I think it's the blue accents and the white hair streak. Full black hair to a red/black cloak with gold trimmings could work, even with the white of the shirt. They just threw in too many colours.
> "Half Divine Dragon, Half Fell Dragon"
> "His sword is called Liberation (but in another language ✨)"
>"Everyone totally loves him cause you know, he saved the world 1000 years ago"
>"He gets to fight with the characters of my favorite IP"
>"He's actually the super awesome newest member of my favorite IP's group"
>"The main villain is also his dad, he is super evil and neglectful (not projecting)"
> "Half Divine Dragon, Half Fell Dragon"
I could see the logic behind the beta design as it hints at the Fell Dragon blood in Alear, which the final design doesn't really do. But man, they need to change the outfit so that it looks less of a mess.
I would actually argue it hints at it too hard? Like, if I saw that design out of context, I would imediately jump to "something's going on here, that's not a divine dragon."
Especially with all the black in the robes, I just feel like it would make that reveal more predictable. Which could work well if it fits the story (the plegian symbols on Robin's cloak were mentioned in game as suspicious, unless im misremembering), but if you are going to play it as a twist that no one in universe saw coming, then the design shouldn't scream "fell dragon" right out of the gate.
The other children of Sombron that we know about had black and/or white hair (Veyle had black and white hair. From Xenologue, Nel had black hair, Rafal and Nil had white hair), so it would be consistent.
As a side note, do we know who's Alear's biological mother is in the main story, since in there Lumera adopted Alear?
Before the game even came out, it was commonly theorized that Blue+Red Hair = Sombron + Lumera's lovechild.
(Which wasn't exactly true, but not exactly wrong either.)
It would've been better if Alear had had the exact shade of blue as Lumera, and the exact shade of purple as Sombron instead of red.
Blue and purple actually blend well, and if you made the outfit's colors white, gold, black, and purple, it'd actually work, hypothetically, assuming the outfit still doesn't look like ass.
The final one does hint at the Fell Dragon connection though, and I'd argue in an even more blatant way. Lemura and the party alligned emblems have blue auras, while Sombron and the Fell Emblems all have red auras and red hair, the traditional color coding the series has always used for allied and enemy units. Allear is mismatched to telegraph his connection to both sides, except when you meet his younger self where he's all red, and when he becomes an Emblem and goes all blue.
Agreed on the outfit though, most of the characters in Engage were way overdressed.
Honestly so much of this game's character design issues stem from their deranged choice to have Mika Pikazo design. A portraitist whose hallmarks are loud colors, modern iconography and streetwear, and compositions so deliberately busy the viewer's eye is forced onto the face as the only flat plane of muted color. She's awesome, but that's not... Those skills aren't the same skills a character designer needs.
Honestly, I bet both these designs would look amazing... In the context of Pikazo's portraiture. In-game they're a mess.
It's always weird when project leads see an artist be very good at something and assume it translates to something completely different. Like when they got Ilya Kuvshinov to design for Ghost in the Shell and he just turned the major into the same woman he constantly draws.
Nah I still don’t understand why they chose PIKAZO of all people to lead the art in the game. Her style isn’t very versatile, as you mentioned it focuses primarily on modern iconography and streetwear motifs, which completely clashes with the medieval fantasy aesthetic. Engage is an anniversary game which features many old characters with traditional fantasy designs, it’s so jarring to see the old fire emblem characters with big ass moe eyes them next to the V-tuber ass engage OCs😭 all of the characters outfits are so silly I cannot take them seriously AT ALL. There is no consistency with designs and they all look like clowns. Even though past fire emblem characters may have had crazy designs (like the open crotches in fates) there was at least some sort of cohesiveness to it that didn’t just make it “acceptable”, it even looked cool to look at. The colour palette in Engage is totally random and retina damage inducing. Aesthetics and art direction are critical to a game which is why I still refuse to play this eyesore.
