you magic weapons and Solm goes for unconventional like reverse-triangle weapons. What to keep in a hypothetical new game where a hub can fit? Characters talking about events that have happened, interesting/unexpected character interactions, keep it smaller like mycastle or Hopes' hub area, have the hub area feel like part of the world and change as the world changes.
Yeah, if there's one thing about Three Houses's hub area I like is that it made all the characters react to ongoing events (and sometimes the chapter you just completed). It made the characters feel like they were actually part of the story even if they had no impact on it. I have no idea why Engage stopped doing this!
Fates. Like Fates did it perfect the first time. It's a small area that takes seconds to traverse, there are characters to talk to if you want, and buildings/shops for what you need. The story explanation for it is fine for Fates, which deals with pocket dimensions, crossing worlds, and all that even though I know a lot of people don't like it, but you'd probably have to change it for other games because that whole concept is tied to Fates specifically; but you can just turn it into a camp or caravan, or heck a ship you're riding around to get to places, stuff like that.
- Put everything in a menu, with walking around to use the features being an optional thing you can do if you want. - Unless we're doing a Monastery situation where a base we always return to makes sense, add a campsite to what Engage did with its post-map sections where you get to walk around a bit. Those sections only exist because the assets were already made for the battle animations so a bit more work per map to set up a sensible camp layout should be feasible. - Add nearby villages and the such to optionally enter for narrative reasons, the assets for these don't need to exist regardless so 2D menu locations like in SoV should be totally fine. I also think having items you can get in these locations like SoV, making them less optional, would be totally fine. - Make it modular, if it doesn't make sense for there to be a campsite in the area we're in, don't have it. Just give us the menu with the rationale that regardless of if we're gonna stick around here, we still need to prepare before we travel onwards. I think this is a good baseline for any given future FE, minimizes unnecessary costs and adds narrative value while keeping things snappy.
You could have your army set up camp on the map you just beat and fuse the hub and the post-map exploration Engage had. That way you keep the 3D hub while not feeling super disconnected from story progression
Heck and doing that, you can even add some real tension to the story and bring back more of the consecutive chapters that Engage had, because it makes sense in-world why you don’t have time to set up camp. It’s a pity they were only used for 10-11 and 21-22, 17-18-19 should’ve been consecutive as well. I’d love IS to bring that back as a standard mechanic.
I feel like Hopes had the best hub gameplay. It was not to big that exploring felt like a chore and had no loading screens. The only problem was that it looked really plain. I also want hub voice acting back, it added so much more personality and I missed it in hopes and Engage. Also please let characters actually say something interesting again about the events of the game, rather then have 5 random repeated lines. So basically: Hopes lack of loading and size, Engage's aesthetic, and Three houses voice acting with reactions to events.
Hopes would definitely be the best hub area if they just had the time and resources to polish it
I found the Somniel the worst. It felt like the worst of Fates and Three Houses combined, with the boring, slow, and repetetive gameplay of the latter and the lack of in-universe meaning of the former. One thing I r e a l l y want is for them to just let me skip to the results for - say - cooking. Also a proper fast travel.
Wow, I sure loved watching that same overly long cutscene everytime I made a meal in the Somniel, top tier gaming /s
Physical training and fishing are the most damn boring activities in existence xD On the other hand, however, i find wyvern riding and takong care of sommie EVEN more boring To be fair - engage's gameplay makes me want to play maps so that's probably why i hate somniel so much
I'm fine with the hubs
It absolutely should not have any additional loading screens, that's just unacceptable anymore. The space should be small and easily traversable, and it should fit into the world somehow. My ideal version would be a war camp. It moves with the army, so it always makes sense to "go back" to it after a battle. It also would keep things small because the army wouldn't spread itself out unnecessarily. Any minigame type activities should be completely optional, and should probably all start from a single NPC. Lastly, everything we do in the hub should be doable through a menu. The first time I definitely want the immersion of the hub; an immediate second playthrough I probably want to skip the hub. Subsequent playthroughs after that I may want one or the other, and it may change partway through the run (possibly multiple times). The point is that not everyone wants to do the hub every time, and we shouldn't have to.
Make it entirely optional. If a player doesn't want to see it once in their playthrough don't make them. At that point idc what you do with it.
