#Almyra is by the plot and devs

[randomnameless]

I mean… fire emblem shouldn't be taking in consideration when making points about representing real world issues or using it as a crutch for sociopolitical arguments irl. One of the best examples in this franchise of "culture bias" and "covet bigotry" is Fates, where Hoshido is too pure, too good, and Nohr is the bad, bad, evil barbaric nation. And this goes so far as to make birthright's story a more watered down version of blue units vs red units story from shadow dragon.

In 3H now the good, pure nation is Fodlan, and those who surround it are either filler to make the worldmap look prettier, or barbarians that like to hunt the good guys for sport (Almyra and Sreng, and possibly Dagda), with Brigid being a repetition of the noble savage trope. Just bc there's a poc guy that wants to unite people and get rid of prejudice in story, doesn't mean that the developpers agree to that or support that.

(Also, let's not talk about Hopes and how Claude's altruistic dream turns out to be unifying two different nations and make the cohabit by force with him as sole leader of both. AKA the typical fire emblem trope of uniting different countries under one ruler, something that's not progressive in the slightest)

Mmh,

Speaking on eggshells here because Fates isn't really my area of expertise, but basically, iirc you can thank Pat for scrubbing the worst of Hoshido!

Fates' best route is Revelation (rip izana) where both countries accept to set aside their differences to work together, meaning that, obviously, Hoshido wasn't only "blue unit land" against Nohr's "red units".

Even through Birthrout, you can catch here'n'there, even in the Pat version!, how Hoshido isn't roses'n'daisies, it's the land where Mikoto takes her niece "hostage" ffs as a measure against Corn's kidnapping (you can't tell me she never guessed Azura was Arete's kid!), where Ryoma (idk if you were the same anon as back then?) as the crown prince ignores the plight of the nohrians and why they were attacking Hoshido because life in Nohr sucks and they're starving (idk if, much like the Leonster/Thracia conflict, Hoshido refused to trade with them and let them starve instead), the fuckery with Mokushu and Shura's backstory, or Hoshido being Misogyny Land (tm).

Heck Birthrout has you march on Nohr's capital city iirc, and fight in the streets - it's in Birthrout that Corn's obsession with taking revenge/defeating Garon leads to Elise' death - so it's not the the "blue unit waltz on red unit lands, routs the enemy and calls a day".

So I don't think the Fates writers really wanted to push the "pure unproblematic land" card with Hoshido compared to Nohr, but rather depict them as both flawed - in different ways - and needing to work together.

Now, I wouldn't say the nations of Fodlan are good compared to the rest of the filler nations that make up this verse's world - after all it's Adrestia who starts hostilities against Dagda'n'Brigid and Adrestia who most recently flattened Brigid and made it its vassal! - but in a sense you're right calling them filler, the FE series in general don't spend a lot of time to depict nations in general, they're just "the place character X is from" and for all of its, hm, reknown writting, Fodlan is following the trend, Albinea is no less different than Cheve (wait, we have one map set in Cheve! kill that) so bar flavor text, they're effectively just "filler".

I disagree about Sreng and Almyra being filler though, if Sreng could be seen as a ref to the Thracia situation or Norh/Hoshido fight for ressources, Almyra?

Is basically Verdane all over again - with the dubious honor of having a Verdanite Lord who, unlike Jamke has some relevance to the plot bar his introduction, but most important, seems to appreciate and want to emulate/import the values/methods of his country to the cast/main plot.

Can you imagine FE4 where Jamke suggests to kidnap Deevtar to seduce lure Andrei in a trap and rekt him?

Of course not.

Just bc there's a poc guy that wants to unite people and get rid of prejudice in story, doesn't mean that the developpers agree to that or support that.

I guess they agreed with the "get rid of prejudice without dealing with the dragon in the room" idea, but the main issue I mentionned and talked about in the other anon reply was the how, and what, doylist wise, it conveys.

"I'll unite people and get rid of prejudice by busting open your country to my people who are as prejudiced as you supposedly are, and I will bring you new values"

That's... not a good way to bring people together lol.

Even in FE16 I found Claude and Almyra's writing a bit odd : why asking Timmy first to stop shunning Bob when Timmy started to avoid Bob because Bob keeps on stealing his lunch money? Shouldn't you ask Bob first to, uh, not be an ass?

In Nopes?

Bob ruins Timmy's house, hits Timmy's toddler sister in the face and still steals his lunch money - but now, Bob has the nerve to tell Timmy that he's doing this to "help" him.

Also, let's not talk about Hopes and how Claude's altruistic dream turns out to be unifying two different nations and make the cohabit by force with him as sole leader of both. AKA the typical fire emblem trope of uniting different countries under one ruler, something that's not progressive in the slightest

Hmmm,

I don't know if you played the older games (FE1 to FE10), but as far as I remember, bar Archanea verse, we have different rulers for each countries and the world is never an unified entity -

And even then, Marth doesn't unify the world by making people "cohabit by force", as forced as it is, everyone gives him their crown.

Sanaki doesn't tell Elincia to suck it as she annexes Crimea in FE10, ditto with Innes and Joshua, or Ced and Ares in Jugdral... I can see Leif's unification of Thracia falling under that criteria, but even then, it's not so much by force than Travant making suicide by cop because he wanted the peninsula to be united and understood he couldn't be the one to do it.

Uniting the continent by force is, on the contrary, what red emperors do, and in traditional FE games, red emperors are defeated.

To return to your main point :

I mean… fire emblem shouldn't be taking in consideration when making points about representing real world issues or using it as a crutch for sociopolitical arguments irl.

Of course, and I totally agree!

The FE series has always been, as its core, a series where a "rightful ruler" returns home to rule "rightfuly" and better than its predecessors, by acknowledging what they did wrong and what they can do now.

That being said, a game is never written in a vacuum : that's the doylist side of various discussions : "What were the devs thinking, was what their reasoning when they decided to make the game this way?"

In 2004, real world persons believed that putting Devdan in their game was okay.

You can give them some flak because different cultural references between Japan and the US world (hell, western world at this rate because damn if Devdan hit "international" racist stereotypes boxes!) - and yet, can you really suppose the devs wouldn't have known, in 2004, that those stereotypes are harmful to real life people and Devdan was basically an insult?

But Devdan was just a living (as much as a fictional character can be alive, but you catch my drift lol) stereotype, the issue was just with Devdan existing.

It was 2004, 15 years later, we expect of IS - not your backwater company! - to never ever fall in the same pits, right?

(well, we had FE13 with the Feroxi main characters who love to fight being dark skinned... so the Devdan dev might still have been there :/ )

FE Fodlan, let it be for design or even names, took some inspiration from RL (it was funny upon release to catch all those links and nods!), and while i appreciated the aesthetic, it was bound to create another "Devdan" issue.

You have Almyra, designed with several RL inspirations (they weren't being subtle with Claude's battalion called the Immortals lol), from design (Claude's clothes and braids!) to units (mounted archers!) to, well, names.

Okay, in itself, it's nothing as insulting as Devdan's existence. But taken with the context?

The devs wrote that Fodlan's aesthetic was supposed to be the Age of Discoveries (1500s and onwards?) so yes, during that Age, you had people who were prejudiced as fuck against people from other lands/different cultures.

But in 2019, we know that those prejudices were full of shit, and either fueled by ignorance, or just, the need to find a good "excuse" to get new lands/manpower/ressources.

Maybe the devs wanted to showcase this part of history : depict the characters being prejudiced against "foreigners" and have them later learn that their prejudice was unfounded !

But... they took the inverse path

Hilda's racist stereotypes? They're shown to be....

True through both games!

As you put it, Almyra are the "barbarians" who : attack the land the characters are from when they're at their weakest, for no reason than to get a good fight - even if it means dying which in turns create several orphans they don't give a fuck about - pillage and "rampage" in cities, let their allies die after accepting a "mutual support" alliance with them, and ultimately rave and scream at their "outdated" values and how you're going to bring them yours.

"You see those people who were derided as savages and barbarians back then in RL - and still are in some parts of the world because the early 2000s happened and in general because racism exists? - Well I'm going to base my fantasy "token barbarian country who is untrustworthy and backstabs everyone" based on them!"

:/

I know you can't compare tomatoes to watermelons, but the Baten Kaitos franchise also has a nation who's, more or less, full of assholes, racists and imperialist pieces of shit. But the devs in those games designed each island/country from scratch, there is no nation that immediately calls back to "RL country X or culture Y"!

you can make a farfetched point about the people wearing ceremonial masks and having totems being a mix of several RL inspirations or at least being a call back to them... but they're part of the most OP people of that universe!

So why? Why, doylist wise, FE Fodlan designed with care - you can't tell me those costumes and outfits were designed in 10 minutes! - Almyra and its characters... only to have them act out as what an english book from the 1780s depicted "oriental" people ?

Unlike Devdan, the racism doesn't ooze out from the way the characters/country was designed, but what role they fit in the story.

