#i did play verdant wind and azure moon before this route so i will be doing crimson flower next so dont worry | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fantasyinvader · 6 months

Text

I keep thinking about how people want the Agarthans to be victims. Not so much that people are saying they did nothing wrong, but a lesser evil compared to Rhea and the Nabateans. I'd ask myself why people would want such a thing, as even in the route where you side with them they're made out to be evil that will be exterminated, but I wouldn't have to think about why that as. The answer is simple, they validate Edelgard's killing of Rhea.

And, really, it fits with stuff I've seen since the game came out. The people claiming that despite Silver Snow and Verdant Wind being routes where big reveals to the lore are given to the player they, alongside Azure Moon, lie to the player and that Edelgard is the only one to tell them “the truth.” Or that said lore pops out of canon once the player decides to side with Edelgard. They want to ignore that the same route not only paints Edelgard as a liar often enough that a chapter titled “Lady of Deceit” begins and ends with her lying to her army, but also reveals that Edelgard herself knows that her source was an Agarthan puppet yet she is still clinging to that narrative. They'll claim it's all a matter of what the player believes to be true and tell people to disregard the game's creators saying that they built Fodlan to support the story of Silver Snow, and that while Flower is about believing something else, how that leads to not only mowing down everyone who stands in your way because of those beliefs but also ends up with tyranny and oppression under the path of supremacy.

Or we'll get people who ignore that Claude's route talks about how we need to let go of misconceptions we may have about others by getting to know them, and how Claude's misconceptions about the Church may have been caused by the Agarthans feeding him info to turn him against Rhea. No, instead Claude is a manipulative schemer who should have killed Rhea as his final boss after learning about her past and how his ancestors profited off the slaughter of her people, and that Golden Wildfire is who Claude really is and his good route.

Because people want to believe that Houses is this morally grey game, where everyone is a hero from their POV. But let's look at that. As mentioned, Claude's POV blaming the Church is ultimately framed as him having misconceptions, and once he got to know them he realized that Rhea didn't have to be his enemy in achieving his goals. Not only that, he realizes the Agarthans tried to manipulate him like he says they did to Edelgard, and ends up taking them out before finishing off Nemesis. Dimitri's POV is based on his survivor guilt and belief that he needs to live for the sake of avenging those who died. He grows out of this thanks to Byleth teaching him he needs to live for the sake of the living and for himself, all while taking the Agarthans out by complete accident while Edelgard's ideals are presented as demonic while Dimitri's beliefs make him a savior. Meanwhile, Edelgard's POV is based on what her father told her despite her knowing he was an Agarthan puppet. She can't be swayed her path as she tries to lie and manipulate those around her, and the world supports the route where Byleth leads the Black Eagles away from her influence (making it so that the Black Eagles are the only class who can get their story-related character development joining any other class). It's either that, or you ignore the world building to walk a path that is based around hadou, which has negative connotations especially when contrasted with oudou, which is what Dimitri's route is supposed to lead to.

You can ignore this growth if you play Hopes, but Hopes is supposed to show how much of an influence Byleth has on their class and is not supposed to replace that experience. Shez can't give Dimitri or Claude the character growth they would have gotten to see the problems with their POV, nor can they stop the Eagles from supporting Edelgard. Shez just seems to go with whatever the lord says, adapting to the route being played, and as such enables each lord's behavior. Not to mention that Shez is hinted to be from Agartha himself, and even then the Agarthan POV doesn't paint them in a positive light.

So, really, what are people saying when they want the Agarthans to be the sympathetic villains rather than the game wanting us to feel sorry for the Nabateans? That they feel the game not doing so is a flaw despite the Agarthans being so racist that they view everyone else as non-human animals and therefore it's okay to experiment on them? That we should support their genocide of the Nabateans because Edelgard said things used to be better despite the reveal that they're the ones who gave mankind Crests while making themselves out to be gods? We should still think that the Church are the bad guys when the Agarthans are the ones behind the experiments, Duscur, the death of Claude's uncle, and so much more? Or that Nemesis was a good king who was demonized by history rather than the power-hungry asshole he's depicted as, the only real misconceptiont here was that he ever was a hero in the first place rather than the tyrannical bandit he actually was.

In the end, it's just people not wanting to let go of their own misconceptions about Fodlan. They don't want to see Fodlan for how it really is. If anything, Houses can serve as a deconstruction of the idea of Death of the Author. It's a game with some very direct messages, but the routes where the player diverges away from those messages (Flower and the entirety of Three Hopes) it leads to bad endings because, at the end of the day, Fodlan was built around those messages. It was built about the need to see people for who they really are rather than who we think they are, as Edelgard being revealed not to be the heroine but rather the villain is the twist of the game who needs to be removed from power. Also that people supporting each other is a far better outcome than everyone being left to fend for themselves, especially when the people at the top use their power to benefit others. But it's up to people to do that themselves, to figure things out for themselves rather than fall into the trap.

Otherwise, we're left with people defending the likes of the Agarthans.

21 notes · View notes

synergysilhouette · 6 months

Text

Remaking "Fire Emblem: 3 Houses"

(Spoilers ahead, obviously)

The time has come for another rewrite! I'm an amateur (re)writer, and I KNOW people are gonna be picky about this rewrite since many consider this entry the Holy Grail of the "Fire Emblem" series, but I hope you'll still be open to my changes, anyway! This is purely subjective and not something that reflects the fandom's opinion or me saying how to make the game objectively "better" (even though the term itself is subjective). I don't remember every single aspect of the game, so if I mention something that I wanted from the game that they actually DID do, be sure to mention it!

General

DON'T RUSH US!--From the get-go, you're on a fixed schedule. Once you become a professor, you've got one day out of the week to explore the grounds, fight battles/do paralogues/xenologues, or another activity. Every Monday, you've gotta do instruction for your student, and the other days literally breeze by until you get to your next story arc. Letting us go at our own leisure would be awesome, particularly since it'd give us more time to get to know our characters via more missions and xenologues. Between school and war, it can get a bit monotonous.

2. Give us impactful dialogue options instead of the illusion of choices--I have the same issue with "Pokemon: Mystery Dungeon." Throughout the game, we're given dialogue options, but most of the time the choices are identical or offer no affect other than a character's approval/disapproval. It felt annoying to have the option to tell the Flame Emperor that you'd join them, only for them to say they could tell you were lying. It's annoying stuff like that that makes it feel like you don't really need dialogue options at all, just cutscenes with Byleth speaking for themselves.

3. Those Who Slither in the Dark being keeping us in the loop--It's wild to me that the people who did the most damage are the most underused in the game. Someone said that making their deeds more pronounced/known would ruin the point, but I disagree. In Crimson Flower, their role in the Tragedy of Duscur is revealed, but Edelgard defeats them offscreen before restoring peace. Dimitri never learns the full truth of this in Azure Moon, and if I recall, the organization does get more attention in Silver Snow (for like 2-3 chapters) and Verdant Wind, but I can't recall for certain. Either way, I feel like each route should feel complete, given that you're playing completely different stories, rather than it feeling like you're missing some information depending on the route you play. Not to mention, Kronya deserves better, even if I'm retconning her actions (more on that in a second)...

4. Don't make us forget about marriage--having to find a ring sucks. After Jeralt dies, you have a certain amount of time in order to find his marriage ring (which I completely forgot about in my first playthrough) that you NEED if you want to reach S-supports with anyone. I'd prefer if Jeralt just gave it to Byleth rather than us having to go to his office and find it.

5. Change the confusing Byleth bloodline--I'm fine with Sitri being either Rhea's daughter or (if you wanna romance Rhea and Sothis without ethical concerns) simply working at the church where she met Jeralt. The family tree above makes things a lot more confusing than what it needs to be.

6. Marriage to (mostly) whoever, whenever--In the game, you have to wait until after the war is over to be married, and out of them, you only have 5 romantic same-sex options for female Byleth--2 of which are route-exclusive--and 3 options for male Byleth--2 of which are either DLC or route-exclusive. I'd rather make it a free-for-all, save for Gilbert and Alois, who are married, and should've never prevented you from a romantic relationship with another character.

7. Keep Jeralt alive--I'm just...I'm just TIRED of the "dead parent/evil parent" storyline that "Awakening," "Fates," and "Engage" have done, along with "3 Houses." I'd enjoy having Jeralt kept alive, in this version. Nevermind, this is probably the longest a protagonist has gotten to keep their parent in one of the recent FE games. Having him stand by Byleth similar to "3 Hopes" would be awesome.

8. Let us have Child units--As someone who got into the series via "Fates" and "Awakening," it disappointed me greatly that child units were removed. While I prefer "Fates" using the Deeprealms, I think an "Awakening" approach fits best here. Perhaps Sothis' time manipulation is more powerful than she knows, having sent the child units from the future to avoid their dark fates. Since it's story-related, perhaps it's Byleth's child who comes from the future first, referencing Chrom's daughter Lucina coming to save him and Emmeryn in "Awakening," only the child comes to save Byleth and Jeralt. Personally I made a lsit of fanmade child units almost a year ago.

9. Recruit Jeritzia outside of Crimson Flower--"3 Hopes" allowed us to do so as long as we had Mercedes in one of our routes, and I'm confused on why that couldn't be done here. Recruiting Mercedes would be the wakeup call Jeritzia needs to join our side, rather than being the opposition.

10. Keep Byleth's hair color--This is a nitpick, but I'd like being able to change Byleth's hair color back to the way it was before becoming one with Sothis. I'm fine with keeping the hair color, though.

11. A 3 Houses United Route--I mentioned in another post about a route where Jeralt survived, TWSITD as the main antagonists. What'd make this route unique (since I'd want the other two changes to be changed in all routes) is that the almost-death of Jeralt would inspire Byleth to leave the church and become a mercenary again, only getting involved years later once they see how the war has affected their students, and they can still recruit others based on their stats, and since they're not tied to a particular "side" in this concflict, they could recruit the house leaders and their aides rather than having to kill them.

12. Fix Dimitri's turnaround (Azure Moon)--It's probably just me, but it felt like Dimitri's vengence and sudden change of heart following Rodrigue's death felt...too quick? I know this is a hot take, but I'd have thought Rodrigue's death would've fueled Dimitri's anger. Plus I didn't feel like Dimitri's redemption (so to speak) was earned. It was just kinda "sorry for being a jerk, guys" even though the whole team seemed to back him. I'd have enjoyed seeing more moments of his sanity and morality kick in amidst the chaos rather than being one-track-minded. I feel like a lot of poorly done villain arcs do this (even if he isn't the villain of this route, per se). Since in my rewrite we learn about TWSITD, it's quite possible that Dimitri's anger is focused elsewhere in any case. Maybe Rodrigue didn't even have to die...

13. Utilize 3 Hopes designs--This may not be a popular opinion, but I think some of the characters looked better halfway in 3 Hopes than in 3 Houses. It would be nice to have the option to switch their costumes to their 3 Hopes looks instead (even though I know they're older in the 3 Houses timeskip than they are in 3 Hopes).

14. NO IGNORANT BYLETH--Instead of other installments that use the amnesia subplots, Byleth is simply kept in the dark about their parents' pasts, the world, and the church (which is kinda the same thing). I'd alleviate this entirely so we can have a mature and well-learned protagonist rather than a teacher who's just learning how the world works and about the tension in the land.

Hope you're not too upset with my version of the game! Lemme know what you think and if you have any questions. The next FE rewrite I do (whenever I get around to it) will be "Engage," which is the last FE game I've played.