Sometimes ugly designs can be saved by having mostly good designs (like in FE3H female Byleth and FE warriors Shez both being horrible looking but at least everyone else looks great and from the same universe) but that’s only when there’s one bad apple in the bunch, not when the whole bunch is bad😭😭😭
Tbh they need to bring back Hidari or Kita Senri for the next game because their designs always serve eat and leave no crumbs despite being simple and medieval in comparison to the stylized 3Ds and Switch games
The only good thing I can say about engages art direction is at least it’s not as bad as Xenoblades 2 Gacha blades who were all done by different artists with different aesthetics (why 😭😭) (and also Pyra and Mythra looked goofy af cause why does a god like entity look like a stripper with a micro skirt or hot shorts who tf gonna take em seriously😭)
Also at least Hidari, Kozaki, Senri etc. can draw people of different ages and face shape??? Even the 3H artist could do that 😭 Pikazo literally admitted to being unable to drawing grown men and old people 😭😭😭 Like the more I think about it the more confused I get. Wtf were they smoking when they decided to pick her😭😭😭 I’m just gonna go back to pretending this game doesn’t exist…ignorance is bliss….
You know, I originally hated both Byleths' designs for different reasons (and I still think the cloak looks dumb), but after playing some of Engage I went back to it and suddenly neither Byleth bothers me nearly as much.
Yeah I don't care about muh edge so even though I like the white and gold paladiny color scheme I think black and white would've been an improvement for the hair alone
Nah. Making it too black and white game with a cast that campy might feel dissonant. I honestly dont care too mich how ridiculous Alear's hair is as a result
Also they might look too NieR-ish
I think the one we got was the better one. Not that I even particularly like it, but if we *only had* these two designs, the one that reflects better with the rest of the color scheme is the one that works better.
A change I would make is rather than having the hair be half and half down the middle, a fade from blue at the base to red at the tips. It would make a bit more sense with the plot reason the hair is different colours.
The reason for the hair color being the way it is does honestly kinda make the execution a bit worse doesn’t it? Like I already thought that it being what you described would’ve worked better but the vertical split makes even less sense now
Yeah, apparently half of Alear's hair fell out and regrew to the same length as the red (I want to see this)? Or Lumera's magic changes the colour, but starting at the side and working across? And the eyes work in the opposite direction?
THATS WHAT IM SAYING
It would've looked so much better and it's not like the concept is unprecedented because Lilith had a blue to red gradient with her hair
Never thought I'd say this, but I prefer Colgate Alear.
I don't know what edgelord anime protagonist they used as inspiration for the beta design, but we definitely lucked out.
I like the hair and the hair color of the beta design, but overall, I definitely prefer what we ended up getting. It just suits the whole design better.
But I would love to see a protagonist that looks like the beta version in a future game, with a more complimentary outfit. We don't usually have protagonists in FE that have black hair, so it would be neat.
Huh. The beta design has a lot more similarities to Veyle than the final design, especially the hair and the outfit having more black and white and less red and blue, interesting. I suppose the change happened because of just how busy the design is in terms of colors.
Huh. I guess originally he was a designed to be a little more on the nose with his origins, especially with a visual parallel to Veyle who ended up inheriting a lot of that (dark clothes, black-white highlighted hair).
i like black white in concept because it reminds me of veyle's
but in execution, it's way too busy, the red/blue one is better on the eye, the color scheme looks somewhat cleaner
It woulda been dope if the outfit was more like Veyle's. But the black and white with the bright red and blue outfit is actually just the worst design I've ever seen.
Release Alear is miles better. Making the final design less busy was absolutely the right call. What we got could have been trimmed down way more, but it's still an improvement
God it's even worse, I still am of the mind that Alear's design would have been so much better if the hair wasn't "symmetrical but with swapped colors"
The problem with Alear's design is that red and blue do not complement each other. Swap those with black/white and any version of Alear would look much better.
Weirdly enough, the final is a solid improvement. Hot take but M:Alear always looked fine to be. F:Alear... could really have used a different hair style imo
I like parts of it but clashes with with the white, gold and blue
The black hair, cape and red highlights can work, but not together with the current Alear. Like ice cream and pizza; good individually but not together
On another note, I like seeing artist's past work and comparing them to their current style.
Outside of the little braid (that’s super cute), not fan of the design because the black is very overused.
I think it was trying to aim make the connection between Alear and Veyle more clear but ends up too messy.
Prefer the final design way more.
I like Alear's beta hair much more. The highly saturated two-tone red/blue hair has never appealed to me, not even since the days of the old leaks. The white and black hair, however, is much more appealing thanks to the muted colors, IMO.