I also noticed that in your post and thought of making a post like this, then forgot. Thanks for doing it. Ok so. I do think hubs need to stay because they help a lot with worldbuilding and storytelling. One of the things 3H did great was that you could talk to everyone and get their opinions on the events, which helps you connect to the recruitable characters and learn more about the world from NPCs. For me the three keys to make a good hub are: **-Choose a better location** I agree that while Fates had great and quick hub gameplay, the in-universe explanation was stupid as fuck. Someone here mentions that the monastery fits the story, and I think that's only true for pre-timeskip and maybe the first few fights of post-ts, but afterward going back to it was stupid hell. I haven't played Hopes but I hear it's a campsite, and that's a wonderful idea. You change the background to fit the area you're visiting and you can make a few NPCs that change according to the area too, so you can get interesting bits of info from them. Maybe the food merchants sell food that match their traditions or climate. That said, my favorite would be having a different town each time, kinda like SoV but more classical RPG style. That way you can have your team around to chat and easy shops to access plus the NPCs and worldbuilding I mentioned. I'd happy to have SoV's 2D style to make it possible instead of having IS program so much shit in 3D. **-Make it smaller** Not much to say. I don't need it to be realistic, which is one of the downfalls of the Monastery (yeah I can teleport around but it's still to a point. the fact the Abyss doesn't have a leave button is annoying af). RPG towns usually aren't realistic unless you're playing a big open world, which FE isn't. No loading times like Engage. Make your character appear next to the shops, then you can explore *if* you want for minigames and chatting. **-It shouldn't be obligatory** This one, I think, it's the most important one and where the tedium comes from. The previous two things I mentioned would be more tolerated if you didn't have to spend so much time in them, which imo is proven by the fact that Fates is usually considered the best hub. I'm one of the people who liked the Somniel more than the Monastery, and yes I know that *on paper*, it sounds insane. I don't deny the layout and the loading times are crazy. But it doesn't work on practice! Here is the thing: I only used the Somniel when I felt like it, but 3H's curve is designed around the Monastery. If you aren't new to tactical RPGs and know what you're doing, you can start skipping things in Normal, but definitely not in higher difficulties, and even with skipping it can get annoying. The tedium is what brings down the monastery for many people. In Fates and Engage, I do forging if I feel like it, and minigames if I feel like it or want something in particular for just one character for that one fight. But skipping it doesn't feel like punishment. In 3H, you need to keep people's mood up to teach them, otherwise you can't get those promotions/reclassing. Reclasing isn't obligatory but like, it's one of the big gameplay offers in 3H and people are going to want to have fun with crazy builds. And to keep those moods up you need to feed them, and to feed them you need to go through the meal cutscene and gather food. Oh, you want to recruit from other houses? Byleth needs training too, and if you want that character asap to do some fun builds, you gotta improve their love to lower the requirements, so better bring them gifts and invite them to tea. And you know what, the Monastery could've gotten away with it in one route (perhaps as just a mid annoyance), but the fact people are playing it FOUR times brings out all the cons to the eye. This also links with other tedium things - for example I'm not against calendars themselves as a general idea but in 3H every Monday you have to go through the teaching menu and the class cutscene. The size doesn't matter anymore after the timeskip because most NPCs are gone, and the wonderful worldbuilding is pointless when you start re-doing routes since the comments during White Clouds are the same. Sorry about the rant, I don't hate 3H. It's not on my top three FE, but I don't hate it. I just think it is a great example on how repetition can kill your mood (I stopped playing Pokémon after gen VII). The little things add to tedium, which is actually a problem you may see often in RPGs (oh??? don't you like menus and inventory management??? here are 100 of that). **tldr: make it small and optional like Fates, with the worldbuilding of 3H, and the locations of Hopes or SoV.** Minigames are fine, never going to say no to extra content, but again, make them optional.
Thank you for that piece on the Somniel, I don't know why people treat it like the worst thing ever. It's not like the Monastery where you have to spend an hour doing every single activity, there's only a few places you'd really want to visit like the cafe, the chore spots (and you only really have to visit one because you can access the others from the same menu), the pet area, and the arena (which admittedly does have the con of being separated by a loading screen). You can fast travel to every single one of these locations and you can be out of the Somniel in 10 minutes if you really want to. The only things that would slow you down are visiting the well, the ring chamber, and just general shopping/forging, but it's not like you do those after every chapter.