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem 3 houses #3 houses #three houses #claude #claude von riegan #dimitri #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #edelgard #edelgard von hresvelg #blue lions #golden deer #black eagles

16 notes · View notes

moltz23 · 2 months

Text

How a Concealed Route-split Cut the Black Eagle House in Two [Fire Emblem: Three Houses Analysis/Essay]

(This wasn't meant to be a repost but tumblr doesn't allow me to edit titles so...)

A long while ago, I did an analysis of each of Three Houses’ routes and all the minutia involved in them that plays a part in each one’s difficulty (level scaling, unit availability, available equipment, enemy composition, etc.). One thing that struck me about it that I failed to mention back then, is that, of the four paths available, two - Silver Snow and Crimson Flower - feel lacking in terms of content and resources compared to the remaining half, a notion which has been brought up by the Fire Emblem fandom multiple times in the past by now.

The thing is though, data shows there’s room to argue this was done on purpose.

For those who are out of the loop on what I’m yapping about; Fire Emblem: Three Houses features four main routes/storylines: Crimson Flower, Azure Moon, Verdant Wind, and Silver Snow (which even serve as the basis for the game’s japanese subtitle: Wind Flower Snow Moon). In spite of this though, the game presents three paths at the start of the game: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer. The game handles this by having Azure Moon and Verdant Wind be the second half of the Blue Lions and Golden Deer routes respectively, and by having Black Eagles split into two different branches right before the second half of the plot starts: the Silver Snow branch (where the player sides against Edelgard); and the Crimson Flower branch (where the player sides with Edelgard). Black Eagles, according to developer interviews, was chosen to get this route split during early stages of development, and was not supposed to be directly advertised:

–On top of that, [Black Eagles] also had a hidden story branch.

Yokota: We kept it hidden, but the idea to have a story branch was there since the creation of the Black Eagle route.

–Did you have plans to implement a story branch for the other houses?

Yokota: No. We only decided it for the Black Eagle house and to keep it a secret. Edelgard is a character with a unique position, but we thought it would be more interesting to have two stories here, then we implemented the triggers for it.

Has anyone ever wondered how important this decision was from a design standpoint? If it feels shoehorned in? Or, if it’s impossible to divorce Black Eagles from it?

Well, for those who just wanna skip to the end of this whole analysis, the answer I’ve reached is the last one: Black Eagles does not feel complete when only one of its branches are considered, unlike Blue Lions and Golden Deer, which from the start were designed as more straightforward and standalone packages.

Thus, this analysis seeks to dwell further on the unique effects Black Eagles’ route-split caused to its design, how it’s expressed in various of its areas, and why the whole idea ran into some problems down the road that made this whole idea become ignored and forgotten. Just for this post, I also worked on a brief comparison document that highlights vital areas in which Black Eagle content was split (click here to see that breakdown for those interested). But for those seeking a more thorough analysis, I invite you to accompany me ‘till the end.

Before moving on, I feel it’s important to stress that, while I’ll be focusing mainly on gameplay-related factors, a few story elements will be brought up as well. Given the genesis of Black Eagles’ branching paths lie firmly in the story, this was inevitable.

1. Parallel War Arcs.

One of the first things that become apparent when you compare both Black Eagle branches, is that each more or less does its own thing after Chapter 11.

For the sake of this comparison, I’ll be focusing on factors like:

Average Enemy Level between Chapters (+ their Suggested Level, which is directly related to the AEL).

Available resources, and the timing in which new ones are unlocked and/or lost.

When the game stops using Intermediate Classes for enemies (in a more conventional Fire Emblem context, this would be like saying “when the game stops throwing Unpromoted Enemies at you).

On one hand there’s Silver Snow, the path that has you be the underdog fighting the invading Empire. In it:

The Average Enemy Level almost always increases by 2 per Chapter, regardless of the chosen difficulty. The only exception of this is the transition between Chapter 16 and 17, as the average level difference of enemies between both maps is 4.

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated a third and last time in Ch. 14 (it’s previously updated first in Ch. 3 and Ch. 8 for those curious).

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 23.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies by Ch. 18 for main story maps.

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear main story missions is 4 in Ch. 16 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 2 for Chapter 18.

The difference in enemy levels between successive story missions is 1.

And finally, the route ends in Ch. 21 with a Suggested Level of 42.

On the other hand, the Crimson Flower campaign has you support the Empire and undo everything the Church holds dear. In it:

The Average Enemy Level almost always increases by 2 per Chapter, regardless of the chosen difficulty. The only shake-ups in terms of differences in average enemy level difference between story missions lie in the 2 Chapters which are done back to back:

Ch. 11 to Ch. 12: 4 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

Ch. 17 to Ch. 18: 2 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated one last time in Ch. 12.

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 25.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies by Ch. 14 for main story missions.

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear story missions is 4 in Ch. 15 (3 if you play carefully), and then 5 for both Ch. 16 & Ch. 17.

And finally, the game ends in Ch. 18 with a final Suggested Level of 37.

If we dig a little deeper into other facets of the routes, it also comes to light how little maps - and in turn, plot beats - are shared between both branches, being the story each branch follows the key culprit behind the lack of overlap. The most we get between CF and SS are 3 shared locations (2 Garreg Mach maps and the Bridge of Myrddin), but besides this, the similarities end there.

In this regard, I’ll say the developers did a good job in making BE’s route-split drastically change the player’s experience.

2. Available Resources.

Every resource involving Black Eagles & the Empire (characters, equipment, weapons, you name it) was distributed between both branches, splitting things in a way no Black Eagles path will ever be able to get everything.

For starters, Black Eagles locks you access to Cyril, Catherine and Seteth pre-Chapter 12. Afterwards, everything depends on whatever side the player picks:

Crimson Flower’s side lets the player keep Edelgard & Hubert, recruit Jeritza after the timeskip, and obtain all of their associated resources and boons. This is due to: 1. Edelgard and Hubert leaving the party after Chapter 11 for story-related reasons, and 2. Their associated content being locked to CF’s half of the story (Hubert’s even the only House Leader’s retainer with this distinction).

From the paid-DLC side of things, while Anna is playable in both Black Eagle routes, her paralogue and its rewards are locked to Crimson Flower’s post-timeskip.

Silver Snow’s side meanwhile, gets to keep Flayn, gives you access to Seteth, Catherine and Cyril, makes Ferdinand and Caspar’s associated resources available, and provides you access to Dorothea’s battalion, as well Rhea’s paralogue and its rewards. In Ferdinand and Caspar’s case, their paralogues rely on context absent in Crimson Flower; Dorothea’s dancer battalion is only obtainable during a story mission not available in CF; and Rhea’s paralogue hinges on her assisting Byleth after choosing to oppose Edelgard.

It’s worth noting that Ferdinand and Caspar’s paralogues, unlike Edelgard and Hubert’s, requires recruiting two out-of-house students to play them (Lysithea and Mercedes respectively).

One curious detail about the Silver Snow’s exclusive cast though, is that most of their resources are not locked behind the Church Route’s branch:

Seteth and Flayn’s paralogue is doable pre-timeskip with just Flayn (thus making Seteth briefly playable). Incidentally, Ferdinand and Linhardt happen to have matching crests for their Sacred Weapons as well, ensuring Black Eagles will always have units which can make the most use of them.

Catherine’s paralogue can be accessed in Part 1 with only Ashe recruited (meaning Catherine also gets Seteth’s treatment), and her Thunderbrand is available in both Black Eagles branches, even if in Crimson Flower it’s in a limited - yet perfectly timed - fashion.

While there are three Church battalions which can’t be purchased from the Battalion Guild in Crimson Flower (ie. Holy Knights of Seiros, Indech Sword Fighters and Macuil Evil Repelling Co.), it’s still possible to obtain at least one copy of them through doing Alois, Hanneman, and Manuela’s paralogues with all of them recruited.

One final detail worth mentioning surrounding the cast available in Black Eagles is that, by default, both branches happen to allow players to obtain a minimum of 16 units (or 15, if playing as Male Byleth) assuming they’ve not been actively trying to recruit other units:

“Number 16? Can I get the number sixteeeeen?”

It is worth noting though, that this coincidental number is possible thanks to Jeritza being added to the game in the 1.1.0. update. Because of this, there’s solid grounds to claim Crimson Flower was missing content at launch due to Jeritza’s conspicuous absence (which is potentially[?] corroborated by datamining the game, not unlike how Rhea’s Tea Time data remained unfinished in the cutting room floor up until the version 1.2.0. update).

3. Miscellaneous differences/similarities Involving Black Eagles

Beyond the game design angle, Black Eagles and its two split branches noticeably stands out in many ways compared to Blue Lions and Golden Deer:

A. Event - Coronation.

The story event named “Coronation” in Black Eagles is the pivotal scene from Chapter 11 which decides whether the player can access the Crimson Flower branch after Chapter 11’s story mission or not. Not only is it very easy to miss (ie. ignoring the monastery during that chapter is enough), it can also play differently according to how many support points Byleth has with Edelgard.

The peculiar thing about it is that this story event is only present on the Black Eagles route. For contrast’s sake, Blue Lions and Golden Deer instead get an event called “Deep Underground”, which is unmissable and always takes place before “The Holy Tomb“.

The story events’ internal IDs, taken from fedatamine.com

B. Part 2’s Chapter Introduction logo

Starting Part 2, all routes feature the logo of your chosen House’s faction in a blazing background when a new chapter is introduced.

The Silver Snow route (and by proxy, also Azure Moon and Verdant Wind’s) has the faction’s icon colored yellow, while Crimson Flower has it painted red. As a result, Black Eagles is the only path in which your faction’s chosen emblem can be seen in both colors.

C. Light/Darkness Juxtaposition in the War Arc’s Beginning/Ending Cutscenes.

It’s been pointed out that many of the introductory and closing cutscenes from Part 2 make heavy use of light and darkness for simbolism’s sake. In terms of execution, Silver Snow and Crimson Flower’s light/dark motifs are notable in the sense both could be argued to be parallels of one another:

In Silver Snow, the reunion cutscene between Edelgard’s Byleth (which is more of a Cutscene Boss than anything, but I digress) shows both characters bathed in moonlight as they fight. As for the ending, Garreg Mach is briefly depicted in darkness just before the sun’s light bathes the whole area after Rhea ends her berserk rampage.

In Crimson Flower, the reunion event between Byleth and Edelgard shows both embracing one another while light and dark are blended, casting shadows at the scene. The ending movie meanwhile, has Byleth and Edelgard finish off Rhea while the showdown happens entirely during night, illuminated only by the fire of the battlefield.

D. The first post-timeskip meeting with Edelgard.

On a related note, the first post-timeskip meeting with Edelgard starts very similar in both Black Eagle routes: Edelgard arrives at the Goddess Tower reminiscing of the past, and is caught off guard at Byleth’s sudden return. Then… stuff happens depending on whether you’re in Silver Snow or Crimson Flower.

Azure Moon and Verdant Wind by comparison have no build-up whatsoever. After Byleth wakes up, they go to the Goddess Tower and… The route’s respective movie plays out immediately.

E. Differences between shared Part 2 Paralogues.

Even though Bernadetta & Petra, and Linhard & Leonie’s paralogues are the only BE-adjacent side missions available in both story branches, both have some noticeable differences depending on whether they're being played on Crimson Flower or not:

Bernadetta & Petra’s paralogue outside Crimson Flower features Hubert as the main boss as well various enemy Assassins and Dark Bishops in its enemy line-up. In contrast, Crimson Flower’s take of it has Catherine as the main boss and contains enemy Holy Knights and Warlocks instead.

