80 Hours in one path - 200 across the three

[Timlugia]

The demo they used in Treehouse and other places showed 12 hours playtime at chapter 8

This was probably played by someone already played this game multiple times for testing, and also likely skipping every conversation and cutscene just to set up the save files.

So realistically each chapter is going to take much longer.

[Azz]

Well good bye summer

As others have said, I hope it’s 80-200 hours of quality content

[Ertrick36]

1 hour ago, Lief said:

To finish what is the aspect of Fire Emblem Three Houses that makes you the most proud?

Mr. Yokota : I am quite proud of this great monastery which is the gathering place in the game but also of the historical context around the continent of the game, Foldan. I am quite proud of this story, that of this country.

Mr. Kusakihara : I do not want to sound weird when I'm obviously a developer on this game, but when I did the game from A to Z, when I got to the end of the story of the final version, I I had this incredible feeling that this country really existed, that it had a story to discover. Even as a developer on the game, I had that feeling of experiencing something that really existed. That's what I would like players to feel: the feeling that all of this has existed.

Surprised to see world building as something the devs are proud of. Seems that they took the criticism of Fates' world to heart when writing TH.

I want to make a witty comment about the possibility of the game somehow having as lackluster worldbuilding as Fates, but I literally can't because the continent already has an actual name, and that alone means it already has more worldbuilding than Fates.

It's more fleshed out than that, though, even from a glance.  I mean, for one the religion seems to be better fleshed out.  For another, the god powers the characters get are more varied and storied.  Thirdly, we have proper factions at play, instead of it just being "these two kingdoms and everyone else".  Hell, just the fact that most characters come from different families - including different noble families that have plentiful impact on their respective nations' politics - is already more than Fates can sneeze at.

Now, it's one thing to have a world that's fleshed out, and it's another thing to actually use it well.  So here's hoping the execution is good.

[SilverArcher]

2 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

I want to make a witty comment about the possibility of the game somehow having as lackluster worldbuilding as Fates, but I literally can't because the continent already has an actual name, and that alone means it already has more worldbuilding than Fates.

It's more fleshed out than that, though, even from a glance.  I mean, for one the religion seems to be better fleshed out.  For another, the god powers the characters get are more varied and storied.  Thirdly, we have proper factions at play, instead of it just being "these two kingdoms and everyone else".  Hell, just the fact that most characters come from different families - including different noble families that have plentiful impact on their respective nations' politics - is already more than Fates can sneeze at.

Now, it's one thing to have a world that's fleshed out, and it's another thing to actually use it well.  So here's hoping the execution is good.

It helps that you can pinpoint the region some of the characters are from unlike in fates. It was especially bad with Rinkah. Also a few characters already have a history with each other.

[Edrey]

80 hours doesn't sound that weird for me when talking about games that let you roam freely and have many different ways in which you can spend your in-game free time... for example in Persona 5 there are moments in which you might not be really sure about what you should do; not only because you are not sure about which is the best choice for beating the game; but also because you might want to try out all the available options. 

There is also the fully-voice acted dialogue... so if you never skip them, they can end up becoming a good chunk of hours in the savefile.

I think that unless you put the management part of the game in auto-mode, 60-85 hours for the first time and the other playthroughs around 40-65 hours seem plausible.

 

[Aiddon]

So definitely getting into Tactics Ogre territory. Fine by me

[bufkus]

Willing to bet a good chunk of playtime is from just academy-related activities. Which is nice. It's like the Persona games and the life sim aspect being as fun as the dungeoning.

[redlight]

Might just be me, but I felt as though they we're trying out world building in Echoes and it worked for the most part. Perhaps Fates' criticisms and experience in Echoes helped them

[Sentinel07]

8 minutes ago, redlight said:

Might just be me, but I felt as though they we're trying out world building in Echoes and it worked for the most part. Perhaps Fates' criticisms and experience in Echoes helped them

Yeah, Echoes had awesome world building especially when you add in all the Valentia Accordion information.

I mean, even in Fates own official book, they still forgot to give the continent a name. 😄

[Hauke]

Everything in the news sounds great. Especially the world building stuff in the bits:

Quote

Yokota: The My Castle system was interesting because you could build it up yourself. But the ambitions we had with the Monastery were much larger and harder to achieve using a similar system. We wanted to give this feeling of shared life; while you created your own My Castle from scratch, in Three Houses, it is already established. The characters have lived there for years and, for them, it’s a place of life that they can call home. So it was designed this way to create that kind of mood.

Quote

Kasukihara: Thanks to the improved technical capabilities and screen resolution over the Nintendo 3DS, we could add more visual elements. For example, the use of battalions that support each unit–this was not possible beforehand. That said, there is another perhaps surprising side effect from switching to Nintendo Switch. As there’s a full HD screen, it was nice that we could show more text, like putting the names of each combatant on the screen. In addition, as we have more space for text, we could add pages that delve into the backstories of the characters, to enrich the game’s lore.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

If there really is good world building, I will assume it's all a lie for now (keep expectations low, and long as you can let those pre-judgements budge later, that's fine), then I guess I'll really have to pay attention to this game outside of gameplay. World building is something I do truly love.

[Druplesnubb]

It's always embarassing to read people who think that not giving Fates' continent a name was somehow the biggest problem with that game's worldbuilding or that just having a continent name somehow means that you have better worldbuilding than Fates.  Like let's say that the continent of Fates is called Krupp or whatever (and ignore the fact that everything points to Hoshido and Nohr being two different continents). You'll notice that this doesn't actually improve anything about Fates' worldbuilding at all. We still don't know of any settlements in all of Hoshido except for the capital. We still don't have an explanation about how Nohr can be a major military power despite their poor resources. The explanation for how Mikoto set up a huge barrier that repels all Nohrian aggression is still completely nonexistent. There's still zero awareness that a barrier that lets Hoshido build up massive forces on the Nohrian border without Nohr being able to retaliate except with the Faceless is an absolutely terrifying weapon. The explanation for why the Yato was hiding in a random statue is also still completely nonexistent. A random Hoshidan kidnapping party still manages to go deep into the Nohrian mainland and conquer a major fortress somehow. Iago still gets the power to resurrect dead dragons somehow. The explanation behind Takumi's possession is still inconsistent between Birthright and Conquest. Kohga is still a Hoshidan vassal that Hoshido somehow let get invaded and torched without lifting a finger to defend it. Revelation's script still mentions "the skies between Hoshido and Nohr switching" in a few months time without said event ever being referenced in the other routes (which is especially weird in the Japanese version where Hoshido and Nohr were called White Nights Kingdom and Dark Nights Kingdom, which implies that the two countries either switch names every couple of decades or that they both have the wrong name half the time).

Let's say that I just made up a continent called Blubleb. It has no geopgraphy, no customs, no history and no people living in it; but accoridng to the logic of some people it has better worldbuilding than Fates has.

A lot of people like to exaggerate that Fates worldbuilding is worse than it actually is. By far the most hilarious instance of this is when this trailer for SoV dropped and people got hundreds of likes/upvotes by claiming that that trailer alone had more worldbuilding than all of Fates, somehow completely missing that besides the short blurb about Zofia's decadence literally every single thing in that trailer had a 1:1 counterpart in Fates worldbuilding. From the world being split into two big countries, both countries having their own god, the differing philosophies between them and the barrier between the two.

Lastly I just want to end by saying that I think Fates' worldbuilding beats Awakening's worldbuilding hands down and I'm not sure how anyone could believe otherwise. But this post is already pretty long and ranty as is so I think it's better to just leave it at that and not go into too much detail on why.

Edited July 6, 2019 by Druplesnubb

[redlight]

1 hour ago, Hauke said:

Kasukihara: Thanks to the improved technical capabilities and screen resolution over the Nintendo 3DS, we could add more visual elements. For example, the use of battalions that support each unit–this was not possible beforehand. That said, there is another perhaps surprising side effect from switching to Nintendo Switch. As there’s a full HD screen, it was nice that we could show more text, like putting the names of each combatant on the screen. In addition, as we have more space for text, we could add pages that delve into the backstories of the characters, to enrich the game’s lore.

Would explain why a lot of info got crammed into the SoV artbook instead.

[timon]

20 minutes ago, Druplesnubb said:

Lastly I just want to end by saying that I think Fates' worldbuilding beats Awakening's worldbuilding hands down and I'm not sure how anyone could believe otherwise. But this post is already pretty long and ranty as is so I think it's better to just leave it at that and not go into too much detail on why.

Well I'm not sure how you can believe what you just wrote tbh... I remember all the territories of the main Awakening story, characters had reasons and backstories to do what they did, there was a deeper story to both wars, it was geographically characterized. Fates is just a sequence of battles.

[Druplesnubb]

The Ylissean continent is just a big blob divided into three not quite as large blobs. Fates went out of its way to show that there were tons of independent nations and villages scattered around the world and it wasn't just Hoshido and Nohr. Ylisse, Plegia and Regna Ferox are all homogenous blocks with nothing separating one part from the other (Regna Ferox is the only one of them where I'm even vaguely certain you can even talk about different "parts" at all). Compare with Nohr where you actually get to meet different vassal states separate from the main culture. The fact that you can separate Cheve from Nohr proper by architectural style alone beats anything that Awakening has. Hoshido admittedly is much worse on this front, which just means that it's on the same level as the Awakening nations. And then there's of course the fact that all of Plegia worships a god that explicitly wants to destroy humanity without any reason ever given as to why. And why does Grima want to destroy humanity anyway? Anankos actually had some kind of reason to want to conquer the world, even if you have to play Heirs of Fate to actually learn it. The fact that Anankos is a dragon who is evil rather than the Dragon of Evil is also much better than Grima in Awakening.

Awakening feels like a world constructed and contrived for the story to take place in rather than a world that a story happens to take place in. Fates has this problem too but Awakening is worse at it.

Edited July 6, 2019 by Druplesnubb

[Flere210]

Awakening worldbuilding include everything we got in the first 5 fe games just by virtue of being the same world in a different age. There are lots of awakening places that are clearly Archanea/Valentia places 2000 years after. There are problems of medieval stasis, but if you consider Marth as the FE Jesus is not strange how prevalent his legacy is.

[NekoKnight]

If the game is even nearly as long as they claim to be, I hope that I can play through it without growing tired of it. I remember playing through just the first two routes of Fates and getting so burned out on it that I didn't want to play any more. I never even finished Revelation (that said, Revelation is a dreadfully boring story so that could be the reason).

In regards to the world-building, I'm a little wary because they talked up a big game for the Fates story as well, and we all know how they turned out. But I'm cautiously optimistic. From everything we've already seen, they seem to be taking a lot more care with establishing the world and characters. It's a rare thing for me to be genuinely excited about a new game, but this has me excited. I'm hoping it can meet if not surpass the amount of world-building in Tellius and have as few narrative snags.
 

3 hours ago, Druplesnubb said:

It's always embarrassing to read people who think that not giving Fates' continent a name was somehow the biggest problem with that game's worldbuilding or that just having a continent name somehow means that you have better worldbuilding than Fates. 

I don't think anyone genuinely believes this. It's just a hyperbolic comment to say that Fates did a blank on one of the most fundamental things in building a setting; naming it. It's the biggest red flag that they didn't care, something you can understand without even playing the game.

[Onestep]

Man, I got a week off of work, but it might not even be enough to clear a single route if that's the case. That's pretty insane.

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Awakening worldbuilding include everything we got in the first 5 fe games just by virtue of being the same world in a different age. There are lots of awakening places that are clearly Archanea/Valentia places 2000 years after. There are problems of medieval stasis, but if you consider Marth as the FE Jesus is not strange how prevalent his legacy is.

Although being set so far in the future, it doesn't mean that much for Awakening in practice. It's something, better than nothing, but there is little direct continuity. All the old kingdoms are well and dead, its the BSh, Naga, Falchion, Tiki, and "Marth", which are the surviving "relevant" links of the old world to the new.

Jugdral never gets visited, and the 11 holy weapons from it are just wonderful nonsexual fanservice (which Awakening has plenty of). Its idea of physical marks indicating holy bloodlines is all that is truly relevant.

That is still better than Valentia-Valm, which in part due to the NES game's very sparse dialogue, only really contributes a continent. Which wasn't needed, because FE hasn't ever had issues fitting enough stuff on a single continent before or since.

Better than Tales of Symphonia being connected to Tales of Phantasia (a none-too-odd comparison), but how much better I can't quantify without serious contemplation.

[Druplesnubb]

4 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

I don't think anyone genuinely believes this. It's just a hyperbolic comment to say that Fates did a blank on one of the most fundamental things in building a setting; naming it. It's the biggest red flag that they didn't care, something you can understand without even playing the game.

Honestly I'm not really into the idea that you must give every fantasy world a specific name. Our own world is simply called "the earth " because it's made of ground. The Old Norse had a specific name for their world, Midgard, but that was because their mythology had other worlds to compare it to. Also the idea of dividing the world into specific continents with their own names is a European concept and likely wouldn't be as well spread as it is today if it wasn't for colonialism and European intellectual dominance in recent centuries. Actually, one of the parts I really like about Three Houses' worldbuilding so far is that there seems to be a clear historical reason for why Fodlan exists as a concept and why some places are part of it while others aren't.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

7 hours ago, Druplesnubb said:

A lot of people like to exaggerate that Fates worldbuilding is worse than it actually is. By far the most hilarious instance of this is when this trailer for SoV dropped and people got hundreds of likes/upvotes by claiming that that trailer alone had more worldbuilding than all of Fates, somehow completely missing that besides the short blurb about Zofia's decadence literally every single thing in that trailer had a 1:1 counterpart in Fates worldbuilding. From the world being split into two big countries, both countries having their own god, the differing philosophies between them and the barrier between the two.