It's not a sociopolitical commentary or representing real world but more like another jab at IS for being as prejudiced against non western/japanese cultures and civilisations as they were when FE4 was released, which is problematic in 2019/2022.

(and then you have Square Enix giving us Hyzante in Triangle Strategy, which is even more in your face with the dubious parallels)

[semi-imaginary-place]

fe3h support thoughts

Ingrid shouldn't have had an ending with Claude. The Claude Ingrid support is one of the worst support chains in the entire game. Entire thing just rambles on and on. It has the plot and structure of your typical C-B support where the two people start off antagonistic or have a misunderstanding but then come to realize the other person isn't so bad but instead of the usual 2 conversations this takes place over, the Ingrid Claude one drags on and on for FOUR scenes of this nonsense. It's the B support line formula that most of the other B supports use where at first they aren't on the same page but then come to appreciate each other. But for some reason their support just drags on and on and on and it doesn't add the depth you'd expect from an A support.

Ingrid's supports with Ignatz and Raphael where fine, I liked them though I think they could have done more with Raphaels. Loved having the two big eaters of the group have a support but Ingrid could really learn about grief and healthy coping mechanism from Raphael (most of the blue lions could really).

Pretty much all of Hanneman's paired endings should have been platonic. The hanneman supports are so weird in that for the most part they're good and they're all platonic but then halfway through some of the A support it takes SHARP turn and becomes romantic out of NOWHERE, it is incredibly jarring. Like they took a perfectly good non-romantic relationship and shoved in an unwanted romance last second.

I'm going to write a petition to give Flayn female friends. Flayn deserves more women in her life! Not even paired endings I just wish she had more supports with women. Some of her supports with men are very interesting or reveal more about her character but others were kinda just filler and easy could have been replaced with other supports.

I find the Shamir Claude ending funny just for the sheer number of positions of power Claude runs away from. Duke of Riegan? Outta here. Leader of the Leicester Alliance? Sayonara. King of Unified Fodlan? Nope. King of Almyra? My work here is done.

Hapi is the blue lion member of the ashen wolves with more supports with them than the other wolves but she shouldn't be. Thematically I'd argue either Golden Deer or a neutral 4th party like abyss is better for her. Golden Deer is all about outsiders and perceived notions, expanding worldviews and greater perspectives, the truth, and the way the mysteries and histories of the Church, Fodlan, Crests, nobility, the Children of the Goddess, and the Agarthans are all connected. Hapi's life story started because she wanted to leave her isolated village and see the world. Her life was greatly influenced for the worse by both the Agarthans and the Church, its because of both of them that she is where she is. She's technically from the Fodlan continent but she's not really a Fodlander either culturally or in perspective in a lot of ways she's more like Dedue who is from a separate culture. I think the devs made a mistake. Yuri is the one with all the history with Faerghus, he's a Faerghus boy through and through with Farrghus values and Faerghus ties. However since he's house leader the devs wanted to write him as the neutral 4th option when that doesn't make sense for him as a character. He was a part of house Rowe, he and Ashe have parallel stories, he probably knows the inner workings of the Farrghus court and nobility very well. Yuri should have been the Blue Lions support character instead of Hapi.

Sylvain, Ingrid, and Felix are especially close. Due to being the prince but more importantly closing off after the Tragedy of Duscar, Dimitri in recent years hasn't been as close to the others. Dimitri closed himself off after the Tragedy so I can see why he and Sylvain don't have an A support. Also while they knew each other in childhood, living indifferent territories, Dimitri's closest friends weren't Sylvain, Felix, and Ingrid.

Manuela and Edelgard's supports were about religion and how Edelgard initially viewed religious people as weak, relying on religion instead of standing on their own. Manuela shows her how religion can be a personal relationship that can make people stronger. It's one of the more interesting philosophical moments in the game (the others come in some of Claude and Linhard's various supports off the top of my head)

[randomnameless]

TBF,

Both for FE16 and Nopes in a way, there's a feeling the devs wanted to write a story that would be centered on different characters, each with their own POV.

As you said, there's enough material to believe they wanted to come up with a story where every character believes they're a hero in their POV... and yet, because those characters and their stories aren't written in a vacuum, there are clues, NPCs, books, mentions etc etc here and there that some narrative we follow is biased.

However, the cast doesn't react to those clues about their worldview, as you noted, Claude will only remember Petra exists - even if he already reached an A support with her - in the second half of the war Arc, when he will realise maybe the CoS isn't the obstacle he believed they were to reach his dreams.

The devs believed the players would only play one route and call it a day, and yet, as I noticed earlier, we have enough easter eggs here'n'there and throwbacks between routes (Ignatz noticing how Supreme Leader's lines from Tru Piss are the same ones as the Agarthans in the JP version!) to instead clue us that the devs also wanted the players to play all routes and see how different the characters act in them, or how some choices affect them in their non native routes (Felix for example!).

So on the one hand, we have the devs pushing some "the players will only see those characters in one route", and on the other hand, we also have the devs going all "we will show those characters change between the routes" with always the same Supreme caveat : sell pots of Hresvelg Tea (or nightgown cipher cards).

By virtue of being an expy, Claude is also hit by this syndrome in a way : only the Lions can express negative feelings about "outsiders" given what they believe happened to their loved ones (Matthias with Sreng, Ingrid with Duscur, etc etc), but even if we learn Almyra raids every monday to buy souvenirs, we cannot have a playable character from Leicester express any ill feelings regarding Almyra that are on par with the Lions' personal losses : Hilda will repeat what her racist grandma told her and happily laze around while "servants" will do her chores, but she cannot tell Claude how Almyrans, through their "cultural exchanges" slaughtered her cousin/brother/sister/mom.

No character, bar the old and supposedly unattractive ones (read, the faculty members and for some reason, Dedue) or Rhea (bcs she BaD) can be unlikable, because FE16 is all about parasocial relationships, even it means the plot is half a gummy bear.

Dimitri's arc, where he cannot be invited for tea anymore, is an outlier, everything he says and does during his "boar" phase is unreasonable - including asking Randy to take responsability for being a member of the Imperial Army who invaded and slaughtered his way to gain a promotion (a bootleg copy of FE5's Raydrick?) but now has the nerve to plead for mercy - and yet, after the events in Gronder, he is the Saviour King and, thank goodness, can be invited for tea again.

He and Supreme Leader will talk about peanut butter and cream cheese instead of, uh, y'know, the war and destruction Lady Farquaad allowed in the pursuit of her ideals (while ignoring the nabateans in the room) and in the end, he will drop any hatred or ill feelings against her, ending with this wonderful :

We have no choice but to destroy each other... Such is the destiny we were born to.

"Isn't it so sad fate forced us to fight against each other :'( we could have been fwends and shared pastries :'( :'( :'( very sad uwus"

-> If Elincia pulled this shit at Ashnard, I'd have thrown my copy of PoR in the nearest trashcan.

Meanie!Dimitri can apparently make Caspar wonder if he's going to receive flak for having joined the army as a former member of Adrestia (compare with Cormag and Duessel fully accepting their status as traitors but willing to push through for the sake of their countries), but he can't receive flak for being the son of Leopold "I am the leader of the Imperial Army" von Bergliez, when the cast already faced numerous "War Assets" fighting side by side with the Imperial Army!

Hell, when Doro asks us to be sad for Ferdie because we killed him, it's as if Cormag asks us to cry for Novala the arachnid lover - both Ferdie and Novala were fighting side by side with eldritch abominations (Novala has the upper hand here, since Baels are their own things and not, mutated human beings turned against their wills in weapons to be used as "assets").

Imagine if, say, during their paralogue, Mercie shits on Caspar for being all gung-ho about fighting the Death Knight when during his time in Adrestia, as the son of Leopold, he must have known about war assets and only ditched the country recently, but not as soon as his Supreme Leader declared war on GM and started to conquer Fodlan.

Hell, we'd never have had the Hector/Jaffar support conversations* in Fodlan!

The show then spends it's time giving exposition when the characters need it rather than for the audience.

Basically Fraud in Nopes who cries about isolationism, when the audience, especially in AG, has access to various books and all explaining how Faerghus, the so-called favorite child of the CoS, traded freely with Albinea and Duscur before Farquaad's associates ruined everyting.

The characters don't interact or even feel like they live in their world, as a result, the story told starring them is a huge mess and feels so disjointed that I really believe Fodlan's popularity in fics was partly prompted by people wanting to make characters "react" to various things they should have reacted to in game, but never did because of reasons.

*Seteth will have talked about ice cream and Rhea's love for cats to Jeritza instead of insulting/hating/resenting on spot like Hector did to Jaffar (or Ochlys does to Mandrin in Unicorn Overlord).

