Fire Emblem Three Houses (Spoiler Thread)

Aren't they all around the same age, anyway?

And above 14, so they are all legally adults.

Thank you fates.

Why thank Fates? Thank the earlier Jugdral games for their 14-year old characters you can hook up with others.

Back to Three Houses though, I finally got back to playing the game after getting sidetracked by other games like Nioh 2. I just completed the Shambhala level on Silver Snow.

Fun fact: when I first played through the Shambhala level, I actually missed that you could enter certain facilities and kill certain Agarthans to stop the Titanuses and the Viskams. So I beat that level while getting pelted by Viskam bolts.

Then I played Verdant Wind and realized I could get into the facilities, and felt like a huge idiot afterwards.

Once I'm done with this Silver Snow playthrough, I'll do another Azure Moon playthrough.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Mar 4th 2021 at 8:35:14 AM

@Pheonix You might reconsider your objections if you had ever watched The Dragon Prince, neither Callum or Ezran are weaklings.

...What does that have to do with Phoenix's objections?

I also think it's pretty condescending to refer to Claude and Dimitri as children, like they are future leaders and already skilled military leaders. As bad as Edelgard attempting to assassinate them was, it did have a pragmatic element as killing them would leave both their nations severely weakened and leave her with less people to deal with.

Not sure why she didn't use say Hubert or Jeritza to kill them but more on that later.

Why would she use people who are actually connected to her? The whole thing with Kostas was that he was a random bandit who wasn't even given specific targets. (And I'm still amused by how the incident is pretty much forgotten by Part II.)

Hubert's job description is partly being an Assassin, and why waste time trying to off Byleth when Dimitri and Claude are there, and Jeritza has been killing people as the Death Knight, why not off Dimitri and Claude when they go to the village after class?

And yes, I'm amused too at how the Writers forgot about this plot point, and made the bulk of her focus on the Church. I guess plans changed behind the scenes.

Makes me wonder if Edelgard was more evil in the initial plans...

The weird thing is that they didn’t forget, as one of his men even appears in Abyss. They just chose not to address it at all in the story. For some reason. Hmmmmmm....!

How is it "forgotten" and not "dealt with and buried"? The bandits only talked to the Flame Emperor and they were killed off in the literal first mission you take with the students. That strikes me as pretty resolved.

Rhea mentions in the aftermath of that battle that they should investigate the bandits more and find out why they targeted the students, but nothing really comes out of it.

Yeah, like in the early bits, it's a plot point given attention as to who hired them but then it's ignored. Like this should be an important part of dynamic between Edelgard and those two, because she tried to kill them and they should at least mention the attempts, but then the game shifts to Edelgard wants to dethrone the Church and Dimitri and Claude are in the way of said goal. Heck, they aren't even targets in CF monastery invasion.

This is why I believe Edelgard had a shift in character during development.

Now why Byleth didn't take that grunt for interrogation or bring him to jail is something I'm still baffled at.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 5th 2021 at 4:44:57 AM

Probably another consequence of Silver Snow being the first route they wrote, since Dimitri and Claude barely have any role in its story.

(Also, seriously, where are these two during CF chapter 12? On other routes they're shown trying to fight off the Imperial Army in a cutscene, so they still participated in that battle even on SS. On CF you don't get to see them again until the timeskip since you aren't at the monastery in that chapter.)

Edited by YnK on Mar 5th 2021 at 2:54:33 AM

Yeah, Dimitri and Claude should have been enemy combatants in the assault on Garreg Mach. Dedue and Hilda should also have been on the field.

Heck, would have been a nice way to cap off the first part. Your school year begins and ends with Dimitri and Claude fighting your house but for keeps this time.

The whole "Edelgard hires random bandit to kill Dimitri & Claude so her job becomes easier later" could've been done just to make a case (especially post-reveal) of just how ruthless Edelgard is. Kostas dying early also ensures the truth of the matter never comes up, which is indeed super convenient plot-wise.

In hindsight and now that you guys bring it up, the Church absolutely sucks at investigating stuff. Seteth in Silver Snow mentions how it was widely speculated Nemesis received help from someone to do his shenanigans in the War of Heroes, yet it took almost an entire millenia + Hubert's help for them to know it was the Slitherers.

For the Garreg Mach's invasion, one could argue Byleth and their class's help is the main reason it ends up involving Dimitri & Claude (cutscene only), the teachers and Shamir & Catherine (if none were recruited before that point). The only thing the battle is consistent in both the CF and non-CF versions is with the presence of Edelgard, Hubert, Jeritza, Randolph and Ladislava.

x4 @Red: How early in development are we talking about? If the trailer with Edelgard's old VA is any indication, her character was already very similar (if not the same) compared to what we ended up getting. And given the interviews and datamine suggesting AM was worked on right after SS (kinda), I bet there were strict limits on how much Edelgard (and by proxy, Dimitri) could be changed if each one was intended to serve as the other's antithesis (in contrast to Claude, who we do know he did end up less evil than initially planned).

Edited by Blackress on Mar 5th 2021 at 7:57:31 PM

@Redhunter May I shortly return a bit to the children argument? Ok first of all,the narritive already treats them as children through by even calling them this way through various characters like Seteth,Judith,Rhea, Rodrigue, et cetera. So I don't see this as really condescending, more as a truth of this situation. Khalid and Dimitri are very young and impressionable like their peers, which makes them easily influenced by outside forces and as Kylee said in her blog, young adults can be very easily manipulated. Now thinking about this, I can see now why it's so easily for many of the students to side with the Empire, they are all impressionable children, who are insecure about the world and can be molded into becoming pro-Adrestia.