Linhard & Leonie paralogue works like any normal paralogue outside Crimson Flower. Within CF itself however, the player is given 2 handicaps:

1. Edelgard and Hubert can’t be deployed on the map.

2. If Seteth and Flayn die during Chapter 15’s story mission, the player is given only one month to do it.

F. The Final Boss.

Black Eagles’ Final Boss is always Rhea, regardless of the direction each story branch goes and who was and was not fought to get there.

Each version of Rhea’s fight also deviates with the set of skills used too, with Silver Snow’s version pulling a fake-out on the player before focusing on making the enemy explode with long range AoE attacks and Miracle hax, while Crimson Flower’s more strategic by silencing spellcasters after combat, targeting the enemy’s lower defensive stat, and consistently buffing nearby Armored Golems as the battle drags on.

G. Ending Themes

Silver Snow & co., plays the song “Edge of Dawn” during the game’s credits, while Crimson Flower uses a piano arrangement of its melody called “Color of Sunrise” instead. Similar to the second point, this means only Black Eagles can play two different songs for this instance.

…There’s probably a ton more differences I’m missing, but I really don’t wanna drag things further.

So now’s the perfect time to talk about-

4. How everything went wrong.

In hindsight, I don’t think it should be a controversial take that giving Black Eagles a route-split was a shortsighted decision.

I mean, if you see it in a vacuum, Black Eagles’ succeeds in making each branch different. And yet, that is where the problem stems from.

The Black Eagles Route does not exist in isolation.

As a whole, Black Eagles has - arguably - content on par with Blue Lions and Golden Deer (heck, perhaps even more). If one sees all four routes separately though, Silver Snow and Crimson Flower suddenly end up in a fight they cannot win on their own. All thanks to the erroneous misconception that all four routes were meant to be equals.

In spite of the evidence at hand saying otherwise:

Q: Can you tell us which route was made first in order to expand and explore the world?

Kusakihara: The first and second parts of the Empire route.. which is called by the userbase as the “Church Route”, Silver Snow. The progression of Class Leader Edelgard to become the antagonist… that is what we initially decided upon. It was from there, that every route’s story and the progression of other Lords as characters were expanded by the Koei Tecmo Scenario Team. As the Class Leader would leave, the Black Eagles were initially decided to be the most difficult route as imagined (gameplay difficulty).

Yokota: Ahh, this is about losing access to the most powerful unit that you would be raising, right? This is pretty bad, yeah.

Kusakihara: In my personal opinion, I think that some cruelty from the parts of developers is necessary. This is because if we weren’t cruel/callous in any way, then, just like pre-established harmony where everything only interacts with itself, it would be easy for readers/players to predict everything that will happen. A scenario that would completely be predicted by the reader/player is not something that feels attractive. And that’s why we went all out that way, but the wish to walk with Edelgard was incredibly strong even in the development team. Walking with Edelgard in “Crimson Flower”, or rather known as the, “Supreme Ruler Route” is something we honestly meant to be much more difficult to enter. [...]

There’s something ironic in how Silver Snow, for being the very first route and having a clear advantage over Crimson Flower in quantity, was the Black Eagle branch which got the short end of the stick. The full extent of it can be grasped in my appropriately named document “No House Stands Equal - 3H's Difficulty from a Design Perspective“, but to give everyone a quick rundown:

Azure Moon and (mainly) Verdant Wind cannibalized Silver Snow’s story missions and plot beats while building over it’s foundation, mainly through: exclusive characters which mostly never ditch your side (and even then, the one that does can return later), and a new shared chapter (Blood of the Eagle and Lion, which canonically happens in Silver Snow but goes unseen due to the Church’s underdog status in the plot); This by itself stripped much of Silver Snow’s novelty beyond the theme of betrayal and loss having an impact in the gameplay.

Blue Lions and Golden Deer also need to recruit Caspar and Ferdinand respectively to access paralogues associated with their cast. In practice, this means playing through Silver Snow isn’t required to see Caspar and Ferdie’s share of Black Eagles’ content. Similarly, Rhea’s paralogue, as well Dorothea’s battalion, is also accessible outside Silver Snow.

Finally, Edelgard’s route stealing all the stuff Silver Snow can’t get for story reasons leaves the latter, in terms of exclusive content, only with: Edelgard and Hubert being temporarily in the party during most of Part 1; Its last Chapter, Following a Dream (+ everything surrounding it, like the White Beasts and Funeral of Flowers); and Rhea’s S-Support.

Meanwhile, Crimson Flower doesn’t escape unscathed from the allegations that it is incomplete either, given its stunt of avoiding Silver Snow’s story beats means it ends up 3 to 4 Chapters short of the other paths, misses a few paralogues (including half of the Black Eagles’ resources) and can’t recruit the pro-Church cast due to story reasons. Besides those shortcomings, it’s whole shtick did give it some significant positives:

First, Crimson Flower takes advantage of its different plot in order to keep Edelgard & Hubert for the 2nd half of the game, recruit Jeritza, and also gain access to their resources.

Speaking of which, it also ends up being the only Black Eagles branch which gets to keep access to Anna’s paralogue and its bonuses, seemingly because… the devs wanted Jeritza to be along for the ride in it???

And second, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind sharing much of Part 2’s content with Silver Snow makes stand out more how Edelgard’s route has its own set of exclusive Chapters between Ch. 12 to Ch. 18 and all they entrail, like: Ch. 12’s golems (normally unseen outside the Cindered Shadows DLC story); multiple exclusive battle conversations; ally NPCs from other routes being mandatory bosses; a few story events changing based on whether the player completed the map’s objective in certain ways or not; various unique monster weapons used in Chapter 17 & 18; and so on and so forth.

When all’s said and done, while the whole route-split of Black Eagles is a fun idea on paper, in practice, it ended up leaving one of it’s branches more or less neglected altogether for reasons beyond its control, while the other one got to stand out for all the right and wrong reasons, and for being given double duty of being a parallel to also another route of the game:

5. Post-Mortem & Closing Thoughts

I’ve been very much fascinated by this game’s Black Eagles route ever since I first got the game back in 2019. As I played the routes under an order of my own design (Crimson Flower > Verdant Wind > Azure Moon > Silver Snow), I heard many comments from other players that Silver Snow “was the Black Eagles branch which was always meant to be in the game”, causing me a ton of intrigue. So when I finally got to try that path myself, after finishing it, my feelings about it were something akin to… confusion and bafflement.

“What happened here? Why is Black Eagles as a whole like this?” - were my driving questions at the time.

Thus I began to dig in further into the game. I joined The Cutting Room Floor and examined the game’s datamine, then discovered fedatamine.com and used it to explore even more stuff, and then I focused on the developer interviews that were coming out at the time about the game. All for the aim of finding the answer to these questions I asked for myself, whatever those ended up being.

And honestly? Reaching conclusions such as “Edelgard was heavily advertised pre-release just to trick players into doing the Silver Snow route”, “Crimson Flower doesn’t feel like it was ever meant to get more than 18 Chapters”, and now, that “both BE branches feel incomplete because the faction’s content was split in half” were not the stuff I ever expected I would find at the end of my road.

Writing this whole document also drove me to the realization that, much of how Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes’s content - Three Houses’ Warriors spinoff - seems to have been distributed, appears to be based on common criticism and feedback obtained from Three Houses and how Black Eagles was handled in it:

That game has only 3 routes, having no proper counterpart for 3H’s “Church route” in favor of keeping an Empire (Scarlet Blaze), Kingdom (Azure Gleam), and Alliance (Golden Wildfire) routes with relatively equal content and story chapters.

Ferdinand and Caspar in that game became exclusive to Scarlet Blaze (thus making their old and newer resources exclusive too), while Dorothea’s battalion was also locked behind SB in spite of herself being recruitable in Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire.

Finally, Scarlet Blaze itself took cues from both Crimson Flower and Silver Snow through:

Exiling the pro-church cast into Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire (with Shamir being recruitable the only common ground), similar to Crimson Flower.

Having a key decision in the story change how a late-game story mission plays out, turning it into a battle between the Empire, Alliance and Kingdom armies during the post-timeskip (a plot beat which in 3H was not available in Black Eagles).

Incidentally, this change makes SB the only route in which it’s possible for Claude to die, much like in CF.

Incorporate fighting TWSITD into the main story, which in Black Eagles itself was largely present only in Silver Snow (even if it amounts to just one Chapter there).

And finally, it has a remixed version of Silver Snow’s final map theme - Funeral of Flowers - play during Scarlet Blaze’s final battle.

As for my closing thoughts, I think Three Houses currently sits at a fascinating middle point in the Fire Emblem timeline.

Before it, the previous non-remake entry was Fire Emblem Fates: a 3-route 3DS game that got so big in content, that each of its paths were chosen to be sold separately, and both its story’s concept and implementation was outsourced to various people. As for the game which came after, Fire Emblem Engage, it notoriously scaled down its ambition to an 1-route experience, and per development interviews, went on its way to avoid 3H’s conventions to the point the story was made in service of the gameplay, and not the other way around. Then, it’s kinda fitting that Fire Emblem: Three Houses ended up becoming the awkward middleground of the two: while even more ambitious in terms of scope, it also notoriously tried to both exploit Silver Snow’s material while also being heavily constrained by it, thus forcing it to base the 4 narratives stemming from it to revolve heavily under the unifying theme of perspective.

Perspective is such a fickle thing. Based on the information at hand, it can greatly change how we understand certain ideas and situations. And while I would love to say a ton about how 3H milks it for all that is worth, at this point, that is a tale for another day…

So what do you guys think? What's your take on Black Eagles (and only Black Eagles) getting a routesplit? Should the idea be revisited in the future? Or 3H and 3 Hopes showed it's doomed to fail?

#fe3h #fire emblem 3 houses #fire emblem #crimson flower #silver snow #black eagles #black eagle house #analysis

6 notes · View notes

loregoddess · 2 months

Note

For three houses, 5 and 30!

Hmm....I'm gonna do all three methinks.

5. Which route did you play through last? I saved Silver Snow for last, which worked out since the final map was the most difficult map for me to complete, even with my superstar New Game+ team of MVPs from previous runs. But it was also my favorite final boss theme from the ost, so...

8. What storyline threads should have had more development / been further explored? Hm, well every route has its strengths and weaknesses in the writing department. I think either Silver Snow or Crimson Flower could have used the most development.

SS feels like a rough draft, which meant that Verdant Wind, in following all the major story beats of SS but just like, better, felt like the finished draft, so if I had been in charge of writing I would have gone back and overhauled SS entirely, and made it completely unique (they could have made VW unique, but I feel it's strong as is, so SS needs to change).

I feel like the writers could have really leaned into the tragedy of Edelgard and Byleth falling out of trust, instead of the short and weird little scene we get at the start of the second arc after the timeskip, although this would require a lot more writing going into Edelgard for the first arc to make the player really care about her and feel the sting of betrayal more (for me, she came off as very cold in the first arc, which fits the general gist of her characterization, but when I'm losing approval points with her left and right I felt like, "girl what do you want from me" slight frustration rather than like, wondering about her mysterious secret bc even going in blind with my first run being Azure Moon, I figured out her role as Flame Emperor super quickly, so she wasn't mysterious so much as. Cold, and deeply untrusting--which is interesting characterization, but doesn't set up a betrayal plot twist very well).

Aside from really pushing for a more tragic overtone though, how I imagine potential rewrites varies bc there's a lot of room to do all sorts of things that I think could be interesting. What I personally think would be interesting and what like, a larger development team would think was feasible or interesting might be different. I would want to put more focus on Rhea and the history of Fodlan, maybe bring Sothis back into the picture and really dive into the world she knew before she had to heal it. I'd also want an entire arc talking about the demonic beasts and their history and the lore behind them, I am so curious about the monsters in 3H.

Alternatively if the writing didn't focus on the Nabatean characters, I think the writing should have really leaned in more to focus on the BE cast, since I feel like this is the most interesting potential arc for most of their character arcs, but they don't get to shine as much in SS due to having to share the narrative with the CoS characters.

As for Crimson Flower, I felt like the writers chickened out by trying to backpedal and make Edelgard morally grey instead of really leaning into her motives and ideologies that make her an interesting antagonist in all the other routes. Honestly aside from seeing all non-central characters undergo negative growth character arcs (watching the BL kids suffer in CF was SO fascinating for a lot of their characterizations), overall CF was the most boring route to me, ending with me wishing I could have defected to Rhea's side bc her spiral into madness seemed a hell of a lot more interesting than whatever Edelgard was doing.

I think the writers should have leaned in to making CF the "bad end" route, with lots of emphasis on all the bad things Edelgard was doing. I was prepared to play as a villain. Other games have made villain routes a thing, the fandom still would have been a toxic wasteland I'm sure, but at least the route would have been interesting. FE in general has a really hard time letting female villains be villains though, so I wasn't entirely surprised. Would love to see a FE female villain who's ruthless and unapologetically evil with no tragic backstory or mind control or justification, like how we see with Scarlet in FF7, but I know what FE is about so my hopes aren't high.

Also I feel like the Agarthans should have either been fully developed as villains, or cut entirely so Edelgard could have shone more brightly in her antagonist role. Especially since, as we see in Hopes, the writers really wanted to lean in more to making Edelgard morally grey, the Agarthans would have had to have so, so, so much more development to be the proper, potentially terrifying and horrific, villains they could have been.

30. What characters should have more support options and who should have been their support options? For Houses, I was actually pretty satisfied with the supports. Every character (sans Byleth) has about the same number of characters they can support with, give or take a few, so supports felt fairly balanced overall. I might have changed some of the supports to focus on different topics bc I feel there are some missed opportunities or vagueness that could have been written more precisely, but overall I'm happy w/ Houses.

Although if Rhea could've played a larger role, I think she should have had supports with various characters. Supports are where a lot of the characterization is stored, and we miss out on so much potential characterization for her as a result. I specifically think she would have gotten along famously with Mercedes and Annette, and I would pay money to see supports between her and Cyril.

Hopes on the other hand is another story, and this is mostly due to uh, many characters not being added into the playable roster (MY SON CYRIL I MISS YOU). If I had the full cast of characters I hoped would be playable (no pun intended), I would have wanted to see supports between Hanneman and Sylvain, since they took Sylvain's character in an interesting direction in Hopes, and I think the dynamic between the two would have also been fascinating. (Also imagine how chaotic supports between Hanneman and Monica could have been; guy who's been studying all his life, and girl with a genius memory).

Nadir and Judith should have been playable, and they should have gotten supports with each other too.

I also think Ignatz and Hubert should have had supports in the Scarlet Blaze route. Hubert compliments Ignatz's strategy the battle where you can recruit Ignatz, and that is just so rare for Hubert, that I was like huh, wonder what supports between these two would even look like. They also both want to ride pegasi so...yeah I've been thinking about the potential dynamics between those two ever since. They haunt me.

I also really, really wished Miklan lived through the events of Azure Gleam, bc his writing was so much more interesting in Hopes than in Houses, and I want to pull out a lawn chair and get a nice cup of tea so I can watch the Gautier skeleton closet get cleaned out in his hypothetical supports.

#if you take anything away from this post let it be the ''Hubert and Ignatz should be weird friends...if not weird lovers...''#bc it is the most unhinged pairing my brain has ever come up with and if I have to be haunted by it I will make it everyone else's problem #youcantencryptyourface #ask game #I still don't have an ask tag

3 notes · View notes

fayesdiary · 1 year

Text

Faye's Fòdlan Journey: Season 1 - Opening Thoughts

Introduction

Masterpost Next->

As a reminder, we're starting with Azure Moon first, followed by Verdant Wind, Crimson Flower and lastly Silver Snow.

This was a route order I decided when I asked around for advice on which order to play them (mainly if there was an intended route order like in Fates) and they basically told me "play Azure Moon first, don't play Verdant Wind and Silver Snow next to each other since they're incredibly similar" and something else that made me decide to place Crimson Flower in the third slot. We'll see how well it turns out.

Before starting, I want to make a small note on my past experiences with Fòdlan.

I was there when Three Houses was first announced and I watched all the trailers as well as some Youtubers breaking them down.

But once it got released, I decided to go on hiding to avoid spoilers, which among other things meant unsubscribing to the very bad, not good r/fireemblem subreddit. One thing led to another, I eventually realized Reddit did me more harm than good because at that point I logged in there deliberately to get angry, so I decided to delete it.

Which means, in a way, I have to thank Three Houses to get me out of there, years before Reddit crashed and burned on top of that.

The following years were spent dodging most (but not all, sadly) spoilers, witnessing third-hand reports of flame wars with morbid curiosity (basically it's as if there was a huge wildfire outside and I was in my garden ignoring it while grilling) and being increasingly annoyed that almost every new content felt like it was about Fòdlan. At least before Engage was announced.

So I my feelings coming onto this game are a mix of awe, curiosity, fear and annoyance. I wonder if that makes sense.

Speaking of annoyances, I have to talk about a small pet peeve I have with the cover art.

While I definitely wouldn't call it bad, something about it felt off to me from the moment they revealed it.

It's clear what they were going for, with the house leaders dividing the art into three spaces, but the end results ends up looking a bit goofy, especially with the infamous upside-down Claude (which became a meme from the very beginning) and the Byleths just slapped onto the background of a building even if it doesn't make much sense.

But this is mainly a subjective thing. What isn't subjective, though, is the art error where Claude's bow is misaligned. If you look closely at the center, you'll notice the end of the bow isn't actually ligned up with the rest of it, and now you won't be able to unsee it, bothering you as much as it bothers me. You're welcome, by the way.

But we've delayed the main event for long enough. Let's start the game, shall we?

The first thing you see when starting the game is an empty throne on the left, followed by a quiet rendition on the organ of the Fire Emblem theme. Already it's starting to become clear the tone this game is going for.

Waiting around a bit, the opening of the game starts playing.

First of all- wow, that theme. Edge of Dawn is one of the best vocal tracks of Fire Emblem by far. I remember listening to it on loop when it first got released!

Also I gotta say, I missed the anime-style cutscenes.

While I like the 3D ones these give the game plenty of charm, even if I wish they were a bit more fluid. Honestly, they make a solid argument for a Fire Emblem anime to be released. no the cancelled OVA doesn't count shut up

If this is anything like Echoes, this opening is made of spliced-up future cutscenes. And given a good portion of it shows up again in the intro cutscene, I'd say I'm right.

Returning to the game, we start creating our file and- ooh, boy.

Ignoring the difficulty options for a second, which are the same as every modern Fire Emblem save for Echoes (only difference being that "Lunatic" is now named "Maddening"), it's time for my first big criticism of this game.

Which is ironic, given that it's about all of the text being too. Freaking. ˢᵐᵃˡˡ.

Maybe it's just an impression I have, but back when Three Houses first released, it felt like every AAA company was in a competition to put the tiniest text possible due to the larger screens, with the result that most of the time you have trouble reading it unless you get closer.

This is a huge blunder on accessibility for people with visibility problems, and while it luckily got better especially now that accessibility is a larger focus for most mainstream developers (except, of course, Nintendo), here it still shows its tiny, hugly head.

And remember, the Switch is also a portable console, so there are people who had to read this tiny font on a small screen, so I'd say this is pretty bad. I doubt I'll play Three Houses on portable because of this.

In fact, I feel this is such a problem I will be including alt text on all the screens with dialogue.

Going back to the difficulty options, I will be playing on Normal Classic.

Normal because I'm an impatient scrub, Classic because I like having some form of consequences. Besides, I have Divine Pulse covering my ass.

Hey, I said I was a long-time Fire Emblem player, I never said I was good at it.

With that said, the screen fades to black, and the first proper cutscene begins.

We open on a large, rainy battlefield, in what I assume is the distant past.

Two armies clash against each other, until a human(?) named Nemesis descends from the skies in a burst of flame. Immediately he turns his attention towards his foe, the goddess Seiros.

The two soon begin a duel to the death. Seiros uses a sword and shield which couple with her general design makes me think she might be slightly inspired from Greek culture? Big if true, because from what I know Fire Emblem never took inspiration from Greece.

Nemesis, meanwhile, fights with... the Sword of the Creator?

Huh. Will need to keep a closer eye on that one.

Eventually, Seiros prevails, and in a fit of rage, stabs Nemesis to death over and over, yelling that he took everything she loved.

After felling her *heh* Nemesis, Seiros grabs the Sword of the Creator, lovingly caressing it calling her Mother.

We see the Divine Pulse activate, and all of a sudden we're brought at Best Goddess Sothis' Mind Space, where she notices her new visitor.

So. This intro.

Besides already setting the tone Fòdlan is going for (grand with a lot of death and tragedy and murder), it's interesting how if you're at least a bit savvy with how Fire Emblem stories go, you can already put two and two together with that's happening.

Granted, future games and loose spoilers are kind of helping me, but still. Let me explain.

First of all, Seiros is a goddess. If it wasn't clear from the fact there's a Church named literally after her. And given what most goddesses are in Fire Emblem are and her particular shade of green hair (the same Naga and Tiki and also Mila share), it's clear she's Fòdlan's equivalent of Divine Dragons.

Nemesis, meanwhile, is using a sword made of bones, which are what all of Fòdlan's legendary weapons are made of. And given they are all effective against dragons as Heroes and Engage show...

Well, it doesn't take a genius to realize where those bones come from.

Remember, Falchion is made from a dragon's bone too.

And given what Seiros says, it's likely Nemesis or someone else affiliated with him murdered all of Seiros' loved ones to make legendary weapons of unfathomable power out of them.

The Sword of the Creator seems to be made out of the bones of her mother, on top. No wonder she's pissed.

I am curious about the Divine Pulse transition. Is it just cosmetic to signify a fast-forward, or is there some time fuckery already going on? I guess there's only a way to find out.

Sothis greets us in her own, sassy way, prompting the Avatar creation screen.

And lo and behold, we went from Awakening and Fates' somewhat limited but still extensive customization options to... Just getting to choose the Avatar's gender.

*sigh* Listen. I went on a tangent about this multiple times, so I'll just keep it brief and say that given how restrictive Fire Emblem's dialogue options are, if you're not going to make the Avatar at least visually properly customizable then there's no reason to have an Avatar and all.

Okay. With that tangent aside, let's talk about Byleth's designs.

Male Byleth is my favorite. The outfit looks good and practical for a mercenary, I'm a big fan of the loose sleeves of his jacket (?) and his face looks neutral but serious.

Meanwhile, Female Byleth... well.

I'm sure I'm far from the only one who mentioned this, but between the random holes in her armor just to show more bare skin, her strangely ornate thights and her somewhat younger face with larger eyes... Yeah, it's clear what the designers' priorities were for her.

Also her expression makes her look like a doll. A doll having flashbacks.

I like her hair more, though. So that's that at least.

As a reminder, male Byleth will be used for the first two routes while female Byleth for the last two. But regardless, I will be talking about Byleth in a gender neutral way, safe for cases where I mention a specific gender. Because again, besides romance options, the Avatar's gender really Does Not Matter.

Here we have the first dialogue option, something this game loves to use. I guess it's why Byleth's a silent protagonist, although I doubt it will be worth it.

As a general rule of thumb I like to immerse myself in who I'm playing as, so I will be picking the dialogue options I think Byleth would choose, which will be the highlighted ones in the screenshots.