@randomnameless

There’s really something... off about the writing of Three Houses, isn’t there? According to the devs, they wanted players to immerse themselves in Fodlan. It wants us to pick up all the bits of lore and backstory, see the implications of what’s being said, connect the dots and the like. This is all meant to back up the natural progression of the story regardless of which House we pick to teach, in addition to showing the player how wrong the fourth route is if the fact it’s leader wasn’t depicted as the “Lady of Deceit” wasn’t enough of a clue. It’s supposed to be on us to figure out the mysteries and how they work, and the fact the localization changed information that was meant to be clues does not help.

Sure, you can say that “everyone’s a hero from their own POV” and that might be true in the case of Houses. Edelgard and those who join her believe they are heroes and doing the right thing, but that doesn’t mean that they ARE doing the right thing and the point of immersing ourselves in Fodlan is for the things I mentioned above to start making it clear to the audience what the game views as right and wrong. And, again, the localization doesn’t help because it wants to lean into things being morally grey and that it’s not just that the villain believes she is the good guy, it wants her to be the good guy with it’s alterations to the script.

But here’s the issue; the game basically relays a lot of this through exposition. And the game is so freaking focused on handing out exposition we get stuff like characters never bringing up the Flame Emperor again after the reveal. People don’t react to stuff like a normal person would, not when they can give a piece of information for the player’s string board, nor are they capable of piecing things together themselves unless the plot calls for it (like Claude pointing out the diversity at Garreg Mach). Hell, they released Hopes with exposition they couldn’t fit into Houses!

People would be horrified by what Edelgard is doing, and would be commenting on it. Characters would normally call this shit out, even Fates knew that, but in Houses it’s absent and it makes Fodlan feel so shallow as a result. Like the people aren’t even living there, they’re just reciting lines. And this shallowness resulted in people believing the game was saying things were okay because the characters went along with it. Like Hanneman confirms that the empire still uses demonic beasts in Flower if recruited, so what does it say about the noble students given ranks of general by the empire doing so after going through White Clouds and knowing where Edelgard’s war assets come from? Chances are they were all commanding demonic beasts themselves prior to the formation of the BESF.

Houses tries to be smart, but this all makes it feel like it’s secretly poorly written. If people are walking away with the wrong idea of what the game was trying to say, then there’s a big problem there. Translation plays a role, sure, but this all goes back to the game’s original script and how inorganic the worldbuilding actually was.

It reminds me of Gundam Reconguista in G. In the first episode, the very idea of exposition is mocked when the protagonist is asked a question by his teacher. He says everyone already knows the answer so why should he, but the teacher responds by telling him to just repeat the textbook answer. It highlights how artificial most exposition actually is, done for the convenience of the audience rather than making sense in-universe. The show then spends it's time giving exposition when the characters need it rather than for the audience. It made the show harder to follow, sure, but in the end the world felt so thought-out and lived in it felt believable.

Fodlan does not feel believable in the slightest. It feels like everyone there has no attention span whatsoever, or robotic tour guides telling us about the setting rather than the game showing us this crap.

[mousegard]

Hi hi, sorry if this is a weird question and I'm not sure you even answer questions here, but I was wondering how you went about choosing Claude's true name (Khalid bin Farid bin Junayd Al Tadmor) in An Eagle Among Lions? I like it quite a bit and was also sort of hoping to ask for permission to use it in my own work. Thank you for your time~!

i had a lot of fun putting together my idea for claude's full true name in an eagle among lions, so let's break it down!

while i'm no expert on arabic naming conventions, "khalid bin farid bin junayd al tadmor" translates directly to "khalid, son of farid, son of junayd, the tadmor," tracing his lineage back two generations on his father's side as part of almyra's ruling dynasty, which i'd decided to name the tadmor dynasty. as for the component names:

farid, which would be the name of his father, means "unique, precious" and was the name of a 13th-century persian poet

junayd, which would be the name of his grandfather, means "small army" in arabic

"tadmor" is an ancient semitic name, commonly seen today as a surname, that was originally the native name of the ancient city of palmyra in syria. given that almyra is literally called "palmyra" in the original japanese text as a nod to the city, this felt very fitting to me

claude's canon first name, provided by the game devs and used in canon for the first time in three hopes, means "eternal" and is shared by such historical figures as 7th-century islamic military leader khalid ibn al-walid

so, putting it all together, the full true name i made for claude in an eagle among lions basically means "this guy's gonna stick around forever, he's one of a kind, he has limited resources and has to use finesse over overwhelming force to get what he wants, and he's from almyra" and that felt very claude-y to me

i also had a lot of fun inventing the titles claude gave himself or planned to give himself to give himself enough clout to take the almyran throne—Conqueror of Shambhala, Schemer of a Thousand Plots, King Astride Two Worlds, Son of Tiana von Riegan—as well as the titles claude/desdinova gained in the alternate universe in the epilogue, the White Camel and the One-Eyed King.

the white camel, of course, comes from the story claude tells hilda in their a-support in three houses, which was originally a metaphor for claude's experiences and also took on a more literal meaning in the fic with khalid becoming the bearer of the crest of flames in the delta timeline; the one-eyed king references his triumph over thales and the mythical boogeymen of the "no eyed people" as the almyrans knew them (also a stealth neil cicierega reference; one of two in the fic) at the cost of losing one eye

so, in summation, canon universe claude's full name and titles in an eagle among lions mean:

"you can't get rid of him, there's no one out there like him, he does a lot with a little, he's almyran, he found and conquered a land of myths and legends, he's a master tactician, he crosses ethnic divides, and he's mommy's special little boy"

in the epilogue desdinova's name and epithets mean "you can't get rid of him, there's no one out there like him, he does a lot with a little, he's almyran, he's got white hair, and he kicked the boogeyman's ass"

i probably went into way more detail than i needed there but that's because everything i did with claude in my fanfic was just so fun!

you can definitely use as much of my headcanon full true name for claude as you see fit, and that goes the same for all my hresvelg sibling ocs and hubert's post transition name if the mood ever strikes you :3c thank you for asking!

[raxistaicho]

They’re saying what we’re all thinking!

Found this on another block the other day;

And the argument from anon’s friend is... pretty damn based!

Here’s the thing: Just because writers intend to do something doesn’t mean they succeed in doing so. The original thought might have been to make Edelgard a villain, but that is not what came through in the final product. A villain, by definition, is a character whose evil motivations and actions drive the plot. Nothing about Edelgard’s motivations are evil, and her actions are no more evil than any other Fire Emblem character, including Claude and especially Dimitri

Also worth noting is that the devs saying she was a villain was a misinterpretation, if not an outright lie.

I’ve made two posts on the subject;

https://raxistaicho.tumblr.com/post/675122832107307008/do-the-devs-call-edelgardthe-empire-evil

https://raxistaicho.tumblr.com/post/675278719939641344/a-closer-look-into-the-dream-article

But the important thing is that Yokata, the one credited with supposedly saying Edelgard is the villain, was actually saying she and the Empire were chosen the play the role of appearing to be the villain;

And because of that, someone evil (Villain)… or rather, someone who has to bear a role close/similar to that has to exist, and so we had the Empire bear that burden.

They speak of shouldering a role similar to villainy, not villainy in and of itself.

To point, here are Edelgard’s motivations / goals:1.) End Rhea’s rule over Fódlan (Rhea’s in specific; Edelgard says numerous times she has no qualms with the Church as a whole or people’s belief in Sothis, but JUST the Central Church)2.) End the crest system and establish a meritocracy so nobles can no longer oppress commoners3.) Kill TWSITD These are not evil goals.

Yes, she has to start a war in order to accomplish goal one, and War Is Bad, but unfortunately there is no such thing as a bloodless revolution. While Rhea was severely traumatized, her rule WAS going too far and she WAS running a dictatorship right down to having Seteth destroy any records that would reveal the truth behind the church. She needed to be stopped. And importantly, Edelgard never wanted to have to kill her.

Houses itself and Hopes make this clear. Edelgard would rather take her alive. She also lets Flayn go during chapter 12 of CF, and can spare both her and Seteth in chapter 15 of CF.

Doing so at the end of CF was a last resort brought about by Rhea ordering Catherine to burn a city of innocents alive. This is why in the other three routes Edelgard merely imprisons Rhea, and in 3 Hopes is shocked when Claude asks her if she wants Rhea dead, saying, “Is it not enough to remove her from power?” It’s also why Seteth, Flayn, Claude, Lysithea etc can be spared. Edelgard had to start a war for revolution, but she spares as many as she can.

This extends not only to Rhea and her family, either.

With Seteth it’s especially dark; “no quarter” means surrender will not be accepted and prisoners will not be taken.

Rhea reacts similarly in SB:

And lastly we have the fate of Count Bergliez in SS and VW (and presumably AM as well):

Whether his men were battling with the Knights of Seiros of the Kingdom Army, they bear the same stench and were prepared to slaughter the entire Imperial army.