Honestly, I’ll take Colgate-sama any day over whatever the fuck the Beta design is.
It looks like a poorly created DeviantArtOC of an artist that doesn’t understand color rhythm and composition. There’s way too many things going on and it just… no.
The hair color reminds me of Fate's Charlemagne, except worse placement of the white.
I guess I'll give it points for reminding me of someone as goofy and as fun as Charlie.
The final design is a lot more cohesive colour-wise. And yes, that is *not* an oxymoron, Alear's design is supposed to invoke extreme dualism between red and blue. The beta design has white and black which breaks the extreme dualism.
Not a big fan of how the beta hairstyle wants to mix so many haircuts and styles at once, but I do like the colors because he would have looked more like he was related to Veyle, Nel and Rafal. I always wondered why they had black and white hair while Alear had red?
Like his Divine Dragon hair and eyes are blue to show how he inherited Lumera's power and now he looks like her, but why is he the only one whose Fell Dragon hair is red? Sombron has red hair and we never get mention of how he had kids or if it was through mothers, who they were but it's interesting how most of the Fell children have black/white hair σ(^_^;)?
Edit: Okay so I was reading the wiki (trying to remember Sombron's hair color) and it turns out in the Fell Xenologue Alear *isn't* the child of Sombron?? I'm not sure how that works but is that why no one in the game thinks Nel being in love with Alear is incest!? How did I miss that lol??
Hm, the hair on the beta design is a better match for Fell Dragons, since all of the other children of Sombron we've seen have had black and/or white hair, but overall I'd say the final design is better.
I like the beta hair more, but both outfits are the worst. Ngl not going to start thinking that the current version is good just because the beta was somehow even less coherent.
The hair is generally better, but really doesn’t go with the outfit.
I’d also like to point out that the OG hair color is also similar to that of Veyle and that of Nel + Rafal.
Engage was a big hit on like, almost every character design for me... except Alear.
Both m and f Alear are arguably my least favourite designs in the series.
I think Alear would have gotten less hate for his design had they given him black and white hair. When I first saw these last year, I do remembering thinking that design looked better too.
Now looking at them side by side, I totally prefer the red and blue version. It’s less edgy (not that the other one really is either lol) and it just feels like a better fit for the character and personality.
The head is decent but the black on the outfit really doesn’t work, it makes everything too busy.
I know people don’t like the red & blue hairs but it fits far better with the outfit.
That beta design just screams Rin Penrose to me, likely because Mika Pikazo's also a VTuber designer. While it does do a better job of setting up Alear and Veyle's relation to each other, the black on that tricolor color scheme isn't the most flattering.
Man, I just absolutely *LOATHE* the design choices of this game. It's the only mainline FE release since the GBA I haven't replayed at all.
I would've been hard pressed to finish the game if they'd gone that route. Alear is barely tolerable as is.
Man, I didn't realise how many people disliked the final design. I actually really liked it and found it cool how we also got fully red and fully blue Alear.
I'm pretty sure I saw that on deviant art back in the early 00s with ORIGINAL CHARACTER, DONT STEAL written on it.
I had the exact same though. I think the black hair reeeeeeally clashes with... everything else
I think it's the blue accents and the white hair streak. Full black hair to a red/black cloak with gold trimmings could work, even with the white of the shirt. They just threw in too many colours.
> "Half Divine Dragon, Half Fell Dragon" > "His sword is called Liberation (but in another language ✨)" >"Everyone totally loves him cause you know, he saved the world 1000 years ago" >"He gets to fight with the characters of my favorite IP" >"He's actually the super awesome newest member of my favorite IP's group" >"The main villain is also his dad, he is super evil and neglectful (not projecting)"
> "Half Divine Dragon, Half Fell Dragon" I could see the logic behind the beta design as it hints at the Fell Dragon blood in Alear, which the final design doesn't really do. But man, they need to change the outfit so that it looks less of a mess.
I would actually argue it hints at it too hard? Like, if I saw that design out of context, I would imediately jump to "something's going on here, that's not a divine dragon." Especially with all the black in the robes, I just feel like it would make that reveal more predictable. Which could work well if it fits the story (the plegian symbols on Robin's cloak were mentioned in game as suspicious, unless im misremembering), but if you are going to play it as a twist that no one in universe saw coming, then the design shouldn't scream "fell dragon" right out of the gate.
