Fire Emblem Three Houses (Spoiler Thread)

I see you are a troper of culture.

Was hoping someone would get that.

For those who wanted to see more of Holst, here are the devs:

• “Columbo” was an American television show about the titular detective in the late 70’s.

Edited by Tropetalker on Sep 22nd 2020 at 6:14:07 PM

Yeah Holst should forever remain off camera.

Holst is Columbus's wife confirmed

Holst doesn't really need more spotlight, anyway. What he's already got from his peers is so much pressure that he goes off and does shrooms until he can't fight anymore.

He really should stop taking these Shrooms, he should rather go to brofist with his new Friend Nader.

Screw it, time to post my ideas for a VW sequel. I will be referring to Claude with his developer-confirmed Almyran name of Khalid for the duration of this post.

Now Almyra is almost one giant blank slate, so it's hard to come up with anything concrete. The biggest conflict that Khalid gets into in the VW epilogue is helping Byleth fighting an imperial uprising (possibly led by Cornelia?), but that really shouldn't be the main focus. At most I'd see it as a small mini-arc that takes up three chapters at the absolute most. Instead of helping another character fighting the same enemies as the last game in the same area the focus should be on Khalid's goals and Khalid's homeland.

The main conflict would probably be Khalid fighting his siblings for the throne. There might also be some secret true villain organization that kicks off the plot by killing the king. The conflict in Fodlan could serve as a ticking clock for why Khalid has to win the throne as soon as possible or/and as a diversion that lets his siblings or the real villains make their move while he's away. I've also had the idea of pulling from real world history of how the kingdoms of the Middle East were constantly getting invaded by different tribes from Central Aisa who became the new ruling class until the next invasion, and have Khalid's family be descended from a steppe people that's different from the main ethnicity/ethnitcities in Almyra. It would make it easier to tie things into Khalid's general goal of exterminating xenophobia, and it just makes more sense to make Almyra multiethnical given how big it's supposed to be.

One idea I thought up would be to have the major siblings correspond to the other lords of Three Houses. Like not a perfect replica, but something similar. Like say a princess who wants to open the succession to people outside the royal family, who wants to help the weak and downtrodden, and someone with a religious bent who doesn't talk much. Khalid is already just Almyran Yuri so it makes sense to give the other protagonists Almyran counterparts too, right? There'd also be some implications that Khalid in the other routes would support whoever would get along the best with Fodlan's new ruler for the sake of his dream.

One potential idea I've had (that would go against some of the things I've listed above) would be to expand the game from just a VW sequel into a sequel to all four routes. My plan for doing this is by having a difficuly system where each difficulty setting serves as a sequel to a different route and changes the story somewhat. The easiest difficulty would be VW, where Khalid returns to Almyra as the victorious uniter of Fodlan who defeated Edelgard, Thales and Nemesis. Recruiting characters would be a lot easier, in addition to Failnaught Khalid will also have the Sword of Begalta, and some of the harder chapters (probably about establishing yourself as a valid heir) might even be skipped outright. SS would be a bit harder, as Khalid bolted from Fodlan partway through the war and thus has a harder time getting respect in Almyra. In AM things are even tougher as Khalid let Leicester get invaded and had to be saved by Dimitri, which will likely tank his already low reputation. He also starts without Failnaught and won't get it until later in the game. I imagine CF to be the hardest difficulty since Khalid outright lost the war and is alive only because Edelgard let him. He would likely be seen as an outright joke and people might even fear that he would lose all of Almyra to an Adrestian invasion if he got the throne. To top it all off Edelgard will likely call in favours to aid in her war against Thales as payback for sparing him and the remaining Golden Deer (she might demand Failnaught since this setting is supposed to be harder than the AM setting). One potential idea would be to have the Golden Deer show up as party members depending on which difficulty you chose. Everyone shows up on VW, everyone except Lorenz appears on SS, Lorenz, Raphael, Lysithea and Marianne appear on CF, and only Marianne shows up on AM (this plus the Failnaught issue makes me considering swapping AM and CF difficulty-wise)

While branching paths as difficulties is an interesting approach for sure, I doubt its practical to write for and program. And mechanically wouldn't be well received by both casuals (who might want access to all the plot threads without hitting the higher difficulties) and hardcore players (who don't want to play lower settings just to see portions of the plot).

They could just set it in Almyra while leaving the Ending Ambiguous or just declare VW in this timeline to be canon. Anything can work.

Declaring any route canon would cause a fandom nuclear war, they'd be better off remaking Fates and doubling down on its creep factors.

If we do get a sequel, make it a distant finale or a concurrent plot, that only references Fodlan vaguely.