Even though Claude COULD come back from Almyra with an army, and she KNOWS this, she lets him go. Because she doesn’t want him dead. So no, she’s not a villain, any more than Dimitri is a villain. Stopping Rhea’s rule was just. Establishing a meritocracy is just. Killing TWSITD, the ACTUAL villains, is just. Edelgard’s actions are morally gray, but she’s not evil and therefore not a villain no matter what the writers’ intentions were cont

Edelgard isn’t a fascist because none of her actions hit the requirements for facism. In fact, again, the Central Church controlling what information people are allowed to have, entwining religon and the government, and also killing anyone who dares to stand up to them comes closer even if it’s still not true facism. Edelgard isn’t a dictator because she abdicates the throne IMMEDIATELY after establishing her meritocracy, as explicitly stated in her endings with Byleth and Lysithea. cont

Of note, there’s an actual list of fascistic traits, and Adrestia under Edelgard falls into maybe 1 of them, and only in Three Hopes:

(That would be Religion and Government Intertwined depending on how you consider Count Varley’s role within the Southern Church)

She’s not an attempted genocider because again she lets Seteth and Flayn go and only kills Rhea as a last resort, i.e. she never wanted to kill the Nabateans, she just wanted to remove them from power. So I don’t want to argue either, but I’ve been dealing with this since FE3H released all those years ago and I’m tired of it. She’s not any of the things her haters claim and I disagree that she’s poorly written

So yeah, Buddynon definitely has done their research into the Edelgard discourse, and given this argument was relayed by somebody who clearly doesn’t agree with them, it looks like they stated their case pretty well, so kudos to you! :)

If you’re out there someone, maybe give me a PM some time? :D

[teaveetamer]

Out of all characters they could have given a full model and 1 minute of screen time to, why was it Dimitri's dad? There are so many other characters, like Claude's actually alive father, who could have benefited from that but instead we get a guy who is already dead and has barely if any relevance past dying.

Idk, probably because Lambert is actually massively important to both Dimitri's arc and the world building surrounding the Kingdom up to this point?

I'll be honest Anon, I really don't get your argument here. Literally the only thing Claude's dad has over Lambert is being slightly more alive. The only way including him over Lambert makes any sense is if you completely rewrite 3H to make him and Almyra more directly relevant to either Claude's character arc or the conflict in Fodlan. As is, though, 3H doesn't really care to engage with Almyra and it treats Claude primarily as either a side quest or as an exposition bot to deliver the world building regarding characters who are actually relevant to the overarching plot. Which was literally the biggest criticism of VW/Claude's writing, that the devs put no effort into integrating Claude as an independent character into the plot better. (Not that Claude doesn't have his own character backstory, but his actual function in the plot of the game is side quest or exposition bot. 3H is not that interested in actually addressing his character motivations or goals).

Not that it's an excuse for dev laziness, but I'd rather complain about the devs cutting corners and not giving other characters their own portraits/models/relevance rather than complain that Lambert got screentime while other off-screeners didn't.

[travelling-on-the-octopath]

You think a big reason GW isn't focused on Almyra much at all is actually because of Byleth - or rather, how the writers treat Byleth's importance to the narrative? Because of their want for Byleth to be the cause of any of the routes' good and bad ends? Since it'd be hard to fit in Byleth having anything to do with Almyra, and so GW is forced to stay focused on Fodlan?

I say this because in trying to come up with something for my rewrite of GW, that was a big obstacle since I'm trying to keep to Hopes' writing stuff as best I can like I tried to do for my VW rewrite and 3H, and the only thing I could come up with is still a fairly big asspull (which I don't mind too much considering how full of those Hopes' writing already is lol). I want it to be revolving around Almyra and give Claude a proper story that centers around his specific issues and story, but damn the writing conventions of Hopes make that weirdly hard :/

I almost want to say you're giving the writers more credit than they're due. It wouldn't have been impossible for the writers to work them into an Almyran plot, considering how unimportant Jeralt's mercs are as characters--plot devices, sure, but if we're talking about ideals and personalities and motivations, they're rocks. Play into the idea that they would earn prestige for helping beat back an Almyran invasion; have the Empire throw them to the wolves, toy with the dynamic between mercs and their employers as soldiers v. people and where that distinction means their survival. Have that survival instinct then play into something with Claude! Mr. "Has Had to Survive as Long as He's Been Alive"!

This is just me rambling, and I'm sure if I dug into that, I'd come across a few problems, but the fact remains that I think this could very well be a chicken-and-egg scenario; it's quite possible that they wanted to keep Claude's story relegated to Fódlan for the sake of making Byleth coming along easier, but it's just as likely they never had any intention to carry through on the Almyran plot to begin with, and Byleth's current integration into the plot followed after. I only say this because . . . well, even if they WERE writing around Byleth's absence, Byleth being absent didn't excuse them killing the most interesting character in relation to Claude yet (Shahid, insofar as he was a literal gateway into Almyran lore), or highlighting rough Almyran stereotypes in Nader (wanting to pillage the country they invade), etc. Which is not a shot at you at all; if the devs were to come out and say that Byleth was the reason they shafted Claude's Almyran ties, it would piss me off, but at least I could make something logical out of it from a writing standpoint.

All that to say: It's more than possible that they worked around Byleth (god knows why) to the extent of Claude's home never being expanded upon, but I wouldn't automatically give the writers that credit because my faith in them is so threadbare.

[dmclemblems]

Oh god, Claude's "We are all risking our lives" response to Sylvain in GW really made me want to punch him. Like, really, Claude - how do you expect to ever have good relations with the kingdom again if you not only invade them and kill their people but act like a heartless d**k about it. But "For all of Fodlan", right? and yes to the victim blaming, and how El did that as well in CF. Tbh, they gave him a lot of her rhetoric in GW. Quite lazy that they couldn't even come up with smth unique.

See, that's one of the things I feel like they really messed up on with Claude. I will say I think Claude is a little numb with his emotions due to being pretty closed off because of his childhood even in Houses, but he's not totally emotionless? I just feel like it was very cold of him to basically just be like "well that sucks for you I guess". Like yeah, people die in war, but even then, in Houses he always wants Hilda to escape and not die for him. It's not just "well that's war" to him.

Also, yeah, I can't imagine that Fodlan would just be peaceful after GW. Since it's his route ultimately, we can assume he's the one who wins the war, yadda yadda and that whatever Edelgard does doesn't end up in her favor. That would mean whether Fodlan ends up unified or not, there will be bad relations if he's at the "top" of the power chain. Even if he does end up with a just and good rule, there will still be ill feelings everywhere.

In this route, not only would Edelgard fail in her conquest (which again we can presume from it not being her route), but after the fighting with the Kingdom I don't imagine they're going to take kindly to either other nation. Tbh GW ends in a pretty unfortunate way, and it's that the whole continent is probably on bad terms after the war. Technically SB is probably that way too in the bad ending of the route, but that one has an option at least.

It was Hapi, I'm pretty sure, who said the Kingdom was definitely going to hold a grudge. There's a lot of little things like that in the camp that more or less imply that post GW's story isn't gonna be all happy stuff. I don't really understand Claude's perspective here and how he believes that after this war/invasion that things will just go back to normal and/or that Fodlan will be a better place. Imo it seems more like it's gonna be a really bitter place afterward...

I do agree a lot of the stuff they used in GW was kind of scraps of Houses stuff. AM was totally unique and SB was basically just a different take on CF, but GW definitely recycled a lot of CF plot points. I was hoping there would be way more involvement with Almyra in his route, but once again he got a shared route basically. VW and SS are more or less the "same", and GW and SB are connected similarly (and for the first half of the game are just opposites sides of the same battle).

Just feels like the devs never give Claude anything unique, like stuff that's only his and part of his own story. :/ For being "the king's favorite child", he's certainly IS' least loved child. 😔

[faroreswinds]

I read your post with the interview additions from renisfan and my mind is BOGGLED. I simply cannot understand it in any way. Outside of a few fans who only care about the lions and don’t want to play the other routes (and dislike byleth i guess), or (eugh) the ones who unironically cheer on imperialism-chan and her clone, not to mention hating the cabbage patch church, i don’t see how anyone is 100% satisfied with the decisions the devs made. And from the interview, it’s because nothing makes any damn sense.

For starters, musou is supposed to be purely a silly fanservice vehicle for players to hack and slash their way through enemies, plot be damned. But this musou was chosen, for some reason, as the way for kt/intsys to add all the things they wanted to put in houses but couldn’t? Why is a musou game part of the canon? I already told you about my acquaintance with the burning hatred for aoc and how he said it made him feel like it completely invalidated botw if all it took for things to be solved was The Stupid Fucking Egg (per his acronym in Spanish) doing timey wimey shit. And I can now totally understand his feelings plus the anons you got about houses fans saying that their experience was invalidated.

Why add all this to a musou game? Why didn’t they just pull a botw and delay longer to let the original houses bake properly in the oven? The demo footage for the next mainline Zelda game was announced in like, 2013, and it was delayed for years until botw showed up with a radically different look and style, and it became a smash hit. So why the rush to push out houses? Would the devs still have wanted to add all the stuff that was cut out back then if it houses didn’t become as popular as it did?