My comparison with Viren and Edelgard was to throw out the fact, that both have shortcomings that makes them hard to sympathize with and wanting to kill the younger folk for the greater good is not something that sits well with people.

@Blackless Edelgard was always going to turn into a twist villian as said by the interview, so they needed to keep a lot of her secret in the trailer and maybe made such an show with her just to give us the big twist. Dimitri and Khalid were given minor roles in the story by comparison. That's why you cannot take back Fhirdiad early in AM and why you cannot side with Almyra in VW. Edelgard got a lot of privileges in the development of this game, because the devs loved her...a bit too much.

Edited by Tropetalker on Mar 5th 2021 at 6:48:10 PM

The fact they believed there was a group working with Nemesis, but Rhea didn’t keep the blonde hair, already says they really wanted to contrive exactly what the characters are doing. It really does feel like it happens to force conflict.

The bandits thing is also kind of awkward because later on non-CF routes there's a lot of talk about how maybe Edelgard isn't all that bad and stuff, while nobody is aware that she was the one behind that attack. Of course, the writers likely didn't want to give Dimitri more legitimate reasons to hate her.

...Also how she apparently expected two supposedly already combat-experienced guys (one of whom literally has Super-Strength) to get killed by a bunch of bandits.

In all fairness, the main gripe everyone has with Edelgard once things relatively settle down is with the methods she uses to change Fodlan. In that sense, the truth of the bandit incident coming to light would only highlight the point even further.

For example, Chapter 14 of SS:

Chapter 18 of AM:

Chapter 14 of VW:

@Tropetalker: What does Edelgard's favoritism has to do with Fhirdiad and Almyra's situation in the game? Also if anything, the last interview paints a bit of a different picture on that (in the sense of what if CF had been the only story branch):

@Yn K: It's worth noting Dimitri's beef with Edelgard besides "murder is bad" is that he belives she instigated the Tragedy of Duscur, which in AM, it doesn't change up until Cornelia tells him it has his stepmom the one involved.

In all honestly, when people say CF has plot holes and illogical events, I can't help but think the people complaining simply don't want to admit they dislike the direction the writers went for Edelgard's story (which, may I remind you, is the same team who did Dimitri's). If you want an explanation for Rhea's actions and the discrepances between 2 versions of history, the game already provides a ton of cues and answers for it. Whether you wanna accept them or not is another matter entirely.

The game's writing isn't flawless either as they went a bit too far with making some important story stuff waaay too cryptic. Like, I'm still salty how the game never really tells you why the Agarthan's ballistic missiles aren't abused enough. Yeah, people speculate about it, but an actual answer/reveal is never provided.

Edited by Blackress on Mar 5th 2021 at 9:24:22 PM

The interview also said that there was a strong love for Edelgard that made them do CF. The fact is that Toei Temco was the reason the game is even the way it is, as they made the all the routes except SS. Also that interview said that only BE gets a route split, showing where they put most of their energy into: Edelgard and Adrestia.

Honestly CF would have been better had they worked on it first, because then we wouldn't have the version with too many plotholes and illogical events.

Dimitri still most likely would react badly to the idea of Edelgard trying (if indirectly) to kill him, even if he didn't somehow manage to link her to the Tragedy of Duscur. That's the thing: he hates her for the wrong reasons, but that doesn't mean she did nothing wrong.

But the one thing she most definitely did do - hiring the bandits to kill him and Claude, which still would be a big and very personal "nope" moment to him - is never revealed. And AM is even the route that goes out of its way to make El seem more sympathetic.

...Which makes CF and Rhea's stuff even weirder, but anyway. The Agarthans are pretty much just "plot drivers", so it's really not that surprising that the workings of their "Javelins of Light" are never explained. (And I was seriously angry when CF went like "oh yeah, they just exploded a fortress offscreen, these guys just do that sometimes, no big deal". After that Oh, Crap! cinematic on VW...)

I guess the writers just wanted to go the "mysterious ancient technology" way with them, because it's convenient. If the characters don't understand something for plot reasons, no need to explain it to the player.

Edited by YnK on Mar 5th 2021 at 8:43:24 AM

My point was that the way you phrased it made it sound worse than it actually is, despite the fact that it's already pretty bad.

Like, let's say I write a story with a villain named Jason, if I say:

"Jason killed a kid."

As a standalone statement that creates the impression that Jason killed someone who was both younger than himself, and the person he killed with utterly defenceless.

However, if we later find out that Jason and the kid in question are the same age, and that the victim was capable of fighting back, then that changes things. It doesn't necessarily excuse or justify what Jason did, but it does change the context of what happened.

So the way you phrased it in regards to Edelgard, you made it sound like she chopped the head off a ten-year-old for laughs or something, when in fact both Dimitri and Claude the same age as her, capable combatants, legitimate military targets, and removing them actually does help to further her plans. What she did was bad, yes, but not quite as monstrous as you made it sound.

@Investigating the bandits- Wait, when did Rhea say something about that? I don't remember that. I don't even know if the bandits ever did anything to indicate they were hired or anybody commentating on the idea.

A video would be helpful.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 5th 2021 at 10:06:59 AM

Report: Harpstring Moon

Also, Kostas has this death quote: