Digitibird

My rules are “don’t repeat anything you can’t confirm yourself” and “if something sounds fishy, ask for their source.” Honestly, I find most fake leaks are just people repeating something they’ve heard without thinking too hard about it. Even confirmed leakers can lie or just get things wrong, and I don’t really like the way it feels getting upset about something that gets debunked in less than a week. As for avoiding real leaks— I’m specifically looking for them, because I want a glimpse of those timeskip designs, lol.

In one of the French previews, they show that when you pick the demon option, Sothis just gets upset with you and you get returned to the choice without the demon option. It still could be used to determine proficiencies and boons/banes as a side effect, but I’d wager its main purpose is just to be the traditional non-choice a lot of RPGs throw at you to cue you into the dialogue system.

I love sour stuff. I think I might not have as strong of a reaction to it as a lot of people, because sour almost never gives me that unpleasant/burning feeling. Like, I have to basically be eating citric acid for it to feel that angry. Sometimes I eat lemons to flex on people.

The other two houses do have a character who buffs gambits, with Lorenz being the closest equivalent in the Deer with a battalion buffing skill. He might just be the resident gambit/support buffer. Alternatively, maybe Lysithea's crest just innately mirror-moves other people's..? It seems a little early for serious crest shenanigans, considering this seems to be one of the earliest non-story maps in the game.

@Chaotix Definitely looking into this, thanks for the rec!

I’ve been thinking about this lately and wondering if this was an innate element of tactical strategy games or if it was just a lack of utilization. I feel like the genre almost has a lot of untapped potential for making calculated story-based risks and moral choices feel visceral and terrifying, and making getting it ‘right’ feel so satisfying. Zero Escape is a favorite of mine, too, and I’ve been thinking about how well it empowers mistakes— when you screw up in ZE, you’re better for it. In FE, it kinda feels like there’s no real reason not to savescum unless you’re going for that Authentic Fire Emblem feel. The recent introduction of turnwheel/divine pulse mechanics could even facilitate the ability to have maps with multiple win/loss conditions, and being able to jump back to that map should you find yourself on a bad path... I’m probably hoping for a little too much out of Fire Emblem, but my heart just wants to imagine the possibilities, lol.

These are gorgeous. Excited to pick over them and try to analyze them, though I’ll probably wait to do anything in depth until after we get some more context, since we don’t know how serious these are intended to be taken. Some initial thoughts, though— I’m assuming Seiros is intended to be the hooded figure, since she has the wavy sword and appears to be communicating with/being received by a character who resembles the depiction of the goddess in the crest mural. Interesting, though, that all artistic depictions of the character we assume is Seiros depict her hooded and don’t use her crest to identify her, but rather, her sword. In fact, there don’t seem to be crests in any of these paintings, despite the fact they seem to be on everything in present-day Fodlan. There could be some hidden, but I’m not seeing them. They could also be using other symbols to represent the important people, i.e. the deer could potentially be Reigan or one of the other Leicester-descended character and the GD could’ve pulled the imagery from there. It could imply these artworks predate the use of the crests as common symbols, but that would mean that the crests weren’t in use as symbols during the lifetime of the saints and heroes..?

For me, it honestly depends on the themes of the game and how things end up playing out. I think one of the big issues of Revelations is that Fates billed your choices as important, while eventually invalidating those choices. Conquest and Birthright played out as pretty much complete mirror image versions of each other, and most of the fan favorite characters were railroaded into dying either way... unless you decided to play the true route. And then you can’t even really pick Revelations first because you have to buy a base game, making it feel a little cheap even though the third option is basically just saying “no thanks” at the predetermined Big Choice Place and saying “no thanks” apparently costs twenty real life dollars. I think Three Houses might already be better off on this foot, because you can micromanage things a little harder. They’ve been billing the ability to save/spare potential enemies of your own power and blur the lines of your houses/nations before the game is even out, and time travel is already an important plot device in the game. So, I could see a potentially satisfying true end if, for instance, playing through routes gives us a true end because Byleth travels back in time with newfound information that enables choices that you wouldn’t have reasonably been able to make at that point in your first run. Especially since we already know the nations are in an alliance and not at each other’s throats since long before Byleth was even born and are already willing to further blur their borders in the right circumstances. I guess to sum it up— I think Three Houses is already on a better track than Fates because you can kinda make out the foundations of a third route that could make more sense, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

And a hidden talent in armor? AND he can sing? Come on, Edelgard, you know you’re losing on this one.

There’s like 3 of us! My goal is to usurp Edelgard and marry the newly crowned emperor Ferdinand.

Where’s the “oh god I still have no idea help” option?

This is me going out on a limb here, but since the game doesn’t give specific values, there could be dynamic scaling as a form of gating. Like every subsequent recruitment requires slightly higher stats, either in general or by the specific stats. If that’s handled correctly, it could make it so recruiting students who aren’t compatible with Byleth’s specializations is slightly more manageable, while also preventing you from doing something like snapping up every healer without trying really hard for it.

I honestly haven’t settled on which house I want to run at first, so instead I’ll choose a couple of stealable picks from each house. Black Eagles- Ferdinand; I wasn’t sure about him at first but he seems like a solid character and a somewhat solid unit choice, and he’s probably my current favorite of the cast. I think I’ll probably try to get him no matter which house I end up on. Aside from him— maybe Linhardt or Petra? They’ve caught my eye a little, and I’m interesting in seeing where they go. Blue Lions- Knee jerk reaction says Ashe because I’m partial to thieves. Felix also looks very good, though I have a sinking feeling he might not be the most useful. Mercedes is also definitely in the consideration since she seems like an interesting character and a strong unit. I really hope you get some kind of bonus paralogue if you recruit her into Black Eagles. Golden Deer- Aside from Leonie, I’m not particularly attached to any of the other Deer students. Maybe Marianne, just because I’m curious about her? Hard to say. I’m probably going to let recruits happen a little more organically for my first playthrough though, since I kind of want to do a run for each house if it isn’t too much of a hassle.

People are so cartoonishly misogynistic towards Leonie I choose to believe it’s trolling because I don’t want to believe there are people that legitimately awful. Leonie’s been my favorite of the girls especially since her bio dropped and the love for her here is really refreshing. Definitely gonna try to grab her if I don’t end up going Deer. Lately I’ve also been wondering if the Deer route is gonna end up being slightly less about Claude and slightly more about the students as a whole, given that it feels like Deer has the highest concentration of “could’ve been the main character under different circumstances” characters and that Claude seems to be the only lord without a retainer. It’d be a really intriguing decision, but it feels like it’d suit the concept of the Leicester Alliance.

For Linhardt’s surname, Hevring could potentially be related to the German-descent surname Hewring? I’m not very good with this stuff, so I don’t know how much of a stretch that is.