And even so, with the added time (and funds and the added benefit of the explosion in popularity houses had after its debut), how was it possible that kt/intsys still managed to make another mess?

How did houses show edelgard as the clear villain and aggressor in 3 out of 4 routes (cf notwithstanding) but nopes now whitewashes her, plays her rhetoric straight, and gives her a moral high ground? And still removes her agency?

Why was monica given the personality a disguised kronya used in houses when characters in houses commented it was strange of her to act that way? And why turn monica into another sycophant for edelgard?

How did the devs acknowledge that vw was copy pasted from ss (and i say this as a claude and golden deer fan), yet not only lied about gw being focused on almyra, but basically turned it into a copy of sb? To say nothing of how contradictory Claude’s entire character turned out (and that’s me putting it nicely)?

How is it that two routes of out three spend a significant amount of time shitting on faerghus, and even in ag there are moments where the kingdom is castigated for responding rationally to an invading force trying to conquer it?

Or that, again, in 3/4 houses routes the church is shown as a victim of the evil mole people and the empire…but nopes, despite showing the church as being clearly good people, also does nothing to contradict the constant shit lobbed their way? Why do even devout characters like Judith go along with this when stuff like dialogue in gw shows the central church is not seen as a major concern by many, much less a threat? Or that all that talk about cutting room floor content they wanted to use for lore somehow doesn’t extend to the church? Hell, they’re not even playable outside ng+! And the way Rhea dies in sb/gw is just plain insulting!

Why does sothis have all her memories in nopes yet refuses to explain anything when she gets screen time? Why was she changed from a sassy and snappy but ultimately caring head gremlin to a mean, gaslighting, controlling little tulpa? And why doesn’t she speak up about her family???

Are the devs aware of all the fuckery pulled by the localisation team in houses, like adding blatantly untrue clauses to the book of seiros tenets to make the church look bad, and how that continued in nopes? (Judging from the way the church is treated in nopes, i don’t think they care, which is very oof)

How do the evil mole people (except cornelia/cleobulus, because ag dodged the idiot ball) still look dumb even though their existence and moustache twirling antics are out in the open in nopes? How is it that the devs still didn’t know what to do with them in sb, or just forgot about them entirely in gw? Why do their actions still benefit the empire even though they’re not working together in nopes?

Why were the dads shown but not patricia, who was a principal contributor to the violence that plagued faerghus before the events of houses/nopes? Why was ionius straight up erased and details about the insurrection fudged further? Edelgard’s siblings???

Why were so many characters changed for the worse? Granted, Petra does shine in nopes and i love her, but Caspar? He kept harping on about justice when he wasn’t talking about fighting and training in houses, but hopes Caspar is a bloodthirsty and patriotic little empire soldier. Linhardt is completely apathetic, Ferdinand toes edelgard’s line, the deer seem to be eager to invade faerghus etc.

Why is Shez’s backstory constantly teased at but never explained, if this game is supposed to be lore-heavy? Or why was that plot thread just tossed out the window entirely in gw?

And as for byleth…oof. “Oh we didn’t want to make fans of byleth and houses to feel sad and invalidated” so then what, devs?? I say this with the added context of me being a byleth (both versions) fan:

If the devs acknowledged that byleth is popular, why does nopes sideline them so hard to the point of irrelevance? Why is it possible for shez to not only kill them in an ultimately anticlimactic fight, but to also twist the knife further by stripping away part of their agency when sothis forcibly pilots their bodies, have jeralt die if they’re not recruited, AND also have them murder two highly regarded side characters (idgaf about Randolph and flèche) which turns them into enemies of the rest of the cast?

Why are they needed to unlock the fight against arval if that extra chapter doesn’t even affect the main plot and is totally optional?

Why are they and shez the biggest parts of the box art and played a huge part in the game’s marketing if their so called rivalry was ultimately meaningless?

Were shez and arval (and i also dgaf about arval, they’re interesting only vis a vis their friendship with shez) only designed with being not!Byleth and not!Sothis in mind instead of the plot…instead of the devs actually doing something different?

Why was arval turned into a cop-out by having them be the nice snarky personality while epimenides the butthurt agarthan barely even affected the plot despite all the flags pointing to arval as suspicious in the first place?

Hell, even the game’s timeline is suspicious…announced in march and released in late june…

I’m sorry for this LONG ass message and for sounding like a broken record, but i simply cannot wrap my head around all the stuff I’ve seen so far in nopes along with what renisfan translated. What was even the point of nopes existing (outside of money ofc) in light of all this messiness???

And regardless of people’s opinions on the game, the one thing i can say confidently is that the mere existence of nopes has done irreparable damage to the already bad state of the discourse surrounding fódlan.

Forgot to add this to my last ask: if the devs “didn’t want to invalidate houses” then what was the point????? Devs??? Explain????

This is quite the message, haha.

And I don't really have a proportional response for you either. Because these are all questions I have as well. And I'm still... processing most of them even now.

I need more time to digest before I can give a full response to everything you said here. Because I share some of your rage.

I can say this though.

The point was to make money.

[randomnameless]

The quintessential problem with Claude and the deer is that they should not have been involved in the war at all, or at least not Claude. What does he have to gain participating on it? Nothing, and he makes it even more explicit in azure moon when he dissolves the alliance. He could've pretty easely given the power to Lorenz or Hilda and nope out of there (what he does in silver snow), as it is clear througouht white clouds that he doesn't have as much of an attachtment to Fodlan as he does Almyra. And it isn't like the devs couldn't take the deer studients out during post-TS, when Marianne unless recruited is pressumed dead, and Lorenz unless recruited joins the imperial forces and dies helping the empire.

Outside of the problems with racism and the bigoted tropes related to "savage cultures" the Fodlan games perpetuate, the devs did not know how to use one of their house leaders for the main plot of "church vs empire", and idk if that's because they bit more than they could chew, or if it was intentional taking into account who gets the short end of the stick in both games happens to be mixed and from one of those "savage cultures".

TBH...

It's on the devs for having wanted to add a third lord to their game, but failing to, well, link him to any of those plots.

Supreme Leader's war of unification?

Well, Nopes gave him a part this plot - and yet there's no third choice in this plot : you bend the knee or you die. Nopes' wise, Clout decided (in his route) to bend the knee with his "alliance" that is totally supposed to make Supreme Leader reconsider her desire to roll over Leicester and make it part of Adrestia again!

(Granted, Nopes don't tell us how his plea to stop the war after killing the evil lizard lady will play out and leaves an open ending...)

In Houses, well, he doesn't want Leicester to be flattened, and goes on the offensive (counter offensive?) when Billy pops up with basically what is the plot events of Silver Snow (down to using the same strategy with disguises) with the Gronder Map.

And that addition radically changes... well, everything regarding Claude's relevance : he cannot form an alliance with the Blue Lord or the Kingdom to get rid of the Empire because "plot convenient myopia" and apparently Dimitri BaD enough that he attacks Alliance troops for no reason.

Forget SS, GW (and AM, in a way) is just using plot contrived excuse to... not have an united from to face the Empire. Why? IDK. Each Lord must be the hero of his story, or the unification boner means only one of them can "win" an unified Fodlan i'd guess.

Nabateans and the plot ?

No one gives a fig about that "plot", so it's basically pursuing a side-quest for no payoff.

Now, as @fantasyinvader wrote, Claude's story and journey as one who is ignorant and gets to learn and clear his misconceptions + the background of the land we're living in could have been interesting, doubly so given how Billy is voiceless and cannot play the "protag discovers the world at the same time as the player does" role.

But it has... no payoff.

Much like Rhea's infodump about the World, Relics and Nabateans... Claude reacts to the mention that Billy has a rock for heart, and not about his crest, his shiny bow or the fact that Rhea also had a vested interest in, uh, getting rid of prejudice against people who are perceived as "different" because her family was genocided for that.

Hell, the entire "prejudice" angle from Supreme Leader's war is swept under the rug, so we can have the Deers say nonsense like wanting to rekt Thales for Supreme Leader's sake, while only Flayn and Seteth can hear her "nabateans shouldn't have power over the people"...

There's no parallel drawn in the game about Claude and Rhea's situation - since she's at the center of this subplot - about being perceived as "outsiders" and not being able to do various things from existing to "rule over the people" because of what they are, or even faking their identities and building metaphorical walls between them and the people they're living with because they are afraid of rejection.

Nah, we can't have that, Rhea must be irrelevant to the possible, while also being the biggest scapegoat/dragon of this saga at the same time as a nebulous red herring to sell pots of tea.

If the "fight against prejudice and make people accept each other" angle was that relevant to his route, Claude would have most likely talked or interacted with Dimitri and learnt of his plan to cleanse Duscur's name in his Father's assassination, raised a brow at Petra being a hostage and done something else than give a surprised pikachu face at Rhea's infodumps.