I still prefer a completely new setting for the next game. Fodlan was fun, but I'd like to go somewhere new for the next game.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Sep 22nd 2020 at 5:03:21 AM

Birthright versus Conquest is already kind of proof of difficulty being tied to different stories being iffy.

You know, at least Birthright and Conquest were way different to feel like different stories and offer much more varied content.

There 3 routes where you fight Edelgard follow the same beats for a long while till you get to the good stuff, while only 1 route does it's own thing and suffers from a content drought.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Sep 22nd 2020 at 9:13:52 AM

It does create that odd dichotomy that Rational talks about, though. Lunatic Birthright is easier than Hard Conquest, so I found Birthright a bit of a bore to go to after Conquest.

I have discovered something nonsensical about the Crests:

If Rhea can create bodies that produces crests via Crest stones, then why can't we make it with all Crest stones and use the blood of these bodies to grant Crests to every person.

Either she can do just that, and its just not a priority for her (because "mother will fix everything and I make Dimitri look like a master of grief management"), or because the subjects would be harmed in someway.

Or it could be that she can, but it consumes resources that she doesn't have. Even Fodlan probably has a population of millions.

No, she can just create empty husks and let them create enough Crests to create more Blood to give people the crests. After all she created the Cardinals and her Crest stone, so she can do something similar with the Crest of Flames.

I don't think that Rhea did that because she was consumed with grief over her Mother's loss, but that she never got the idea to begin with and that is the fault of the devs since they are the very same idiots who allowed Byleth to live in CF and have Edelgard a weak backstory.

First of all, the developers aren't ''idiots" because they made decisions you disagree with. Rhea has serious flaws and a massive case of tunnel vision, that's core to her character.

Secondly, say she can produce Crest-granting blood with no ethical or risk issues. She still has to distribute it, which in a pre-modern society is not going to be easy, imagine trying to roll out a vaccine without modern technology. Economies of scale are not going to be the Church's strong point.

And unless she goes "Crests FOR EVERYONE!" very early on (centuries before the plot starts), the nobles will push back hard. Enough to trigger a serious rebellion as they fear the loss of their power.

I don't believe that devs are always Enlightened about everything and even in the interview they messed up a lot and admitted that they do not know everything about their own story, which means that any sort of take, no matter how bad is valid... that's not nuanced, just like simplifying my critique as simple disagreement. Rhea having tunnel vision is only appearent on SS amd VW and even in WC, often than not, she is the one with the most reasonable approaches to things like with the Western Church. For all the talk of how bad the nobility system is,Fódlan is far from an shithole and anyone who knows something about revolutions knowns that they happen only in a state of Crisis. People didn't cared about their leadership unless it directly affected them, hence why the French Revolution happened but Fódlan is not France.

So the bit about the Nobility does confirm that Rhea had not the power over them and instead they life on a uneasy truce? That's nice.

All in all I think the Worldbuiling in TH is flawed and overcomplicates things unnecessarily and doesn't resolve anything at all like to Tragedy of Lambert. Avatar also has Worldbuiling issues like with Airbending but it does enough to make people not ruin it.

I stand by my view that Rhea simply didn't had that idea and that's the only way to make sense out of it. I might be too harsh on them on my earlier comment, but they made many bad decisions.

Alternative plan: Rhea encourages all of her senior staff to go out and fool around as much as possible.

Rhea having tunnel vision is a feature of her entire, centuries long life/career. Her entire plan is to revive the Goddess and then...PROFIT!

And comparing an early modern administrative/absolute monarchy like France to the pre-modern monarchies/oligarchies of Fodlan just doesn't work. The differences are too vast.

And that's how Seteth's Rebellion began.

Edited by Rationalinsanity on Sep 23rd 2020 at 7:27:17 AM

That's awful History and you know it.

Speaking about awful history why did the devs indulged themselves in the cliche that the Church supressed science in the DLC? They created the perhaps most sympathetic church in all of the Japanese roleplay games and they ruin it?

For that I would have fired every last one of them

Edited by Tropetalker on Sep 24th 2020 at 6:43:59 PM

The most sympathetic church in fiction is the Church of Halone from XIV I feel.

Like there's this great detective story side quest that deals with honest believers and priests trying to help reform the nation while dealing with the exposed corruption of the higher members.

Besides, the Church even suppressing tech is less evil than say every other JRPG church.

They ain't removing the free will of people for one.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Sep 24th 2020 at 12:39:24 PM

Oh I didn't knew that thanks.

But back to the point: what is the point of supressing science? I thought she hated the whole deal with the 10 Elites and the relics, she could replace it with high tech.

Agarthans = evil and Agarthans = technology. Therefore, technology = evil and the Church's stance is justified.