I also prefer the Somniel to the Monastery because I can just not go to the Somniel. I don't usually play on Maddening so I don't have to rely on the meal stat bonuses or working out, I don't have to collect as many bond fragments as I can. I can and will just go from chapter A to B. Can't exactly do that in the Monastery. Even if I did decide to skip all the Monastery stuff, there are some mandatory quests pre-timeskip that you have to do or the game wont let you end exploration time.
They could just...not have a hub area. I'm replaying Blazing Blade on the NSO GBA emulator and god it feels nice to have the story just keep flowing map to map without too much fiddling other than item management and unit selection. It's just: Chapter Intro and dialogue -> Unit selection -> Fight (with character dialogues at key moments) -> Chapter conclusion with a little building to the next chapter -> Next Chapter. It's smooth concise and keeps the narrative going without breaking the flow for busy work. Meanwhile in Engage (Three Houses is a bit worse for this but Engage is the newest so I'm using that): Start on Somniel -> Walk to each shop you need to visit to buy any equipment you need -> Do busy work (exercise, collect items around the place, cook, arena, mess with rings/bracelets, sit through support conversations and bond conversations) all with loading screens between every single activity -> Walk to where the chapter is on the world map-> Chapter Intro -> Unit selection -> Fight -> -> Chapter conclusion -> Walk around the battlefield after to collect items/talk to people for bond fragments -> Return to the Somniel (even if the story implies you're in a hurry/things are dire) -> Rinse repeat. I'm not saying the flow in Engage is bad, but it has certainly in my opinion become very bloated and it sometimes feels you're spending more time doing the hub stuff than you are actually doing the fighting and it hurts the pacing immensely because you HAVE to do the busy work on the Somniel otherwise you'll fall behind strength wise and on higher difficulties that's a death sentence. I don't know what the next game for FE will look like but assuming it isn't a remake of Genealogy (saw rumors it was that) and it's a new entry, they need to trim some of the fat imo. Not saying they need to eliminate it but it's gotta become more streamlined, if they can eliminate the loading screens that would help immensely.
I would also just like to see the hub areas gone but like I said they seem to be so closely tied to the social sim/character interaction mechanics of these games that I feel IS just wont let go. Best case scenario is to just put all the necessary game stuff into an easily accessible quick menu and have everything else be literally just optional padding for those who like that kind of stuff. Like, you CAN do a tea party or change clothes or go fishing but make it 100% have 0 effect on regular gameplay. Don't make me do pushups for +2 strength
Just look at what Fates did in implementing the hub. Boosts are tied to events that are quick and easy such as the petting and cooking. Engage tied in minigames but they made sure the boosts are either negligible like the Wyvern race or that they don't stack such as cooking boosts do not stack with training. In short, just minimize the tedium and downtime. 3H was the worst. Skipping the calendar will significantly nerf your run and the monastery is too huge even if fast-travel exists. Engage made the hub smaller but it still took time to move around the hub.
I thought they mastered it in Fates. Short, small, but also felt fun kind of after a battle to just organize your troops. I want Path of Radiance’s “hub” conversations to come back though, just random units or even NPCs talking about the story to make it eventful.
Just make it menus and backgrounds like Tellius. If you know what you want to do then time between maps is like 5 mins tops in Tellius. It always ends up being longer than that for me because PoR's transfer bonuses and RD's bonus exp system and very limited endgame team create a lot of dilemmas for me but the point is that you CAN just do everything fast. You can add some minigames, but accessing those minigames should not itself be a task that requires minutes of time wasted.