He could have reacted at her reveal that if you might want to live in peace with some people, if those people don't want that and label you as nothing more than fodder or things to be looted, it's not going to work.

And of course, gave a reaction at your second in command (unofficially?)'s reveal that, uh, her house keeps identured Almyran children as war prisoners?

Some people already made some AUs or "what ifs" routes for a proper Claude route and not the nonsense that we got in FE16 where it's basically "I react to the same plot events that happen in the other routes but top it all with a zombie".

The Deers could have been "better introduced" in a plot about getting rid of prejudice, or learning the causes of this prejudice : Marianne was/is hunted because of her blood ties to Maurice - not because what she did, but because what Momo did back then! - Lysithea was treated as a guinea pig and her house rolled over by Adrestia who has a less than rosy views about the "offshoots" that are called Leicester and Faerghus, Lorenz could explain that prejudice, just like piety, are tools used by people whenever they're relevant, like, some people being pissed at foreigners and some who aren't because they make money through international trading like Margrave Edmund does, Hilda justifying her House's animosity towards Almyrans because they lost many people in those pointless skirmishes (maybe a closed ones? Her mom or Uncle or whatever?) which would make Claude realise that "ending prejudice" is a much more difficult quest than, idk, just killing one or two randoms.

The commoner trio might share Claude's views about prejudice and welcoming foreigners, but have more "mundane" worries like being able to have a roof and food to eat, which might be the case of some people in Leicester, or tell us more about Leicester and how it works (give us more insight about the different countries if Fodlan ffs).

Maybe we could have had a Claude who learns and discovers Fodlan, and along the way, starts to love the land as much, if not more, than Almyra and really wanting to protect this land from whatever Supreme Leader's cooking, or becoming an Almyra v.2.

I don't think making Claude the third wheel of the plot was maliciously intentional because of the, uh, implications with RL cultures and Almyra, but more like they didn't know where to put him.

I noticed you wrote the conflict as one that is "the church vs the empire", but I do not really agree - if that was the case, the war would have stopped in VW/AM/SS the second Rhea was caught.

The main conflict is Supreme Leader's war of conquest - with the twist that the devs were really banking on their brilliant idea of making the red emperor the titular waifu of the game that each person/lord/whatever Rhea is must find a way to excuse and/or justify her actions.

With this in mind, AM is basically Dimitri's fall (and rise!) because of his ties to Supreme Leader.

In VW? The game cannot explore too much outside of the Supreme Leader scope so we're left with.. well, what VW was.

Claude cannot go on a journey to discover Fodlan and get rid of his misconceptions... because part of those same misconceptions are used by Supreme Leader to start her war, or the sheer concept of a conquest, aka a nation being rolled over by another is anathema to his, supposed, ideal of wanting people to accept each other despite their differences.

I ranted about it since day 5, but the Nabatean subplot (and Fodlan in general) is accessory to Supreme Leader war, there is no point aka no payoff for learning all of that, because you cannot challenge the one who wants to unify the continent.

As such, Claude cannot deviate too far from this plot - while receiving infodumps about "the lore" - and we end up with third wheel of a bike and characters who, at first and second glance, appear to be irrelevant.

Fodlan ends up unified despite starting as three separate countries, we feel bad for Supreme Leader and mourn her unknown ideals, Rhea is gone and the Agarthans aren't a problem anymore.

the second the devs said leicester was a republic, claude was doomed. Merchant republics are always irrelevent or straight up useless in the FE series!

[semi-imaginary-place]

@gabityaby

heyyy

yeah that was like 70 replies you left on one post lol

AM and CF part 2 claude comes off as very fake it until you make it. i wrote a post about claude and trust as well as one about non vw claude... somewhere... that talks more about these things (i don’t think i tagged any of it... sorry). post deirdriu he staked all his hopes and dreams on this one plan and he failed. he can potentially lose everything and its devastating to him. but claude would portray weakness in one area to hide the things he truly cares about and the things that actually hurt him and you see this act in non vw routes because he never quite opened up and connected with people like he does in vw. claude starts off not trusting anyone, but trusting his ability to read people and manipulate them. he doesn’t grow out of this on any route except vw.

oh edelgard definitely bunker’s down when threatened. her entire field of view shrinks and she doubles down on whatever path she set herself upon before. claude and edelgard are ideologically compatible, but don’t take what claude says at face value.

i wrote a post a while back that outlines a few crimson flower verdant wind fusion routes and i think you should take a look. where is the post? i don’t know. but its out there. good luck.

don’t forget that claude only became king because he led the winning side of the war in fodlan. his dad has to see that it was claude that won. he doesn’t automatically become king. i see this problem a lot where people think “oh of course claude becomes king” like its destiny for him but no the default is not claude becomes king its quite frankly the opposite. claude has everything against him he isn’t even being considered for the throne. claude has forge his path to the kingship one hard won brick at a time. treating is as anything less is a disservice to cladue and undermines all he actually managed to accomplish.

this one i didn’t write out but when i was plotting out the vw+cf fusion i kept running into the road block that is byleth, because of how highly emotionally attached edelgard it to byleth like she really latches on byleth became central to the story and so slowly it became not the story of edelgard and claude, but of byleth. but i stopped myself there and never typed it out.

im guessing you played as female byleth? i prefer male byleth’s design, but i ended up playing female byleth to 100% the game and collect every single s support.

i find the sheer number of times claude gives up positions of power to be hilarious. edelgard is a bit more comfortable in power but in the end to both of them power is only a means to a ends, thats why you see both of them abdicating in a number of their end cards.

fe3h’s a beautiful mess so a true rewrite would disentangle what was included for resource limitations and what furthers the themes and character arcs. mm i wanna see almyra too but i fear whatever the devs come up with would pale in comparison to whats in my head. you should check out microlm for almyra headcanons

[randomnameless]

What are the odds of, 20 years from now, IS releasing a 3 Houses remake but with:

most of the “uwu” moments removed

Edelgard being constantly and explicitly portrayed as a villain with characters calling her out on her actions

Massively reduced recruitment options

deeper worldbuilding for Almyra and Adrestia

Claude explicitly adressing that Almyra's just as much at fault for it's bad relations with Fodlan as the other way around and swearing to work to get them to stop pillaging and taking child slaves

TWISTD not being so story-breakingly OP

CF not existing at all, or at least being rewritten from the ground up and being fully finished instead of a glorified reskin of another route

Dimitri's friends, especially Dedue, supporting him and being important for his character development instead of just Byleth

Byleth being fully-voiced and having a very clearly-defined personality and beliefs, being an Avatar only in the fact that the player can choose a different name for them but otherwise being a normal FE protagonist

Rhea's S-support being erased from existence, along with her getting new supports with her family and friends and more plot relevance post-timeskip

Sothis' S-support also being erased, especially if CF still exists, and having her be rewritten so that she only gets her memory back right before fusing with Byleth, apologizing to her children for leaving them alone again but refusing to let Byleth die, staying unambiguously dead for the rest of the game

I highly doubt any of this will ever happen, mind, but if it did, 3H might just jump multiple spots into being one of the best FE games lol

Oh, anon :(

I'm afraid this will never happen lol

FE16's main appeal is the uwu factor, you have to feel bad for Supreme Leader who is sekritly the red emperor, even if she does red emperor things.

That's the basis on which FE16 was built, a lot of parasocial pandering towards Supreme Leader, which will make the player feel "sad uwus" when they will have to fight her, always wondering if they couldn't have picked her route instead.

(I say "sad uwus" and not "feel bad", because Fates made the player feel bad, by having characters react to Corn's choice, and Corn, in turn, reaction to all the salt and shit thrown at their face, as the result of their actions).

And while we could think FE16 is also a story meant to challenge the players, and have them realise they're interacting with biased narrators so it's up to them to find the truth and make their own opinion about the world - imo this reading, while a thousand times more interesting than "uwu be sad uwu" is, imo, not the one the devs prioritized, hence the constant supply of Hresvelg Grey.

As I ultimately came to realise (when nopes was released lol), no Fodlan game can circle around and ignore the uwu factor. Uwuing about Earl Grey and always being a carpet to some lord characters is part of Fodlan's DNA - the faves will always take precedence over the world/lore's coherence.

Clout wonders about Fodlan's isolationism and if it has any relationship with Seiros's tenets? No one, not even Hilda, will tell him that Fodlan might not like its neighbours because said neighbours are always trying to invade them (as she could speak for Almyra). Leonie and Claude wonder if they will get some sort of retribution for saying out loudly they don't believe everything good in the world comes from Sothis... when the Alliance is later revealed to be a place where no one really gives a fuck about religion, and when no line, on-screen, has been thrown around that could justify their doubt and worries (not even a random NPC dissing people for being students in the officer's academy even if they are not particularly religious).

Supreme Leader is another can of tea lol, but you get the meaning.