I know Byleth is nicknamed the Ashen Demon but I don't know how they feel about that moniker yet, so I choose to have them call themselves a mortal.

Sothis then asks Byleth for their name, which for every route will be... Well, Byleth. Not that it's ever said out loud anyway.

Lastly, she asks them about their birthday.

It's interesting to note how here, instead of using our real life Calendar, every month has its Fòdlan counterpart. While this is really neat, I hope they will keep the number along with it because I know I will forget about them otherwise.

And I share their day of birth as well! What a peculiar coincidence!

With a last phrase that feels like it's leaning on the fourth wall, Sothis bids Byleth farewell for now.

donotmakeaSkyrimjokedonotmakeaSkyrimjokeDONOTMAKEASKYRIMJOKE

Byleth's father and soon-to-be corpse, Jeralt, wakes Byleth from their strange dream.

Apparently, Byleth dreamt about Sothis multiple times, but this is apparently the first time she actually noticed them.

Guess she was asleep for the other nights, that must have been pretty awkward for them. I hope she doesn't snore at least.

The father-and-child duo prepars for another mercenary mission, when they're approached by three inconspicious teenagers who definitely haven't set the Internet on fire for years to come, asking for help.

The problem is of course, bandits. The universal evil of all of Fire Emblem. With a whole group of them on their tail and about to attack a village, the five prepare their counterattack.

Which we will see next time, since this post is getting incredibly long and more importantly, I've hit the image cap!

Introduction

Masterpost Next->

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fe16 #faye's fòdlan journal

7 notes · View notes

lady-byleth · 2 years

Note

I finally beat Silver Snow. And I only have two words: Never again.

Rhea didn’t deserve to go out that way. Dimitri didn’t deserve to go out that way. I know Claude’s alive, but he didn’t deserve to just vanish before Byleth could at least see him one more time.

I vaguely remember something about Silver Snow being intended as a first-time player’s route, and I can see what they meant. Edelgard’s betrayal hits harder if you knew her personally. Silver Snow probably left a lot of first-time players wondering if they could save the house leaders, and so that motivates a lot of them to play the other routes.

While I wouldn’t play this again, I did enjoy aspects of it. The Silver Snow reunion cutscene probably hits the hardest (“Even as our swords cross as they do now, there’s no denying that our chosen paths never will. Farewell, my teacher. When next we meet, one of us will breathe their last.”), and while I am disappointed in Byleth’s lack of agency on a route where they are meant to be the protagonist, their plan to invade Fort Merceus was clever.

Fittingly enough, both this and Crimson Flower had two distinct tones to how the war is going. Silver Snow makes you really feel like the Resistance Army are struggling to win the war and must make their moves carefully, while Crimson Flower makes you feel unstoppable.

Azure Moon, taking most of its plot beats from Silver Snow while also adding some of its own, also has you feeling like the Kingdom army is struggling, less on a tactical/strategic level but more on an emotional level, what with Dimitri’s instability up until you’ve beaten Grondor Field.

I wonder what sort of tone Verdant Wind will take? Whether things will feel more like a struggle to win, or relatively smooth as far as war goes?

I dunno about AM hitting similar story beats to SS - VW and SS are the most alike since they fill in the gaps in the story and make a whole together - but I do agree on "never again" and it feeling lackluster

SS served as a sort of blue print for the other routes, every bit of lore builds onto it. VW will give you some very nice revelations you didn't get in SS. Fun fact, you CAN save Rhea if you decide to S Support her.

To me AM was always the most emotionally heavy route, less about lore and more about personal struggles, especially Dimitri's.

VW is...not that. You're not the main emotional support of a lord there, you're basically Claude's right hand. I feel like it's...snappier than the others and it's definitely the lightest in tone. I think you'll like it

16 notes · View notes

kisant · 2 years

Note

So how did you end up liking Verdant Wind, VW Claude and VW Byleth?

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to advance much more in the story due to tons of real life work to do and very little free time -.- I am liking Verdant Wind, though. I'm still early in the war phase (just after Reunion At Dawn/Bridge of Myrddyn) What I'm enjoying the most of the route is all the politicking that Claude, Byleth and the golden deer are getting into, it gives it a unique feel when comparing it to the revolution of Crimson Flower and the Dimitri breakdown show of Azure Moon.

Verdant Wind's strength is that it feels like the characters hold practical motivations over idealistic ones. Edelgard vs Dimitri or Edelgard vs Church is very much a clash of ideals, of what kind of world they want Fodlan to be. Edelgard wants to do away with the Church and the Crest System in order to create a society that is much more equal and fair than the one that had been upheld by the Church of Seiros and the Crested Nobles. Dimitri wants a restoration of the idealized world of his childhood, unable to see that while things may have been good for him, the prince at the top of society, they may have been less good for those who were lower in the social hierarchy.

In VW, while Claude does have his own ideals about ending Fodlan's isolationist policies and the xenophobic distrust of outsiders, the Deer seem more concerned with survival and coming on top of the war. The Alliance is very much the smallest fish in the war. Adrestia has the biggest and most bountiful territory and a massive and renowned army. Faerghus has fewer troops that Adrestia, but compensates with elite knights and a high number of relic wielders. While Leicester has less land, less military forces (they rely a lot on mercenaries), and a smaller amount of relic wielders.

So what they do in order to win is to play politics with every other faction. They join forces with the church in order to gain political legitimacy through Byleth as the successor of Rhea, and to gain the Garreg Mach Monastery as a base of operations. But Rhea herself is seen as an obstacle by Claude, who hints at finding her conveniently and tragically dead (aka, killing her if they find her before the church knights do and blame it on the Empire). They are also not above of using subterfuge, manipulate their own "allies" and use tactical tricks to turn the situation to their favour. Claude also wants answers on all the weird shit that he's been seeing in Fodlan, and the ones who can give him answers are Rhea and Edelgard, so that's an additional motivation for him to win the war and take Enbarr.

Regarding Byleth, I can see VW Byleth becoming interested in finding the truth about Fodlan, scheming and politicking through their association with Claude and the Deer. Byleth, as a character, tends to end up absorbing some of the values of the side they choose, and one who chooses to teach the Deer and side with Claude ends up with vastly different values than a Byleth that sides with the other factions.

#fire emblem three houses #verdant wind playthrough #fe3h meta

7 notes · View notes

kob131 · 2 years

Note

Claude, although subtle, DOES have character development. It’s most noticeable in his support with Cyril.

Edelgard, if you ask me, is the one whose character arc needs serious improvement.

I should mention… Verdant Wind was my first route, Azure Moon my second, and Crimson Flower my third.

Verdant Wind-Edelgard made a BAD first impression on me by the end.

Azure Moon-Without spoiling anything… I ended up hating her EVEN MORE after this route.

Crimson Flower prompted SOME thought… and I ultimately decided it did NOT redeem her in my eyes. She comes off less as changing for the better and more as being prevented from changing for the worse. That dialogue you mention about her relaxing her views on the church rings hollow considering this is the only route where the church is more or less completely dismantled, vs reforming on other routes. She overall comes off as remaining static, with her character not changing much, if at all. Not to mention that the story seemingly goes out of its way to ensure her misinformed view of Fodlan history is never challenged. (Which feels more sue-ish to me.)

It’s also kinda funny that you claim Claude’s flaws never screw him over when, in fact, they DO screw him over in any route outside his own! And it’s heavily implied he only really succeeds in his route because he has Byleth on his side. Also… pretty sure his cheerful attitude is a cover for his pain.

Although, I suppose without knowing if you’ve played Azure Moon, or your thoughts on it if you have, I can’t form a full opinion on your thoughts. So I’ll just wait and see.

(BTW, the TRUE Mary Sue in the overall Three Houses canon is Three Hopes!Dimitri)

Okay, before I go anywhere with this, i want to say that I appreciate that you took your time to come and explain yourself to me. Very rarely do I get something like this and instead get preaching to the choir or really bad arguments that don't do shit. So thanks for putting in so much time and effort.

1- I can't deny or affirm this since I didn't GET Cyril in my run. And from what I remember- Claude acts a little more trusting and his facade is more truthful by the end. That doesn't help that Claude is still the guy who gets the most hopeful route when he presents less vulnerability.

2- While I do understand this and I am not going to argue for her on any kind of objective basis here- I do have to say that the Church being dismantled doesn't make her relaxing her views come across as less hollow to me. This kind of stuff would go beyond just the Church since the real problem is the tramua she suffered rather than the Church's issues. Also I can't really think of a way to change it so the Church stays since you need Rhea and Seteth/Flaynn around still. And no fucking way can Edelgard pull off the shit she does and they stick around.

2.5- Going to the history bit- I can understand that. She isn't being challenged here properly and I get that. But my issues with Claude weren't fully detailed in my post so sorry about that.

Another of my big issues is just what was revealed in Verdant Wind: The history of Foldlan, the relics and Rhea's past. This is all stuff that should have been at least shared with the other routes, ESPECIALLY Silver Snow since...you know...that's RHEA'S route and the final boss is NEMESIS, her mother's murderer? Of all the places to have the Agarthans and Nemesis show up, Claude, the guy least affected by them, gets to fight them.

As far as I know, you don't get to get revenge on them for killing Edelgard's family and torturing her, shattering Dimitri's mind and ruining Rhea's life. No, CLAUDE gets the fight.

Again, I could be wrong. My personal experience lacks Azure Moon and Silver Snow. And I know this is emotional and stupid as all hell. But...fucking hell, it REALLY feels like the developers realized Claude was the weakest Lord in terms of character and then shoved the backstory into his route to give you a reason to fight with him.

3- Yeah, the problem there is that from what I've seen, other characters drop their masks but Claude never really does. Just once, can he not have a smile on his face.

And- You'll have to explain how Claude keeping up a facade fucks him over in Crimson Flower. Best I could get there is that without Byleth, Claude's fakeness means no one will rally behind him. Which...doesn't get that much focus compared to Dimitri.

4- I haven't and my memories of Verdant Wind and Crimson Flower are a bit distant since I took about a year to revisit this game. This is kind of why I would like for you to explain the bits about Claude like you did against Edelgard.

Just as well- my thoughts here are just that. My thoughts, not an actual analysis of Three Houses and the routes. In that sense, Claude's route is perfectly functional and works well as a contrast to the more dour routes along with fitting his rouge-like aesthetic and the Golden Deer's more cheerful tone. (That...might just be because of Rapheal though). Claude's development isn't obvious and upfront but it doesn't need it. In fact, Claude's upbeat demeanor is something that can't really be filled by anyone else in the route and is necessary for the tone and unique identity of Verdant Wind. So he works perfectly fine here on an objective level.

You really shouldn't take what I said before as any actual judgement on his character. That was me summing up my year old thoughts on a route I personally didn't like.

Oof, kinda ranted a bit in my earlier ask.

If it makes you feel better, Three Hopes has some… opportunities to vent your frustrations with Claude.

No problem, man. I clearly touched a frayed nerve there and I know all too well the feeling. I should have explained myself better if I didn't want to get a rant after all.

And...if that's a reference to killing Claude, I don't really want that. I want Claude to be vulnerable or for me to snark at him for making jokes about poisoning others. Like dude, I know it's a joke but the fucking diplomats won't care. Probably a good thing I paired him with Ingrid- She can act as the resident Claude translator.

3 notes · View notes

unmeiokaemasu · 1 year

Text

shadow dragon progress (and 3H)

I started typing this in the tags for my doodle post but then wrote too much as per usual so here it is

yeah going into shadow dragon I didn’t have any idea who I’d end up using most. I always gravitate towards magic users, and I rarely end up using axe mains, not sure why. so yeah going in I figured my mains would be navarre and linde, and that minerva and tiki would high powered units I’d use out of necessity. and I was SUPER looking forward to using Xane since his gimmick is unique.