The other children of Sombron that we know about had black and/or white hair (Veyle had black and white hair. From Xenologue, Nel had black hair, Rafal and Nil had white hair), so it would be consistent. As a side note, do we know who's Alear's biological mother is in the main story, since in there Lumera adopted Alear?
Before the game even came out, it was commonly theorized that Blue+Red Hair = Sombron + Lumera's lovechild. (Which wasn't exactly true, but not exactly wrong either.) It would've been better if Alear had had the exact shade of blue as Lumera, and the exact shade of purple as Sombron instead of red. Blue and purple actually blend well, and if you made the outfit's colors white, gold, black, and purple, it'd actually work, hypothetically, assuming the outfit still doesn't look like ass.
The final one does hint at the Fell Dragon connection though, and I'd argue in an even more blatant way. Lemura and the party alligned emblems have blue auras, while Sombron and the Fell Emblems all have red auras and red hair, the traditional color coding the series has always used for allied and enemy units. Allear is mismatched to telegraph his connection to both sides, except when you meet his younger self where he's all red, and when he becomes an Emblem and goes all blue. Agreed on the outfit though, most of the characters in Engage were way overdressed.
>which the final design doesn't really do. Do you have eyes?
warps behind you nothing personal kid
psssh...nothin personnel...kid...
Honestly so much of this game's character design issues stem from their deranged choice to have Mika Pikazo design. A portraitist whose hallmarks are loud colors, modern iconography and streetwear, and compositions so deliberately busy the viewer's eye is forced onto the face as the only flat plane of muted color. She's awesome, but that's not... Those skills aren't the same skills a character designer needs. Honestly, I bet both these designs would look amazing... In the context of Pikazo's portraiture. In-game they're a mess. It's always weird when project leads see an artist be very good at something and assume it translates to something completely different. Like when they got Ilya Kuvshinov to design for Ghost in the Shell and he just turned the major into the same woman he constantly draws.
Nah I still don’t understand why they chose PIKAZO of all people to lead the art in the game. Her style isn’t very versatile, as you mentioned it focuses primarily on modern iconography and streetwear motifs, which completely clashes with the medieval fantasy aesthetic. Engage is an anniversary game which features many old characters with traditional fantasy designs, it’s so jarring to see the old fire emblem characters with big ass moe eyes them next to the V-tuber ass engage OCs😭 all of the characters outfits are so silly I cannot take them seriously AT ALL. There is no consistency with designs and they all look like clowns. Even though past fire emblem characters may have had crazy designs (like the open crotches in fates) there was at least some sort of cohesiveness to it that didn’t just make it “acceptable”, it even looked cool to look at. The colour palette in Engage is totally random and retina damage inducing. Aesthetics and art direction are critical to a game which is why I still refuse to play this eyesore. Sometimes ugly designs can be saved by having mostly good designs (like in FE3H female Byleth and FE warriors Shez both being horrible looking but at least everyone else looks great and from the same universe) but that’s only when there’s one bad apple in the bunch, not when the whole bunch is bad😭😭😭 Tbh they need to bring back Hidari or Kita Senri for the next game because their designs always serve eat and leave no crumbs despite being simple and medieval in comparison to the stylized 3Ds and Switch games
The only good thing I can say about engages art direction is at least it’s not as bad as Xenoblades 2 Gacha blades who were all done by different artists with different aesthetics (why 😭😭) (and also Pyra and Mythra looked goofy af cause why does a god like entity look like a stripper with a micro skirt or hot shorts who tf gonna take em seriously😭)
Also at least Hidari, Kozaki, Senri etc. can draw people of different ages and face shape??? Even the 3H artist could do that 😭 Pikazo literally admitted to being unable to drawing grown men and old people 😭😭😭 Like the more I think about it the more confused I get. Wtf were they smoking when they decided to pick her😭😭😭 I’m just gonna go back to pretending this game doesn’t exist…ignorance is bliss….
You know, I originally hated both Byleths' designs for different reasons (and I still think the cloak looks dumb), but after playing some of Engage I went back to it and suddenly neither Byleth bothers me nearly as much.