This is also why, I believe, we will never get WoH meaningful content (and not Epi wanting to use the power of friendship to help his genociding fwends!) because we can't uwu about it -

Much like every story centered on the Lions (even if AM got the Parley scene...), a plot hax has to happen to make you forget everything about the red emperor emperoring because now she's a puppet and nothing has ever been her fault and what is even agency and accountability ?

So we got the general "good old academy days" that Engage tried to push, and the recent Heroes alts -to avoid talking about post TS Fodlan, because IS doesn't want to talk about post TS Fodlan.

I mean, if you're not in FE16 with the various "Rhea maybe BaD bcs Nader raids Fodlan every monday to show everyone how large his penis is" and unable to meaningfuly interact with that world, all the "Crust System + IdEaLs" nonsense just sound like Ashnard's battle convo, and while Almedha still seems to be fond of him, she's the only one on Tellius who still has positive feelings about Ashnard as a person.

Tl:Dr : Fodlan's DNA is "Supreme Leader uwu" + "Rhea BaD" + "don't ever question the characters and nod when they say something ridiculous".

If you remove even one of those core principles, FE16 crumbles, so at that point, it wouldn't be a remake that would be released, anon, but an entire AU to the game.

[fantasyinvader]

I was thinking about this some more.

Edelgard calls Dimitri the king of delusion, which would tie to the boar theme. The poison/flame of ignorance can also be seen as delusion or foolishness. But here's the thing, Dimitri isn't the only one suffering delusions. Hallucinations, sure, but he's not the only delusional person.

Look at the guy who was involved with Duscur. He says that his lord viewed Lambert and his attempts to reform the nobility as tyranny, and therefore was in the right to assassinate him. However, the Western lords proceeded to frame the innocent people of Duscur for the act, and then used that to justify subjugating and oppressing them. They sat around as Rufus ran the Kingdom into the ground, and then proceeded to betray their country to join Edelgard which again put their people under her tyranny (as Azure Moon does say she is a tyrant).

They killed Lambert to supposed stop tyranny, but ended up enabling Edelgard's, yet they still believe themselves the good guy. That's delusion, just like Edelgard in the parley. Hell, the dev's confirmed that the worldbuilding was done to support Silver Snow, so joining her goes against everything the world is saying owing to the theme of having different beliefs in doing so.

Houses... is a story about the dangers of delusion.

In Silver Snow, Byleth will naturally side against Edelgard. That's the way the story is supposed to flow, but being close to Edelgard opens up the options that lead to joining her. But doing that goes against the story thus far, and again the worldbuilding is saying that Edelgard is the bad guy. One route is backed by evidence, or you can reject that truth and side with the villain while thinking you're the hero. Truth or Delusion.

In Azure Moon, Dimitri clears up his delusion. He learns to live for himself and that he needs to focus on helping the people currently alive rather than avenging the dead.

Then there's Verdant Wind, where Claude realizes he was wrong about the Church, learns more about the truth than any other route, and achieves his original goal for coming to Fodlan of learning from it in order to learn how to change Almyra. He's the one to point out that the Central Church doesn't actually say to keep foreigners out and that Rhea had people from various countries outside of Fodlan working with her at Garreg Mach. Claude cleared up his own erroneous beliefs in order achieve his ambitions.

Delusion also is said to lead to pestilence in Buddhism, the spread of epidemics and plagues. Look at Remire now, with it's hate plague. Edelgard claims she had nothing to do with it and would have stopped it if she had known, but she did know she just didn't think it would be so awful. Hopes also implies she knew about the plot to create demonic beasts since the start of the game and did nothing, allowing TWSITD to experiment on people for her own benefit. Naturally, Jeralt is the one to call her out by saying her words are meaningless because they are. Edelgard might be able to delude herself into believing she's not doing anything bad, but the evidence says otherwise.

Ironically, the guy with one eye sees things the best.

I can't get Hubert's Japanese line about Dimitri out of my mind.

“Hehe...A king has arrived who claims to help people, yet continues to kill them.”

Three Thoughts:

This comes after the parley, where Edelgard is called out on sacrificing people and her reply is that more people will benefit from her actions in the long run. She tries to make it out that she's doing it for the people, but then blames the people if they don't raise up through her system. She's saying she's doing this to help people, yet still continues to kill people.

Adding to this, the people Dimitri saves and the people he kills are two different people. He's stopping the latter from hurting the former as they invade and oppress Fodlan. Yuri even reveals that the people view him as a hero for it. It's not the same as Edelgard choosing to sacrifice untold scores of people.

When you consider Dimitri's earlier reactions to killing, that he viewed it as wrong and himself a monster for it, it helps solidify him living for himself and the living. Yes, he's killing people but he's doing it to stop those causing suffering to others AFTER he attempted to resolve the matter through talks. He tried to solve things peacefully, it didn't work, so fighting is necessary to bring an end to the conflict. It's the flips-side of him learning that people can attempt to justify self-serving actions by claiming to be the good guy, sometimes fighting is the only answer and he's no longer suicidal about it either.

[faroreswinds]

I’m really mad because my recordings of my SB playthrough have been cutting out for some reason at times. It’s not going to make the cut pretty when all is said and done. >:(

I think I fixed it but man, so many hours of garbage. 

I know my comments on my playthrough probably aren’t very exciting but I’m also posting them for reference later. In case I need to call back on something. 

Anyways, time for anons and other asks! My answers are short because my hands hurt from typing so much.

Varleys sliminess is well documented. Even in the final battle and facing the Agarthans, killing Imperial Varley for being scum and spreading false teachings is a priority for some of Rheas troops.

The guy is an Imperial plant. I don’t blame from people wanting to take him out. 

Like I'm not asking for Claude to stay the mostly squeaky-clean Good Guy he was in 3H, I'm just asking that he be allowed to retain any semblance of his character. Like... he could have brought in Almyran forces without telling anyone despite having fought off a large army from them not that long ago - in fact, specifically because of that last altercation with them, because he can't find it in him to trust his friends to believe in him, even though he desperately wants to.

That can cause some deep tension and suspicion between the Deer and Claude, and hey Shahid can be a reoccurring threat in his route to deepen that tension even more (instead of just a joke who immediately gets killed off - hey, maybe don't throw away one of the most interesting new additions to your story for no reason 3Hopes!!). You can have it to where Claude secretly gathering Almyran forces to bolster his Fodlandi ones is causing problems in Almyra, because now the people are split between supporting Khalid (the runaway prince, but who's fighting in a war that's proving daunting) or Shahid (the hot-headed fool, but one fighting for "traditional Almyran values" - i.e. proving themselves superior to Fodlan). That could cause Claude to question whether his faith and dreams of people working together as friends and allies is worth what going through with said dreams is causing to the war in Fodlan, his homeland, and his friends.

And his route as a whole can be about the struggle of having to juggle trusting your friends, trusting yourself (cuz hey Claude showing some self-doubt in GW is actually really neat but like. lowkey doesn't go anywhere imo), recognizing what is necessary to be a good leader, and his personal conflict regarding Shahid and Almyra as a whole! Oh, wow!! YET AGAIN Claude is given a route where OBVIOUS DIRECTIONS FOR HIS CHARACTER are right there that aren't taken, except now there's blatant character assassination to go along with the missed opportunities!! Oh boy my favorite!!

@fea-and-fehf-headcanons

There is nothing to add, really. I agree. They didn’t have to make him squeaky clean, but this just... isn’t Claude. It’s crazy how different this guy is.

They botched his route. I’m so sorry, Claude fans. 

I just read the dev interview and I find the byleth take odd. I think you can the same plot for three hopes just playing as the lords.  If the what if a scenario is what the lords not meeting byleth why do you need a new avatar?

They could've given byleth their own route showing how much being a professor or working at church changed them. Maybe a secret route playing as them bouncing between all three factions fighting for each side as a common merc watching fodlan burn. A weirder idea is to have byleth raise their mini-army and get the sword of the creator and the people herald them as the new "liberator". Byleth could do this as a response to seeing the bloodshed on all three sides. Deciding to finally take action rather than passively jumping from place to place for work. That's sort of a character arc for them.

The only thing byleth concretely influences on all three routes for better or worse in three houses isn't the lords. It's the war coming to a close. Which doesn't end in three hopes. So having byleth be the one to end the war vs all three lords could be interesting?

I guess I should remember warriors games arent for plot/gameplay more so for fanservice and some mindless fun. Sorry for the word barf.

@happiighost

When I saw the new avatar months ago, I groaned out loud. Seriously, I HATE avatars. Shez was so unnecessary, especially when you have such a strong cast to play off of! 

And yeah, the devs didn’t want Hopes to have a conclusive end or else it would invalidate Byleth. And like... ok? Then WHY have another avatar at all???? Just use the lords right out the gate and boom, problem solved. 