What’s actually happened is Lena promoted early through staff spamming, and then Abel is an absolute beast. I don’t remember why I initially favored him over Cain but it spiraled out of control and now since he nearly single-handedly cleared Michalis’s map he’s like promoted level 18. I tried that map more times than any other, and anyone else I let take multiple hits ended up dying. I parked Abel in the woods and loaded him up with javelins, and he dodged most of the long-range magic and just went to town on the wyvern riders and cavaliers. I did use a couple physics but honestly not a bad use of them.

My other good units are promoted Merric, Minerva, and promtoed Caeda in a pinch. I promoted Navarre but honestly he gets hit too easily and he’s still too frail. Maria’s promoted as well but I still mainly user her for healing, but that’s still super useful.

And I’m not using Xane! :( idk I just didn’t get into it, I don’t like that you have to pick weapons for him to have if he’s going to transform, and I frankly didn’t look up how long he stays transformed so I get nervous about him turning back. I really miss having a dancer, I love strategic layer that that adds and dancers are usually one of if not my top favorite units.

I’ve been trying to train Gordin up since the start for god knows what reason, he’s like level 17 now and I could promote him now but eh. waste of master seal unless he’s 20. I also usually deploy Jeorge now as well but I rarely use either. Don’t really use the whitewings even tho I always deploy them, I wanted to train up Est but it’s so hard for her to even do damage to enemies, setting up kills is a bitch.

Haven’t used Tiki at all, I don’t know how you’re meant to distribute dragonstone uses and idk if hammerne works on it but even it does it’s too much of a pain to figure out so. no Tiki. idk if I’ll regret that later but.

Marth is decent. He’s level 20 now so I’ve stopped letting him fight most times but he’s pretty good at getting people out of scrapes if he’s near enough to help.

so yeah that’s shadow dragon rn, it’s a really solid fe game! reminds me a lot of the gba games. maybe some time I’ll go back and play the FE3 incarnation...but I’m a ways off from that. I have so many priorities before that:

My Genealogy run that I’ll probably never finish (on chapter 4 rn)

Wanna give Thracia a try

Unfinished Binding Blade run

Really wanna try a hard mode Blazing Blade run

I got up to the last chapter of Sacred Stones and abandoned it for so long that when I came back I started over, and I think something may have happened to that file as well...we’ll see.

Really want to get the data transfer from PoR to RD to work, so I’ll probably scuttle the run of RD I had going. oh and I’d have to complete a new PoR file because the old one couldn’t transfer for reasons.

I can’t remember if I even finished a Fates Conquest playthrough, but if I did it was definitely on Phoenix mode, idk I had very little patience with the 3DS games for some reason. I don’t remember if I finished a Birthright route either but if I didn’t that would’ve been out of boredom. I did finish Revelations.

and speaking of the 3DS I never finished Echoes lol. idk I’m cursed.

...but on that note! I’m on the second to last chapter of my hard mode Azure Moon run! :D It’s been super smooth sailing esp now that most of my units are flying, but I’m still happy I’ve been able to get to this point. My lunatic Verdant Wind has stalled out, I’m stuck on the Gautier Inheritance :( I was doing pretty well but I haven’t been able to deal with the waves of enemies...honestly kind of like the Knight-Filled Sky chapter I just beat, but I don’t have an Abel to tank everything for me. Byleth is my tankiest character and even she can’t deal with all of them, nobody else really stands a chance. idk if warping her up to fight Miklan after most of the reinforcements had left would work, probably not tho, but I think it’s a moot point bcs I don’t think Lysithea has warp yet.

...but anyway I’ll be happy to finish that a hard mode run for sure (since I can’t remember if I beat a hard mode verdant wind before), and I’m DETERMINED to actually FINISH this shadow dragon playthrough.

#catfishchat #fe talk #catfish plays fe

0 notes

lunar-soren · 1 year

Note

4 5 6?

4 (which route did you play first?): I played black eagles!! this was to prevent myself from being brain poisoned against edelgard lmao also I wanted to see if ferdibert were as absurdly gay as I'd been led to believe (they were)

5 (which route did you play last?): silver snow ;;; I Don't Like Rhea so I actually played all the other routes twice before succumbing to the Lore Thirst

6 (which route is your favorite?): ough that's a hard one !! probably verdant wind for Claude Reasons but azure moon isn't far behind!

#soren answers #thanks for the ask !!

1 note · View note

lananiscorner · 2 years

Note

Perhaps you're burnt out on 3H and that's to be expected. But have you ever done a meme or challenge run of the game beyond a speed run? I've done a few so to share some examples: CF magic/spell only (no physical weapons), VW no promotion (noble/commoner class only), SS infantry only/no canto, AM bow only, AM inverse (all physical units use magic only and vice versa). All had their own challenges. Some were actually not fun xD but I think it was a worthwhile experience in every example.

Thanks for your ask, anon.

I did actually do a few challenge runs! Off the top of my head:

Silver Snow Holy Knight Byleth solo, full recruitment: This was actually kind of fun and it helped me a lot in figuring out how to recruit everyone the fastest.

Silver Snow church characters only: This is the second-worst route for a church only run, topped only by Crimson Flower, for obvious reasons--cannot recommend.

Silver Snow Ashen Wolves only: This was actually kind of fun. Hapi tanks Rhea's attacks like nobody's business. I used Enlightened One Byleth with gauntlets in this run, and she really was the second coming of Sothis. Crits for days.

Crimson Flower non-hypocritical run (no saint statue bonuses, no crest users, no instructing, no unlocking hidden talents, no choir, no church battalions, no divine pulse): this was fun, but also occasionally frustrating when you start to realize just how much help from the Goddess/church is involved in a normal run and how badly "everybody rises and falls by their own merits" sucks. I ended up with only Wyvern Lords Petra and Caspar, Dancer Dorothea and Dark Bishop Hubert (thankfully WL Petra is a one woman army in her own right lol).

Crimson Flower minimal NG+ prep (no saint statues, no unlocking skills/battalions beyond what's needed to get Byleth and Edel into Wyvern Lord): This one came about because I eventually want to stream a NG+ Azure Moon 100% run, but I don't really want any of the NG+ bonuses except for Dimitri's alternate hairstyle (yes, I am that petty). So this was essentially a two character speedrun with minimal use of gameplay mechanics.

Verdant Wind all Bow Knight team (except for dancer Raphael): completely trivialized Shambala--I sniped everything and everyone from behind the walls. Bow Knight Lysithea with a Magic Bow is terrifying.

Azure Moon Bow Knight Dimitri solo: I got bored of making him a Holy Knight over and over, so I decided to go with Bow Knight instead. Absolute legend. Disgustingly strong.

Azure Moon 100% OTP duo run (Wyvern Lords Felix and Annette only): I had never made either of those two Wyvern Lords before, but I figured I needed high move classes, though as it turns out, most maps on AM are actually cavalry friendly, so it really wasn't required. I actually chronicled my experience with this run here on my blog.

Azure Moon 100% Maddening, no NG+, DimiMari Holy Knight power couple run: Exactly what it says on the tin. I did AM on new game, Maddening, using only Holy Knights Dimitri and Marianne. Which means Marianne had to solo chapter 6 (including the Death Knight). This run nearly made me quit several times (chapters 7, 12, 14, as well as the paralogues Dividing the World, Retribution and A Cursed Relic in particular can go and get fucked). This was the only time in all my playthroughs that I actively needed to plan out my combat arts, battalions and abilities to the finest detail or else I'd be fucked. I don't ever want to play Maddening again (the trick to surviving it are the "breaker" skills btw--the weapon triangle is actually important in Maddening, and especially swordbreaker on Dimitri in chapter 13 will save you sooooo much trouble). I chronicled my experiences with this run as well.

Aaaaand I think that's all my challenge runs. For my eventual Azure Moon stream, I am planning to use "Knight" master classes only, so Holy Knights Dimitri and Mercedes, Dark Knights Sylvain and Annette, Bow Knights Ashe and Felix, Great Knights Dedue and Gilbert, and Falcon Knights Ingrid and Byleth.

#asks #anon #Fire Emblem: Three Houses #FE3H #FE3H challenge runs

0 notes

iturbide · 2 years

Note

If I had to guess, Claude killing people and using violence is kind of inevitable. It’s a series where violence being used to solve the problem is kind of baked into the gameplay. It’s hard to tell a story of careful diplomacy and patient negotiation in between over the top fight scenes. Not saying it is impossible (Verdant Wind), but lightening rarely strikes twice.

And I think that's the really disappointing thing for me. Claude in particular was notable in his presentation regardless of route: no matter who you side with, after the timeskip you're greeted with the fact that the Alliance has managed to stay out of the war for five years owing entirely to Claude's ability to keep the other Great Lords of the Leicester Roundtable arguing with one another rather than mustering troops.

In Crimson Flower the Alliance has control of Myrddin, but has only used it for their own defense; when Edelgard takes it and marches on Derdriu, though Claude rallies his own forces to defend the Alliance, he attempts to keep the loss of life to a minimum, saying outright if Hilda falls that he had ordered her to retreat if things got bad rather than lay down her life, essentially making his stand the last one before passing the Alliance's control over to Edelgard in the desperate hope that his surrender will keep the bloodshed to a minimum.

In Azure Moon, he once again only rallies troops to defend the Alliance, calling in aid from the Kingdom following the successful liberation of Fhirdiad in the hopes that it will keep the Alliance from falling to Imperial control (we won't get into the issues I have with him passing control of the Alliance over to Dimitri in that route because that plot point doesn't make sense and I think was just about having a united Fodlan regardless of route, which is stupid)

His own route of Verdant Wind did its best to defy conventions to the best of its limited ability: he joins the battle at Gronder Field because he can see the troops amassing, and when he sees Dimitri he specifically says that "he doesn't look interested in joining forces with us," because he still wants to avoid conflict as much as possible. He knows that conflict with Edelgard is inevitable and refuses to back down from a fight with her; but he still tries to get through to Dimitri, even though it's a futile attempt. He speaks gravely of the cruelty of war and the lives it takes -- a striking difference from Edelgard, who considers the lives lost to be "necessary sacrifices" for achieving her goals.

The thing is, there isn't a need to show the diplomacy and negotiation. Even Three Houses got around it by glossing over the roundtable in Verdant Wind, having it brought up that they're going at the start of a chapter and then skipping straight ahead to the aftermath: they don't have to show the details, and never have. Given that battles are so often life and death struggles, Claude's insistence on trying to reach out to people just in case he can get through to them, rather than gearing straight up for combat in every engagement, was unique and fascinating: he fights to defend himself and the people who depend on him, but only when there's demonstrably no other way. And in Three Hopes, they could have kept that up: I don't know if they have little dialogues where he banters with foes the way that Three Houses did, but in the case of Shahid -- who, as I understand it, was already defeated and disarmed at the end -- they could have had Claude order that his brother be detained after that failed attack and have him sent back to Almyra. It takes just as much time as having him kill his half-brother. But they don't. And that's what bugs me.

But hey, again, I haven't played the game yet. I'm only going off second-hand info. This is just the product of my tempered expectations.