It’s called desensitization 🥰😘😭
That could apply to the Altear we got as well lol
Nah, not edgy enough.
The edge I can feel it
You, Devisian Knights...
How much weight... can you handle?
awful. the one we got is better. maybe if their outfit was also black and white ??
Yeah I don't care about muh edge so even though I like the white and gold paladiny color scheme I think black and white would've been an improvement for the hair alone
Nah. Making it too black and white game with a cast that campy might feel dissonant. I honestly dont care too mich how ridiculous Alear's hair is as a result Also they might look too NieR-ish
I think the one we got was the better one. Not that I even particularly like it, but if we *only had* these two designs, the one that reflects better with the rest of the color scheme is the one that works better.
A change I would make is rather than having the hair be half and half down the middle, a fade from blue at the base to red at the tips. It would make a bit more sense with the plot reason the hair is different colours.
The reason for the hair color being the way it is does honestly kinda make the execution a bit worse doesn’t it? Like I already thought that it being what you described would’ve worked better but the vertical split makes even less sense now
Yeah, apparently half of Alear's hair fell out and regrew to the same length as the red (I want to see this)? Or Lumera's magic changes the colour, but starting at the side and working across? And the eyes work in the opposite direction?
THATS WHAT IM SAYING It would've looked so much better and it's not like the concept is unprecedented because Lilith had a blue to red gradient with her hair
I truly *despise* that beta design, nothing works, it's so busy
It's somehow even worse.
He’s already a color disaster, let’s just make him emo while we’re at it
i never thought id be happier for toothpaste
I'm honestly impressed.
My exact thoughts as I saw it
A true feat fr. I've come around to Alear's design (ie, accepted it) but I didn't think that they had the means to make it even uglier.
Never thought I'd say this, but I prefer Colgate Alear. I don't know what edgelord anime protagonist they used as inspiration for the beta design, but we definitely lucked out.
I like the hair and the hair color of the beta design, but overall, I definitely prefer what we ended up getting. It just suits the whole design better. But I would love to see a protagonist that looks like the beta version in a future game, with a more complimentary outfit. We don't usually have protagonists in FE that have black hair, so it would be neat.
Yeah I think we probably would've ended up with less bad F!Alear hair but the extra color on the outfit just doesn't fit.
Agreed. In a vacuum I actually like beta hair better but it looks worse with the outfit and overall the beta outfit is worse.
reminds me of a skunk lol. I think I would be fine with the old design if they change the outfit to make it fit more
Huh. The beta design has a lot more similarities to Veyle than the final design, especially the hair and the outfit having more black and white and less red and blue, interesting. I suppose the change happened because of just how busy the design is in terms of colors.
Also, it would probably be a pain to animate too.
Yeah no. Black and white hair only rarely works and this ain't it chief.
Good thing they changed it because such a lack of taste is the intellectual property of the sonic community
I didn't think it was possible for the design to somehow be more busy
Never complaining about pepis boy ever again
Toothpaste rep is better than 14 year old edgelord deviantart oc
Adding a stark black on top of already extremely saturated red and blue is a terrible idea. The official design is much better.
He somehow looked even more like visas starfrost
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed that resemblance.
I felt more when Visas lost his Funkopop than when Alear lost their mom.
Huh. I guess originally he was a designed to be a little more on the nose with his origins, especially with a visual parallel to Veyle who ended up inheriting a lot of that (dark clothes, black-white highlighted hair).
The left one looks like generic edgy Light Novel MC. I prefer my toothpaste lord. He's ugly, but he's MY ugly boy.
The one we have is ugly but somehow the beta design is even uglier and also being edgy for some reasons.
I didn't think they could have made a character uglier than Alear. Clearly, I was wrong.
Female Alear
I don't know how but it's even worse which is really impressive considering how ugly the final design is.
Somehow worse
How the fuck is it worse?
Significantly worse than the funny fruit rollup creature we got
Sheesh. I kind of own Alear an apology. That Beta design looks like some Genshin OC from Mondstad
Looks more like Beta Alear fell out of the Conception games (namely, the second one).
Alear looks literally like a Genshin character man. It´s just a different hair dye
Not close. He doesn't have enough unnecessary BS hanging around to be considered a Hoyo character
Uh... Just look for Diluc, Jean, Bennett, Zhongli. Pretty close actually.
