I can understand the hate for a couple. But all in all, I thought the cast was pretty diverse. I think the major problem just comes from little action from them outside of Supports and their starting scenes. In some old Fire Emblem games, quite a bunch of characters had scenes of their own regardless of whether you played with them or not. Then you also had the fact that in past Fire Emblems where you needed certain characters to get other characters and you had characters who could actually interact with the enemies. While Fates does still have the later, it's far and few between. Besides some of the siblings, Corrin and Azura, the only others who have their own conversations with enemies are Kaze with Saizo(Conquest), Felicia and Jakob with Flora, and Saizo and Shura with the one Ninja guy. Otherwise, as far as I know, no one else can. Does anybody remember Selena's support with Subaki? How Selena heard about Subaki being a Pegasus Knight known for his "perfect" nature?
Imagine if that also spread out to Birthright and Conquest and if you had Subaki face Selena in Birthright or vice-versa in Conquest, Selena would comment to him about him being the "perfect" Pegasus Knight. Silas tried to comment to Xander alongside Corrin in Chapter 12 Birthright. How about if Silas also had a fight conversation with him in that chapter? Effie and Hana in Conquest Chapter 22? Hinoka to Camilla in Chapter 13 Birthright? Takumi to Leo in Chapter 18 Birthright? Beruka to Oboro in Conquest? It's surprising how Kaze didn't have a chat with the one ninja guy like Saizo did.
Then you have some of the writing. In the case of Corrin, Azura and some of the siblings, they suffered from bad writing. And then you have how some characters were handled in some of their supports. Like you have a really good support between Laslow and Peri that gives Peri really good development for her character.....than you have some of her other ones. Basically, I think the characters in Fates were diverse and pretty good, but underutilised in the main game and suffered during the times when bad writing did come in.
I just wonder how Intelligent Systems will take this criticism with the writing for the next Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem Fates was a really great game gameplay-wise and brought in some very great things for the gameplay. But the story and the writing were poorly done. I just hope IS keeps the really good things about from Fates while trying to fix the bad in a slow and steady manner, compared to being rushed in Fates.
Edit: To give a better picture, the actual concept for Fates with the whole "Choose a side" thing was a great concept. Much different compared to past Fire Emblems which is mostly a start-to-finish deal. But the writing and actual story felt very rushed, as if they had this great concept, but due to businesses and the fact that they had to make 2 different games for each side, the story and writing were rushed and polished very little.
And I think that's the main problem behind Fates' story and writing was that while you had good moments, they were very little in between and some scenes had this feel of "You really didn't think this through, did you?"
I know it probably doesn't count since it's not part of the story, but Laslow, Selena, and Odin also technically have special "enemy" conversations with Lucina and Robin in their Hero Battles.
I agree with your general point though. A lot of the characters are fine and inoffensive in Fates, but a number of them are utilised poorly due to, what I like to call, "segmented writing". Being that rather than having one cohesive narrative, you have multiple narratives going on at once. Rather than having cohesive development with characters, they have to be repurposed for all of these possible outcomes, like the three different paths and the different potential supports. Supports themselves are also an isolated thing and don't effect each other. Let's say for example, you marry Xander to Felicia. Then you have Peri, who is obviously Xander's retainer and cares deeply about his well-being, and could still reach A-Support with him even when he's married to Felicia. Then you let Peri and Felicia have a support and...suddenly Peri attempts to murder Xander's wife due to her hatred of maids. If they wanted to make the support mechanic more fleshed out, they would, for example, have Peri and Felicia's support change if Felicia is married to Xander, so it's not as non-sensical (either Peri is simply portrayed as not liking Felicia and takes some time to warm up to her, or at least, add in a jealousy angle where Peri is in fact in love with Xander and is jealous of Felicia being married to him, making her attack a little less non-sensical and having a genuine motive).
I also heard Fates actually had
completely different writers for the three different paths, likely so the development team could develop the three games simultaneously in a timely fashion. Understandable, but that's exactly why we have Elise having an amazing character arc and development in Birthright...only for her to basically be a generic loli trope elsewhere. And other similar instances.
Pretty much all of my favourite characters, like Takumi, Ryoma, Hinoka, Leo, Rinkah, and Kaze, are the ones who somehow manage to be largely unaffected by this segmented writing, and somehow manage to remain charming, interesting, and consistently characterised no matter what path you take and no matter who they support with.