#answered #anonymous #fire emblem warriors: three hopes #fewth spoilers #fire emblem: three houses #claude got bodyswapped by an agarthan #i'm just so sad that they gutted what made him interesting #at least to me #i thought that the dichotomy of his scheming #with how earnestly he cared about people #and how little he liked bloodshed and war #was striking and wonderful to see #so i'm honestly saddened by a lot of what i've been hearing

16 notes · View notes

moltz23 · 1 year

Text

The Odd One Theorem: Why "Fixing" Three Houses' Crimson Flower isn't Straightfoward

A week ago, I did a keen analysis on how Three Houses manages difficulty for every one of its four routes which I’ve been slowly improving thanks to the feedback I’ve received on it (many thanks to those who helped btw!). From all the notes I’ve gathered, something very interesting stood out about how the game handles challenges with each path, which reminded me of a certain possibility I raised in yet another previous post surrounding Black Eagles’ development and the hidden intentions lurking within.

And you know what? I think it’s time I make it into an actual theorem because it’s really bugging me out that much. After all the stuff I’ve seen about 3H’s gameplay and how it handles challenges per route, I am convinced that “fixing” Crimson Flower isn’t as straightforward as people make it up to be.

Before getting into why gameplay evidence of all things has convinced me of such, I wanna cover all my bases first just in case someone (and somehow, ‘cause a part of me finds it unlikely) has no clue what I’ll be talking about.

So… Here's context:

Why “Fix” the Odd One?

…Also known as Crimson Flower.

Three Houses has four routes overall. From those, Crimson Flower is the only one which has 18 story chapters while the others get 22 (or 21, in Silver Snow case). Saying this made people mad back when the game was new would honestly be an understatement given there’s a youtube video called “Edelgard deserved better” done sometime after its launch which has over 250k views as of this post.

Incidentally, the idea of “fixing” CF is far from new, and the go-to direction most attempts I’ve seen, do it by crafting a small 4 chapter arc after the main plot (so it can reach the 22 Chapter quota Dimitri and Claude’s routes follow, which the idea inherently assumes it was the original goal of the route), eventually leading Edelgard and co. fighting “those who slither in the dark” in their headquarters, something which is mentioned it will happen a few times during the route, but as a very distant… thing, due to Edelgard’s n°1 enemy being not them in the main plot. This gets to the point that an S-Support and even a few solo endings touch upon it in a way that might or might not be mean spirited from the devs’ POV???.

Anyways, now that’s out of the way, it’s time to jump into the actual meat of the theorem:

No House Stands Equal - Three Houses' Difficulty from a Design Perspective

The key findings of my exhaustive attempt at analyzing 3H’s difficulty (which you can check by clicking on the title above) is that Three Houses, from a gameplay perspective, handles difficulty by messing with factors like:

Average Enemy Level between Chapters (+ their Suggested Level, which is directly related to the AEL).

Available resources, and the timing in which new ones are unlocked and/or lost.

When the game stops using Intermediate Classes for enemies (in a more conventional Fire Emblem context, this would be like saying “when the game stops throwing Unpromoted Enemies at you).

And more.

Thus, at a macro/superficial level and, according to the info at hand, Three Houses does the following:

The Average Enemy Level almost always increases by 2 per Chapter, regardless of the chosen difficulty.

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated 3 times; first in Ch. 3, then in Ch. 8, and last in Ch. 14.

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 23.

Your chosen House Leader gets their unique battalion in Chapter 13.

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear main story missions is 4 in Ch. 16 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 2 for other maps that do this.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies around Ch. 18~ for main story maps (17 for Silver Snow, 16 for Azure Moon, and 18 for Verdant Wind, for those curious).

Your chosen House Leader’s paralogue is unlocked around the second half of Part 2 (Ch. 19 for Dimitri, and Ch. 17 for Claude).

The difference in enemy levels between the successive Enbarr invasion missions is always 1.

And finally, the route ends in Ch. 22 (or 21 if you’re in Silver Snow) with a final Suggested Level of 42.

This pattern is followed religiously in all the routes which happen to share a lot of content up until Chapter 17 (or 16, in Silver Snow’s case) due to story reasons, yet despite this, there’s still many quirks exclusive to certain routes which make one experience different from the other.

Silver Snow, for example, is meant to be really hard according to the devs, and as the spreadsheet reveals, it does this by handicapping the heck out of the player (very squishy starting cast with no Relics besides Byleth’s; one deployment slot less, far less resources; losing your House Leader + N°2 midway through the game; etc). Due to this, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind by design are more beginner friendly by simply having none of that (AKA more balanced casts that stays with you; more Hero Relics; more resources, etc), while still deviating in other areas. Azure Moon for one, gets the most resources between all routes to play with, still gets their exclusive units handicapped in other ways, and in the late game, it has a “turret & mage infestation problem”, for a lack of a proper term. Conversely, Verdant Wind gets just a pretty decent amount of tools, has no actual handicaps for their cast, and their late game isn’t so overly specific in enemy variety as Azure Moon’s.

Fairly straightforward stuff so far. But as you might have noticed, I haven’t mentioned Crimson Flower once, and that's for a reason.

Crimson Flower, by design, is not built like the other three routes.

♫ One of these is not like the others ♫

To explain what makes CF challenging, I need to go back again into into how 3H manages its difficulty, because unlike the other three paths, this one follows its own set of rules:

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated one third and last time in Ch. 12.

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 25.

Edelgard & Hubert get their unique battalions in Chapter 12 (is Hubert a lord too…?).

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear story missions is 4 in Ch. 15 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 5 for both Ch. 16 and Ch. 17.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies in Ch. 14 for main story missions.

Edelgard’s paralogue is unlocked in Ch. 15, midway through Part 2.

The difference in enemy levels between successive story missions goes as follows:

Ch. 11 to Ch. 12: 4 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

Ch. 17 to Ch. 18: 2 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

And finally, the game ends in Ch. 18 with a final Suggested Level of 37.

And this isn’t even considering how every story mission from Ch. 12 onwards is exclusive to it for story reasons, or even factoring the other tweaks exclusive to CF, such as: having one Chapter less to receive funds and recruit students/teachers; having 2 units that join in Part 2 with innate access to Mastermind; its second half of the game being full of enemy pegasi/wyvern riders; its last chapters having a high number of monsters with anti-magic barriers, and with weapons used in no other route; and more stuff which I won’t cover here for brevity’s sake.

Dedue's Monster form is legit the strongest Giant Demonic Beast in the game in both raw stats and weapon.

Everything mentioned so far about Edelgard’s route highlights that, compared to the other three paths: it scales up the difficulty earlier; makes its resources available earlier as well; and raises the challenge of its last two chapters considerably. Incidentally, this in turn explains why the path is a viable option to obtain the “Yellow Title Screen” after finishing it on Maddening difficulty despite having fewer Chapters; it's because its difficulty was optimized to work with that specific length in mind.

Here is where the crux at hand lies. Why “fixing” Crimson Flower isn’t just adding more chapters to it and calling it a day.

Edelgard’s route, structure-wise, does not feel it was meant to be as long as the other three paths.

This is important because, as well-intentioned the idea of “fixing” the route is, adding more chapters over what’s already there would completely throw off its balancing and potentially and unintentionally make it the hardest route of the four by numbers alone (and this is is still accounting that you would have to fight even more bosses later on…).

To illustrate what exactly I mean by this-

I'm going to propose 2 experiments.

First, let’s imagine an hypothetical scenario where KT and Intelligent Systems listen to the fan uproar over Crimson Flower’s shortness and add more chapters to it. The catch? There won’t be any other changes done to the base game. As a result, CF’s unique scaling stays due to the assumption it's presence is unrelated to its short length, meaning:

There's still 4/3 levels of difference between Chapter 11 and 12, for Normal & Hard/Maddening).

The level scaling remains consistent with no alterations unlike the other routes, up until the Last Chapter in Maddening Difficulty where the Average Enemy Level increases by 3.

This is how the route’ Suggested Levels' would look like for its chapters, compared to Dimitri and Claude’s stories, as well the Church's.

Now everyone's finally- Wait a second...

(Click here if you wanna check it on the spreadsheet)

(Note: Suggested Level is the value shown when you're about to start a mission. In-game, it's used as an indicator of the map's difficulty and the level the game expects you to be in order to beat it.)

From my understanding, the whole point of the idea of “fixing” CF comes from the desire of making it a proper equal to Azure Moon and Verdant Wind, not unlike how in Warriors: Three Hopes, Scarlet Blaze, Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire are equal in length and difficulty scaling (at least by the time the game ends). From the get go, we can see how this experiment has failed, because now Crimson Flower has the highest average enemy levels for its late game. To properly “fix” Crimson Flower in this instance, we would need to either redo its difficulty scaling from scratch to make it match the other routes, or just simply give it one Chapter less like Silver Snow, in which case, it still fails the experiment's purpose.

As a result, we now move to our Second Experiment: We will make Edelgard’s route unfinished. To do this, we will assume CF was meant to always have 22 Chapters, and as logic dictates, it's unique difficulty scaling would serve no purpose, meaning that, as far difficulty parameters go, there's now a 1 level difference for enemies between Chapters whose missions are played back to back, impacting now both Ch.11 to Ch. 12, and Ch.17 to Ch. 18.

Here’s how the Suggested Levels' would look like in this case:

(Scaling it for Maddening wasn't easy...).

(Click here if you wanna check it on the spreadsheet)

These numbers look far more harmonious, yeah? Not only that, in this one you can clearly tell by the sequence the numbers follow that something is very off with Edelgard’s path- Not only it's somehow easier in Normal and Hard, something which is meant to come after Ch. 18 clearly isn’t there. Will it come around later as free DLC, as the rumors say? The evidence says it’s likely, though we dunno if it will happen yet.

This isn’t our reality though, and I have a big hunch on why it was never on the cards in our case. Both interviews which speak about the route’s development always coincide on one vital area:

–On top of that, [Black Eagles] also had a hidden story branch. Yokota: We kept it hidden, but the idea to have a story branch was there since the creation of the Black Eagle route. –Did you have plans to implement a story branch for the other houses? Yokota: No. We only decided it for the Black Eagle house and to keep it a secret.

——————————————————————————————————

Kusakihara: [...] Walking with Edelgard in “Crimson Flower”, or rather known as the, “Supreme Ruler Route” is something we honestly meant to be much more difficult to enter. Yokota: I’m really sorry to you, Kusakihara-san too, but I was also someone who battled with Koei Tecmo on it. The exploration event split was initially too difficult and there were no hints at all.[...] Kusakihara: Compared to what I envisioned, it’s about 3 times easier to enter, but that’s fine, I think.

From all four routes, CF was the only one which was meant to be a secret.

Picture this: you’re developing a video game with four routes that happens to love recycling its own content a lot, and you even have solid in-universe reasons for it too! And yet, you decide to hide one of the four just because. The reasoning here isn’t important. What is, however, is its secrecy. You want people to play the game, and have some of them stumble across it by accident and be surprised. Under this train of logic, I ask the following question:

Would it work to its benefit, if it was very similar to the other three routes regardless?

The answer to this question would be probably not. From then on, it becomes important to have that one route be different. Not follow the same rules the others do. Otherwise, what is the point of having it be a secret?

Edelgard’s route, as the theorem, proposes is the odd one out on purpose. Its identity stems from how it was conceived as the route which would be super hard to access, before the plan changed because Silver Snow was received poorly by KT’s testing team + devs. And because it’s the odd one out, trying to make it fit a very different mold isn’t gonna be an easy job, to the point you have to wonder if it would be best to just redo the whole thing from scratch instead.

In my humble opinion, this very well explains why the route is so different in both gameplay and outside of it, but I'll digress on the latter since that one's not the point of this post...