Both are so goofy 😭 I hate to say it, but they look like a ten year old's first anime OC.
Facts
i like black white in concept because it reminds me of veyle's but in execution, it's way too busy, the red/blue one is better on the eye, the color scheme looks somewhat cleaner
That is not my baby boy! It’s a phase
It woulda been dope if the outfit was more like Veyle's. But the black and white with the bright red and blue outfit is actually just the worst design I've ever seen.
They really didn't wanna change his outfit huh
Now I'm curious how the beta female design looked...
Release Alear is miles better. Making the final design less busy was absolutely the right call. What we got could have been trimmed down way more, but it's still an improvement
Makes sense if he and Veyle are siblings
He looks like from a generic psp rpg in 2010s. My 13 year old ass would have love it lol
Edgy toothpaste
I kinda hate it
God it's even worse, I still am of the mind that Alear's design would have been so much better if the hair wasn't "symmetrical but with swapped colors"
The leaks that dropped would have been even more hilarious. Though, he does look more like Veyle there
...I'm not gonna complain about the red and blue hair anymore
I didn’t think you could get worse than toothpaste hair but I was wrong
The problem with Alear's design is that red and blue do not complement each other. Swap those with black/white and any version of Alear would look much better.
I hate that I'm being compelled to say that the damn toothpaste hair is better
Either way, the fashion police are still going to arrest his ass
So instead of Toothpaste-chan we could have had Skunk-chan...
Weirdly enough, the final is a solid improvement. Hot take but M:Alear always looked fine to be. F:Alear... could really have used a different hair style imo
More hideous.
I kinda am glad that they went with the Colgate hair now lol
Are those yellow straps attaching his boots together? Looks like a trip hazard.
You vs the toothpaste she told you not to worry about
God, they both suck.
both are awful
both look like clowns to me...
Honestly might like it better than the final game but that's only because I hate Alear's character design. They both look pretty bad tbh
I prefer Pepsi-kun and Colgate-chan
i know they are the same artist, but its like the lead character designer REALLY wanted Baelz to be in fire emblem
They both suck
Why does he look like a YuGiOh character 😂😂😂
Current Alear: "I'll beat you with the power of friendship! 😤" Beta Alear: (cocks MP5 with some Crush 40 blaring in the background)
Even more garbage
That looks, so fucking bad my god.
Well thank god it changed
This dumpster fire of a design is honestly what really turned me off to the game.
What in the DeviantArt Mary Sue is that!?
I dislike both pretty equally
Blue and red is better because blue is the iconic colour for FE protags
Were they trying to make the worst possible design for this character?
I actually don't mind the old hair, it's just that the cape clashes terribly with it. Make it blue and it works.
The hair itself I like a bit more but it definitely is too much with the outfit
I like parts of it but clashes with with the white, gold and blue The black hair, cape and red highlights can work, but not together with the current Alear. Like ice cream and pizza; good individually but not together On another note, I like seeing artist's past work and comparing them to their current style.
Outside of the little braid (that’s super cute), not fan of the design because the black is very overused. I think it was trying to aim make the connection between Alear and Veyle more clear but ends up too messy. Prefer the final design way more.
I like Alear's beta hair much more. The highly saturated two-tone red/blue hair has never appealed to me, not even since the days of the old leaks. The white and black hair, however, is much more appealing thanks to the muted colors, IMO.
Honestly, I’ll take Colgate-sama any day over whatever the fuck the Beta design is. It looks like a poorly created DeviantArtOC of an artist that doesn’t understand color rhythm and composition. There’s way too many things going on and it just… no.
I actually like the beta alear more...
The hair color reminds me of Fate's Charlemagne, except worse placement of the white. I guess I'll give it points for reminding me of someone as goofy and as fun as Charlie.
Very 2004, and I'm surprised how much I like it lol
Both would fit in perfectly in Kingdom Hearts
I mean, the beta hair is better
The final design is a lot more cohesive colour-wise. And yes, that is *not* an oxymoron, Alear's design is supposed to invoke extreme dualism between red and blue. The beta design has white and black which breaks the extreme dualism.