Similarities between Valentia and "Fateslandia" don't immediately make Valentia worse. That would be a shallow snap judgement to make before Echoes releases, kind of like people saying a time skip in Three Houses is a great idea because FE4 did it. But for all we know the time skip in Three Houses might just be there for the same reason it was there in Awakening, to justify shipping. Awakening needed a year for Lucina to be born (even though baby Lucina never comes up again, nor any other babies). And Three Houses needs a time skip since its cast is often clearly underage. Fates tried to get around time skips by having its "baby oven outrealms" and hoping the player never thinks about how much time it would take for these women to get pregnant and have those kids in the real world. Don't worry about it, time doesn't pass in this universe. Having such a shallow reason for the time skip in this new game would suck, but comparing trailers to fully released games is an unfavorable comparison. Like An Echoes trailer compared to three different versions of a game you can play right now.

Let people upvote what they want to upvote. Yeah people regurgitate things that they've heard, but that's the nature of the internet, not the nature of Fire Emblem. Seeing Fates' ideas done seemingly better in a trailer for a different game just illustrated for people how much better you can execute those ideas with three minutes of effort. And now we can evaluate in full where Echoes does better in its worldbuilding. Fates is full of great ideas, but execution is everything. Years before Fates was announced two of the most common ideas I've heard people suggest for a new game were "can we have a manakete lord?" and "What if there was a route split that changed the entire game as you chose between two warring factions". They're good ideas, people just didn't expect Corrin's...everything or IS monetizing our beloved route splits. Those are the rude awakenings we can potentially get from a good idea.

[Flere210]

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Although being set so far in the future, it doesn't mean that much for Awakening in practice. It's something, better than nothing, but there is little direct continuity. All the old kingdoms are well and dead, its the BSh, Naga, Falchion, Tiki, and "Marth", which are the surviving "relevant" links of the old world to the new.

World building is mostly about irrelevant stuff. You don't need to know that fishing is the main industry of village A wich you only visit because there is a macguffin in it. But knowing that is world building nonetheless. Awakening has a lot of ancient history, wich at leadt is more than what we could say about the Fates continent.

 

[Druplesnubb]

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Similarities between Valentia and "Fateslandia" don't immediately make Valentia worse.

You seem to have completely missed the point. I was talking about how people claimed that that one trailer alone had more worldbuilding in it than all of Fates, which makes no sense when practically all of the worldbuilding in said trailer also existed in Fates.

[NegativeExponents-]

3 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Awakening has a lot of ancient history, wich at leadt is more than what we could say about the Fates continent.

What ancient history? and no, flimsy connections to Archanea and Valentia are not part of its history when non of it is ever brought or inconsistent to the source material with no explanation for said inconsistencies.

Why do taguels and seemingly other forms of beast exist in a continent that previously had none? what actions did Chrom's warmongering father take that caused Plegia to resent them and why is no other country besides Plegia bothered by this? what the hell is Nowi and why is no one surprised to see a dragon of unknown origins in a place where most dragons are dead or sealed away? Talking about sealing away, why was the binding shield left incomplete and scattered across the continent and why has the Dragon's Table been turned into a worshipping place for Grima?

There's more I could list but Awakening has worse world building than Fates who at least has stuff like the concubine wars, Garon's history of being a kind father to his corruption by Anankos, differring places of Nohr and Hoshido such as the Ice Tribe, Cheve, Wind Tribe, Beast's lairs, etc. Anankos's deterioration, among other things... or not but it's still more than Awakening ever gave.

Awakening even ruins two other continents pre-existing lore for no reason.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, Druplesnubb said:

You seem to have completely missed the point. I was talking about how people claimed that that one trailer alone had more worldbuilding in it than all of Fates, which makes no sense when practically all of the worldbuilding in said trailer also existed in Fates.

Then I defer to everything else I said in that post. Unless the point your making is literally that the 3 minute Echoes trailer really does have as much worldbuilding as Fates, then I don't see what you're problem is with upvoted comments making the same claim. Really a lot of what you said is defamation of Fates so I'm not sure what you're trying to argue at this point.