But I will say this. The game IS fun. Dumb, but fun. And it does have some very good moments. Seteth crying for Flayn to escape was divine. I live for that shit.

Oh hold up, when does claude sacrifice his allies ? Which allies ?! Agh I'm afraid to watch the playthroughs and yet my curiousity arghhh

The Empire. Actually, I don’t think he ever sacrifices Kingdom allies. Just the Empire allies. Both routes, actually. Randolph in particular. 

Am personally dreading how fans are already saying hopes/houses is worse than the other because x character, y scenario, z outcome, and tbh part of why i left the fandom is because no one can just fucking enjoy anything in fire emblem without immediately hating on its predecessors/sequels. Can people fucking chill? Regardless of their stances on any character or route can people really not find it in themselves to enjoy the games on their own?

No, people cannot chill. Sunk fallacy and all that. They have devoted their lives to “being right” and they will now feel vindicated, damn it!

But I think the reason people are so mad is because Hopes wanted to address fan criticism AND not invalidate Byleth. This is both a blessing and a curse. And not only that, but they are butchering characters in a way that isn’t entirely logical.

You can enjoy the game. But people have a right to be upset when the game isn’t faithful. 

Like... I’m actually having a lot of fun! I’m confused a lot per the story. But gameplay is honestly great. 

[randomnameless]

Hmm...is no one going to mention that Ingrid asked Ignatz to paint Seiros with a miniskirt and a claymore?

Poor Ignatz isn't the only one to have a thing for Nabateans...

Bar that...

I finally finished Marianne's paralogue!

So yes, Marianne is accused of turning into a monster and eating people alive, because she has the emblem of "the beast".

Which actually validates Rhea's warnings about people losing their faith in nobles and in anyone else if it becomes known that relics can turn people into monsters! So the "she's lying to us people" goes, again, into the trashcan ; what is the best option, lying to everyone or letting the descendants of the Elites be shunned/hated etc by the rest of the world for something they didn't do?

Too bad Claude couldn't react at the end of this paralogue, he wants to find answers, here is one.

I was pleased when Maurice turning into a beast was hinted at in Linhardt's support convo with Catherine - she had the matching emblem but says that even for her, when she used Thunderbrand, she feels her life force being drained away or something by the weapon.

The beast dead, Maurice's bones are found, and the Blutgang.

Why his bones? Is his human body aging/decomposing in his beast form or is the beast form taking over his human body, like Miklan? What happens to the human body, it isn't fused but it's more like used as a host? Idk but it sounds horrible.

Given what happened to Joe, the dragon turned into Blutgang... Not saying Maurice deserved it, but maybe Joe remains wanted some kind of revenge - but again, we're going into circles - are relics housing the remaining conscience of the Nabatean it was made of? Is the Nabatean trying to take over his host to have a new body and live again?

:/

I like this game's lore and it pisses me that we basically don't know jack shit about it where are the dev notes damn it

Flayn said hi to Indech who's still a troll but wants to play with humans and finds them fascinating (unlike Birdie but I haven't unlocked his paralogue :'().

I find Seteth's depictions of him in his Bernie support hard to reconciliate though, for someone who's supposed to be a shy recluse he's too into his role playing "I am the guardian of the Lake worthy humans I grant you this weapon".

Whatever... I liked Leonie there though, she's so into the "find a treasure" side quest to prove her worth, because she feels like a banana next to crested people and doesn't feel good using that bow even after getting it...

Also finished the paralogue with Rhea's puppets (Claude was looking for something in her room made me agree with Billy for once being :/) ; it is suggested that the puppets were created before the monastery? Did Sothis engineer them and Rhea made more models or else? They have been used since a long time ago, if the ruins in Monica's death chapter are enough indication.

Plot hole though - how the empire managed to steal crest stones if those things were active?

Plot wise...

We met with Judith who finds Nader hot, surprising Claude. She's sure she met him somewhere though which is... Meh in a greater level ; Nader's widely known I guess, so why the fuck appointing him the regent of House Riegan?

Claude expected that no Goneril would go to Derdriu to meet a Riegan and draw their swords when they will be faced with an Almyrian general???? Ditto with Judith?

Maybe he wore a mask to conceal his identity.

Claude is the one to suggest using the crest of flames banner, to hide his involvement and also to rally everyone under Billy. Idk if this banner is the same as Nemesis' or if they only have the crest of flames in common.

Ultimate gfdi why point :

Claude agreeing with Edel's goals but not with her methods :'(

Rhea gone means people can finally start thinking by themselves and stop isolating Fodlan from the rest of the world.

I guess it's good for his "destroy boundaries get rid of racism" plan but...

It's not like the "sponsorised by the church" Kingdom had good relationships with the dark skinned Duscurian foreigners until Thales'n'co happened... Oh wait.

Almyra raids the alliance's border every Sunday for funsies. The empire subjugated Briggid and Dagda for a reason we don't know of.

Maybe the church's doctrine isn't the only reason why Fodlan's not a very tolerant place?

Idk...

BTW, poor Claude, if only you knew what Edel's real goals were...

[dyaus-pita]

Claude's entire plot feels like an FE5/post FE Kaga plot that the writers didn't know what to do with tbqh. The war between Veria and the Raze Empire in Berwick Saga in particular is basically Almyra vs Leicester, with the Raze Empire even sharing a lot of the Turkish/Mediterranean vibes, and there's a character from there hiding out on Veria investigating the history of the war to understand it and bring people together.

I guess they were attempting something like Leif where his struggle is not directly tied to the main conflict, but does intersect. But it worked better there because the writers were actually interested in it and spent time establishing things and trying to tie them together. Maybe they just don't like republics? Given how the devs depict the Alliance, it wouldn't shock me if that was a reason.

Controversial opinion but I saw you already posted about it: I think Byleth fits far better into the story of 3h than Claude ever did and I find even the existence of Leicester very redundant when it’s one of the least developed parts of the game. I admit to being biased as a Blue Lions fan (and as a multishipper who also throws in a lot of Flayn and Byleth ships into the Lions) but at least they get their culture and conflicts and issues shown. The church isn’t as developed but it still is clearly very important. Byleth is also excellent in Azure Moon, Flayn gets some of her best supports with the Lions (and Azure Gleam is right there), the church and Faerghus have a close relationship and history, and they tell the story of the continent extremely well. But what does Claude, and by extension, Leicester, bring to the table, when even in the mess that is Hopes the Lions stay morally and thematically consistent but Claude is apparently able to become an incoherent indescribable quagmire after part 1? We don’t know any specifics about his governance and even his “dream” is very much based on his wants even when he supposedly develops more compassion for the peasants Dimitri has always been concerned about from the start, and his fans are so closely related to Edelstans that I can’t see why people like him yet throw mud at my fave lizards.

Well, setting aside Byleth here (who should make sense in the story since the story was basically created for them), I wouldn't necessarily call this a case of bias with your complaints.

Besides wanting to end racism, what does Claude and, by extension, the Alliance really bring to the table that is different from the other two. Sneaky plans? Because I can't think of much.

I've seen the Alliance described as "recruits for BL or BE" and that's honestly pretty accurate. They have almost no allegiance to their nation (Hopes has an entire scene in SB where the few students Claude could gather up all had a "we will stand with you Claude! ... Unless something happens, then we will join the other side" spiel). Not even Claude really does. He is more loyal in Hopes, wishing to give his nation that big edge and screw the other nations over, but in Houses he's quick to dip or to hand over the entire Alliance. Claude's loyalties really are with Almyra... which is almost no development or screen time at all. Heck, Hilda is not even Claude's retainer, NADER is.

What about their culture? Well, officially, it's described has being both the Kingdom and the Empire's cultures sort of mixed into one. The Alliance inherited a lot of leftovers from the Kingdom from the days when they were under their rule, but adapted Empire fashion. Which makes sense, but then they have such little unique identity that it makes it hard to distinguish them from the other nations. What seems to be uniquely their own culture is to not care about their own culture.

And in terms of themes.... well, I can't think of anything they bring to the table that the Empire of Kingdom doesn't already. Change the world? Edelgard already has that covered. Racism? Dimitri actually has the better story about that and talks about it way more, surprisingly. Being an outsider? That's probably the "thing", but like... no one treats him as an outsider, and neither GW or VW are ever about feeling like you don't belong. Heck, people don't even know he's half Alymran. Come on!

Claude is honestly the most privileged of the three lords. Edelgard's family was killed, her father made inept, and her mother is a murderer who happily planned to have her own step-son killed. And she was put through some serious experimentation. Finally, she had to fight her way to the throne, else she would have been a puppet ruler like her father. Dimitri... Well, Dimitri is just a tragedy epic. But Claude? Two parents, two hereditary "thrones" and one he got with little resistance. I know his life was still hard but man, you wouldn't know it with how little he talks about his troubles and woes.

And you know, I like Claude. I do. Except his GW self, that one can fuck off. But Claude as a concept is great. It's just that... they didn't know what to do with him.