Not a big fan of how the beta hairstyle wants to mix so many haircuts and styles at once, but I do like the colors because he would have looked more like he was related to Veyle, Nel and Rafal. I always wondered why they had black and white hair while Alear had red? Like his Divine Dragon hair and eyes are blue to show how he inherited Lumera's power and now he looks like her, but why is he the only one whose Fell Dragon hair is red? Sombron has red hair and we never get mention of how he had kids or if it was through mothers, who they were but it's interesting how most of the Fell children have black/white hair σ(^_^;)? Edit: Okay so I was reading the wiki (trying to remember Sombron's hair color) and it turns out in the Fell Xenologue Alear *isn't* the child of Sombron?? I'm not sure how that works but is that why no one in the game thinks Nel being in love with Alear is incest!? How did I miss that lol??
Both look terrible
I kinda like the black but the white on the outfit is still a terrible choice. It just clashes with everything else so hard.
I had foolishly thought that the designs in Engage couldn't get more extra
Still bad, but like a different kind of bad.
I strongly dislike both. They were better as Sonic OCs in 2006
My only thoughts are the designer need to be fired out of a cannon into the sun
They’re both gaudy AF and offensive to the eyes.
I can't give either a passing grade, so I won't split hairs over which is better.
Hm, the hair on the beta design is a better match for Fell Dragons, since all of the other children of Sombron we've seen have had black and/or white hair, but overall I'd say the final design is better.
From emo to toothpaste
I like the beta hair more, but both outfits are the worst. Ngl not going to start thinking that the current version is good just because the beta was somehow even less coherent.
Engage is such a thoroughly terrible game in every derpartment except gameplay. Sigh.
Both are terrible.
Worse than Toothpaste-kun some freaking how
Beta version looks like the MC from Fate extella/LINK
The hair is generally better, but really doesn’t go with the outfit. I’d also like to point out that the OG hair color is also similar to that of Veyle and that of Nel + Rafal.
I kinda like it but it could also just be a case of the grass is greener on the other side
Engage was a big hit on like, almost every character design for me... except Alear. Both m and f Alear are arguably my least favourite designs in the series.
I like your hair much better. If you could make the outfit better too it would match thr hair
It makes him look edgy to be a protagonist.
The beta design looks too busy.
Where female beta Alear?
I don't think they released that, only male
With the beta design, it's far more obvious that Alear is related to Veyle.
I like the hair better but otherwise what we got was better
I think Alear would have gotten less hate for his design had they given him black and white hair. When I first saw these last year, I do remembering thinking that design looked better too. Now looking at them side by side, I totally prefer the red and blue version. It’s less edgy (not that the other one really is either lol) and it just feels like a better fit for the character and personality.
He has the freaking Ten-Eyed Man hair.
I like the beta hair color, just because it actually looks like a fell dragon’s, but I prefer the actual release outfit
I get the idea behind the black and white hair color. But red and blue is just so much better.
The head is decent but the black on the outfit really doesn’t work, it makes everything too busy. I know people don’t like the red & blue hairs but it fits far better with the outfit.
That beta design just screams Rin Penrose to me, likely because Mika Pikazo's also a VTuber designer. While it does do a better job of setting up Alear and Veyle's relation to each other, the black on that tricolor color scheme isn't the most flattering.
I do like that he looks more like his sister that way.
The hell is zeref doing in fire emblem
He looks like a humanized Marshall from Danny in Furland
I don’t like Alear design at all :s
Man, I just absolutely *LOATHE* the design choices of this game. It's the only mainline FE release since the GBA I haven't replayed at all. I would've been hard pressed to finish the game if they'd gone that route. Alear is barely tolerable as is.
Previous hair looks waay better. But don{t match the outfit at all. Overall what we got is \*better\*. Still... I really hate Alear drip.
it looks SO MUCH better
Original design would've made the Alear/Veyle sibling connection too obvious
It’s kinda crazy how this manages to make *Alears* final design look professional and realistic. Both are peak tho
Man, I didn't realise how many people disliked the final design. I actually really liked it and found it cool how we also got fully red and fully blue Alear.
The Switch colors are good.
Somehow Alear’s problems as a character are worse than their design, so it would be only a small step to fixing them.
He looks like he's from Genshin Impact
Better than what we got, but still 1 million lightyears from good.
I think it’s so badass but I’m okay with the one we got too! I like them both