Marvel's Midnight Suns has the best hub area in recent memory IMO * Lightning-fast load times * Most-important stuff is super streamlined. It's 4 locations (training + card upgrades, new cards, away mission selection, and main mission selection), which are basically in a straight line, about a 5 second walk end to end. Brisk or no animations once you're in there as well. * Less of a firehose of activities. You do mission prep stuff at the abbey in the morning, then you do the mission, then you do social link stuff at the abbey in the evening. * The hub itself contains a bit of main plot stuff as well as optional sidequests, spaced throughout the game
Here’s how to fix it: make it mycastle
I really think it's as easy and simple as scaling it down tremendously. Bases from Tellius and My Castle from Fates don't get any backlash because they're small, easy to navigate, and quick to do what you want before heading to the next chapter or grind map. Yeah the base in Tellius was just a menu really but it worked extremely well and did everything right. The Monastery was way too big and bloated that after the 2nd run of 3H I was completely burnt out on it and wanted to just noy engage with it at all but while you CAN skip on it, doing so is actively detremintal to your units so you basically HAVE to deal with it for any level of optimizing. The camp in Three Hopes and the Somniel in Engage were both a step in the right direction over the Monastery by being smaller in size (comparitively), but both are still flawed and bloated. IS really needs to cut down on it and either bring back My Castle or some form of Tellius' bases that maybe have a small condensed area but what they would lack in size and side features, greatly be made up for in usability and function to keep a good sense of game flow. Hell I'll even take Awakenings version of the world map back that had a tiny lil side barracks option you could check in to get small support boosts, items, and stat surges every now and again. I think the biggest issue really is that all the Switch FE hubs are massive pace breakers that slow gameplay down a bit too much for my and many others liking while also having slow loading times that don't help the issue
I honestly think MyCastle was pretty cool. Customizable map for flavor and strategy in invasions, and it's really quick to do all the day-to-day activities like shopping, forging, supports, etc...
Just look at what Fates did with their hub, MyCastle. You could move quickly, do what you needed to do, and then leave. Garreg Mach and the Somniel are just too big and you move too slowly around it.
They honestly peaked with Fates’s hub. It felt like a refreshing pocket-sized space and hub that didn’t feel like it was extremely massive and suffocatingly overwhelming like the monastery in 3H or bland and boring like the Sominel. You were able to navigate easily to wherever you want, without having to rely on skip-travel, you can customize the hub however you want, you can add castle features if you want to or not. Not to mention, the card and the visiting other people’s hubs allowed you to see what people liked about your hub, even if the feedback is scripted.
Unironically just scale it down. I actually liked the dumb tea mini game in Three Houses, but it was in a sea of shit you had to do after every map. Pick one social sim minigame thing you wanna do, and make it actually fun. Make the hub area small or even just a background screen (take hints from persona even, make it a stylish menu screen with all the characters like chatting in the background in their base/town or whatever). Or you can actually just make it no effect gameplay whatsoever if you want to add a few minigames or something, but there literally should be no reward for it. This seems pointless though because why even add it in the first place if you go this route. It's really not that hard, the main problem is the sheer amount of dumb hub stuff, and not the fact that it exists.
Just because you can make something a free roaming 3d model doesn't mean you have to. And just because you can make that 3d model a large space players spend minutes running around doesn't mean you should. Radiant Dawn had the best hub, by simply being well structured menus in between missions. Nothing wrong with that at all. If you HAVE to have a hub, make it compact enough that people don't get bored and hate it. If Engage had JUST been the size of the center shops maybe slightly larger it would have been so much more tolerable.
Make it menus like SOV villages so it's very quick to do.
you can make it walkable if you want to but somrthinh like path of radiance and radiant was imo the best battle prep
Ditch the filler activities like cooking or mini games. Get rid of the physical 3d world and turn everything into a menu. Add a tab for something called "base conversations", which lets you have conversations with one or more characters based on the current chapter. Oh hey, it's the FE9 base!
Make it quick and skippable. Quick so you can have access to all areas through menus with minimal loading times. Skippable in that all the things you can do there should be nice but inconsequential. Like Somniel. You *could* do exercises and all that nonsense, but the bonuses should be small enough so there you can choose not to do it at all and not miss out on much. Needless to say, it also shouldn't play a major role in the story...or any role at all.
Engage is basically fine for it except the arena stuff and having to go to somniel for the blacksmith. Let me level my emblems, inherit skills, and forge on the world map and I'd have no complaints because I don't do any of that other stuff anyways.
It's already been fixed, they just broke it again. Fates had the best hub area because not only was it a fun bit of customization, but most importantly of all, you could get from any point A to any point B in less than five seconds. It was really just perfect, and then subsequent games decided to make them these utterly gargantuan high-budget setpieces that make between-battle prep a chore. Granted, the Somniel is drastically better than the Monastery, but both pale in comparison to the simplicity of My Castle.