#fe3h #crimson flower #azure moon #verdant wind #silver snow #gameplay analysis #theorem #what if #fire emblem: three houses #feth #difficulty balance #difficulty

6 notes · View notes

azuregard · 3 years

Text

How Rhea Views Edelgard in Crimson Flower

Word Count: 2,296

I’ve been thinking about how Crimson Flower portrays the Edelgard/Rhea conflict. In the route itself, Edelgard is clearly not a fan of the archbishop, but Rhea seems much more concerned with Byleth. While I do plan on analyzing how effective this decision was, I felt like it would be a good idea to offer my two cents regarding the way Rhea views Edelgard first.

When it came down to it, I figured it would be better for me to present the less-opinionated piece first. Unlike the other piece, where I point out what works and what doesn’t, this piece is more focused on analyzing certain quotes in an attempt to make sense of this decision from an in-universe perspective.

One more thing I want to mention before I start is that the analysis is largely looked at from Rhea’s PoV. As such, the language I’m using to describe Edelgard might come across as somewhat harsh. A lot of things tend to get lost in translation on the internet, and I will admit I’m not the best at expressing myself, but I figured I’d address this now just so you know that this analysis isn’t an excuse to attack her (and as someone who likes Edelgard, I have no intention of doing so, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think there’s any room for improvement).

With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy this dumb little analysis.

The Flame Emperor Unmasked

“You have disappointed me, Edelgard. To think that a descendant of House Hresvelg would dare betray the holy church…”

—Rhea (White Clouds Chapter 11: Throne of Knowledge, Event: Fateful Farewell)

If you chose to teach either the Black Eagles or the Golden Deer, this first quote occurs after you defeat Edelgard at the Holy Tomb. To explain the context of this quote, Edelgard has led the imperial army into the tomb to plunder the crest stones contained within. While Edelgard isn’t aware of what the crest stones are, Rhea is, and given that they’re the hearts of slain Nabateans, the archbishop is justifiably not happy about it.

That said, while Rhea is obviously furious with Edelgard in this moment, she also expresses her disappointment that a member of House Hresvelg betrayed the church in such a manner.

“Professor, kill Edelgard at once. She is a danger to all of Fódlan. Such a rebellious heart cannot be allowed to keep beating.”

—Rhea (White Clouds Chapter 11: Throne of Knowledge, Event: Fateful Farewell)

Rather than perform the task herself, Rhea orders Byleth to kill Edelgard. While this might not seem strange at a glance, anyone who has played Ashe and Catherine’s paralogue is likely familiar with the following quote:

“Lady Rhea is going to personally execute the bishop. I have been appointed as her guard. I want your help protecting her. So what do you say? Will you come?”

--Catherine (White Clouds Paralogue: Falling Short of Heaven, Before Battle)

As you can see here, Rhea is not above executing heretics herself. Unlike Lonato and the Western Church members from chapter 4 (and Seteth and Flayn’s paralogue), the bishop in Ashe and Catherine’s paralogue is the one leading the Western Church. Like that bishop, Edelgard was the one leading the charge against the church at the Holy Tomb. That, combined with her high status, would probably make one assume that Rhea would be the one to personally take her life.

Rhea ordering Byleth to kill Edelgard makes sense when looking at it from an out-of-universe perspective; what with this being the catalyst for the player choosing between the two women, at least if they chose to teach the Black Eagles. That said, when looking at it from an in-universe perspective, it seems odd considering the above Catherine quote. Rhea wasn’t hesitant to execute the western church’s bishop, but she isn’t willing to do the same with some girl who led the imperial army to defile a holy place and, in doing so, likely caused her to relive a traumatic moment in her life.

“To flee is futile, wicked girl. The Church of Seiros will raise its entire army against you, until you have been captured and punished! You have defiled the Holy Tomb, dishonored the goddess, and humiliated your brethren. That crime will never be erased, even if you burn in the eternal flames, and spill all of your blood into the goddess's soil!”

—Rhea (White Clouds Chapter 11: Throne of Knowledge, Event: Fateful Farewell, Azure Moon/Verdant Wind/Silver Snow)

Again, Rhea vows to make Edelgard pay, but she doesn’t specify that she will be the one who will punish her. In fact, she states that the church will raise its entire army against Edelgard, which seems to imply that someone in that army will be the one to perform the deed. This comes to fruition in every route where Rhea utters this particular line; Byleth ends Edelgard’s life in Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, while Dimitri is the one to strike her down in Azure Moon.

The Fall of Garreg Mach

“No matter your reasons, I cannot permit you to go on living any longer!… You must know what a fool you are! The greatest of sins is to make an enemy of the goddess herself!”

—Rhea, to Edelgard (Crimson Flower Chapter 12: Outset of a Power Struggle, Battle: The Battle of Garreg Mach)

Edelgard and Rhea’s pre-battle quote is another interesting one since it’s a lot less hostile than it ought to be. Edelgard’s actions in the previous chapter amounted to not only her defiling a holy place, but also in Rhea experiencing a pseudo-Red Canyon Tragedy. Yet despite this, Rhea and Edelgard’s pre-battle dialogue isn’t nearly as heated as the one-way dialogue Rhea has with Byleth.

“You... How dare you betray me... You worthless piece of garbage... I will punish you myself!”

—Rhea, to Byleth (Crimson Flower Chapter 12: Outset of a Power Struggle, Battle: The Battle of Garreg Mach)

Rhea’s pre-battle quote when Byleth approaches her is much more hostile compared to what you would get if Edelgard was the one to do so. She is in no mood to entertain the idea that they had a reason to turn against her, and she makes it clear that she will be the one to punish them for their decision. While she mentions that she cannot permit Edelgard to go on living, she doesn’t explicitly state that she will be the one to end Edelgard’s life the way she does with Byleth here.

“So you have sullied yourself by joining with the rebels? I hope you came prepared to breathe your last.”

—Rhea, to units who aren’t named Edelgard or Byleth (Crimson Flower Chapter 12: Outset of a Power Struggle, Battle: The Battle of Garreg Mach)

Rhea’s generic pre-battle quote is a middle ground between the two unique ones she has with your lord and avatar. She’s not as hostile as she is with Byleth, but this dialogue strikes me as her being willing to kill the unlucky unit you picked to stand against her (at least compared to Edelgard).

In addition, Rhea doesn’t point out that the unit in question has a reason to turn against the church. As such, she doesn’t distinguish characters like Ashe (whose adoptive father and brother turned against the church and paid with their lives) from characters like Annette (whose father is a devout member of the church). This lack of distinction on Rhea’s part leads me to believe that their betrayal did not sting Rhea as much as Edelgard’s or Byleth’s.

Finally, given Rhea’s status as the map’s ultimate target, she doesn’t move from her assigned position. As such, you will probably only see the pre-battle quotes if you initiate combat, or place a unit close enough to Rhea that she feels the need to defend herself. This, combined with Rhea deploying the monastery’s strongest military force when she emerges, makes me believe that she was hoping that someone else might finish the job against Edelgard and anyone not named Byleth.

Return to Tailtean

“Mother... Oddly the rain has come to fall yet again. At this place, once again... I will fight to take you back... The one who keeps me from seeing you again... I will be sure to return them to the earth from whence they came. The foolish descendant of Hresvelg who bares her fangs at me will suffer the same fate…”

—Rhea/Seiros (Crimson Flower Chapter 17, Field of Revenge, Event: Field of Revenge)

While you could argue from this quote that Rhea is no longer hesitant to kill Edelgard, I have to respectfully disagree here. Even though Rhea states that Edelgard and Byleth will suffer the same fate (that being “returning them from the earth from whence they came”), there is a moment earlier in the chapter that makes me think Rhea isn’t as keen on taking out Edelgard as she is Byleth.

Dimitri: “There is only one person I am after. I have no interest in any other prey.” Rhea: “I will take you at your word. Erasing the other child's existence is my task, and mine alone. I will get you back, Mother... I promise…”

—Crimson Flower Chapter 17, Field of Revenge, Event: Preparing for the Final Battle

While Rhea mentions that Edelgard will suffer the same fate as Byleth, she never mentions that she will personally be the one to enact that fate. Given the dialogue provided above, I would argue that she is relying on Dimitri to do the job for her.

“King Dimitri! There is no retreat for the Knights of Seiros! Fight until none are left standing! Slaughter them all and send them straight to hell!”

—Rhea/Seiros (Crimson Flower Chapter 17, Field of Revenge, Event: Field of Revenge, if not defeated before Dimitri falls, pre-v1.02)

“No... It can't be... There is no retreat for the Knights of Seiros! Fight until none are left standing! Slaughter them all and send them straight to hell!”

—Rhea/Seiros (Crimson Flower Chapter 17, Field of Revenge, Event: Field of Revenge, if not defeated before Dimitri falls, post-v1.02)

The above two quotes only appear if Dimitri is taken out before Rhea at Tailtean. As you can see, there is little difference between the two besides 2–4 words. That said, I would argue that they aren’t all that different. On the surface, they point out Dimitri’s defeat; however, if you look at them with the final quote I will be providing, they could also be Rhea realizing that it’s becoming more likely that she is going to need to take care of Edelgard herself. She realizes that there’s still a way around it, that being if one of the knights gets there first, but the odds of that happening are decreasing.

“An ancestor of the Hresvelgs, who became Adrestia's first emperor... He saved me. Supported me. Gave his all to the cause of defeating Nemesis. That I should find myself here at Tailtean, striking down his scion…”

—Rhea/Seiros, to Edelgard (Crimson Flower Chapter 17, Field of Revenge, Event: Field of Revenge)

This is easily the most important quote that I provided, as it both reiterates the previous quotes and shows us the reason Rhea seems so hesitant to be the one to take action against Edelgard. First of all, it calls back to all of the times Rhea mentioned Edelgard’s noble house. Back in the eleventh chapter, Rhea expresses disappointment in Edelgard, a member of House Hresvelg, for betraying the church. This quote clears up why: Edelgard’s ancestor was someone Rhea clearly thought highly of, and as his descendant, Rhea believed Edelgard should have known better (hence why Rhea stated that Edelgard “disappointed” her).

Unlike Edelgard, who channelled Nemesis when invading the Holy Tomb, Wilhelm gave his all to defeat the crusty old bastard. In invading the Holy Tomb, Edelgard caused Rhea’s trauma to resurface; in contrast, Wilhelm likely served as a pillar of support for Rhea after she lost everything.

Edelgard’s actions from chapter eleven onwards were the opposite of how Rhea remembered Wilhelm, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she saw them as Edelgard disrespecting the memory of someone she cared for. Yet at the same time, given her motivations and relationships, she’s obviously still bound by the past. Rhea knows that Edelgard is doing terrible things that the Wilhelm she knew would never even consider, yet she can’t bring herself to punish her like she did the other heretics because of that connection.

Like how Rhea views Byleth as the closest thing she has to her mother, you could argue that Edelgard’s ancestry makes her the closest thing Rhea has to Wilhelm. Unlike Byleth, who becomes a new Nemesis when they take Sothis’ spine and heart with them upon siding with Edelgard, Rhea doesn’t have anyone else she can project onto the tiny emperor (at least that she’s aware of).

The latter half of the above quote isn’t filled with the determination you would find when she is pitted against Byleth in this route. Instead, she seems upset by the turn of events. In her mind, Rhea knows that Edelgard needs to pay for betraying the church and disrespecting Wilhelm’s memory. At the same time, Rhea’s fondness for Wilhelm makes her unwilling to perform the act herself, at least until she feels she doesn’t have any other choice.

After everything that’s happened, Rhea finds herself facing off against Wilhelm’s descendant at Tailtean, and she’s aware that Edelgard intends to kill her. As such, Rhea knows that she has to strike down the descendant of someone she cared about if she intends to live and reclaim all she has lost.

#rhea #edelgard von hresvelg #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem #meta

64 notes · View notes