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How do you see Three Houses influencing the series going forward?


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Will Three Houses be a bold, experimental take that fundamentally changes how the series works going forward, like Genealogy of the Holy War?

A cool, nifty side experiment that will have parts cherry-picked from for future games, and maybe individual games expanding on its ideas, but not being how every game will be like going forward, like Gaiden?

Or something different?

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We're bound to get a sort of sequel to it, either directly or how Awakening and Fates are connected. 

But I'm willing to bet the next entry is another Echoes. So many references to FE4 are in this game that it's impossible to ignore.

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Isn't this a little soon? The game is still 12 days from release. Reviews might be coming in now and they might be nice, but general reception hasn't happened at all yet. Maybe this game will be great and glorious, maybe it'll be a calamity, or maybe it'll be a middlin' in-between.

I'm not saying this is a bad idea, it's a fine and thought provoking topic. But its difficult to cast judgement on something one can't play nor watch Let's Plays of.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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If it's wildly successful, they'll continue using the time management elements and deeper control of character growth. You may not always be in a school (Though that's possible with the popularity of stories like that), but you'll be in a position where, as leader, you can tell characters how to grow.

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I think they'll reuse most assets for the next Switch title, but improve some of the textures and details. The focus on a home base for getting to know other characters and getting stat/rank bonuses will probably keep returning. An FE4 remake could give you the choice to split a chapter once a certain objective is achieved and have a mid-chapter save option where you return part of your allies to the castle to keep training/building supports. For FE5/6, the home base could be a moving tent city that expands as the game progresses. Battalions, gambits, chapter-limited spells, calendars, and other new features will return depending on player feedback and if the context is appropriate (likely not in an FE5 remake), which is hard to say until more people get to play FE3H.

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That's hard to speculate on until we see sales data and critical response.  Then again, Echoes did not sell as many copies as previous entries yet still left its mark on this game so maybe Fire Emblem developers are more free-thinking than we give them credit for. It matters just as much whether the developers are satisfied with the finished product. I don't want us to have another interview of "we had a lot of ideas cut from the final product of Three Houses that we now plan to incorporate in insert fire emblem remake here"

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"A bold, experimental take that fundamentally changes how the series works going forward"? I haven't seen anything that would indicate this being the case. Aside from graphically, it seems a fairly safe, iterative step in the series. Not saying that's an inherently bad thing, mind you.

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4 hours ago, Humanoid said:

"A bold, experimental take that fundamentally changes how the series works going forward"? I haven't seen anything that would indicate this being the case. Aside from graphically, it seems a fairly safe, iterative step in the series. Not saying that's an inherently bad thing, mind you.

id say its taking a few risks, new class management system, a heavier focus on unit personalization and relationship building, battalions which seem like a natural step for the series even if im still kinda peeved we didnt get to see formations instead which seemed more interesting. nothing particularly new in regards to strategy gameplay mind but enough to shake things up.

plus this is the first one to actually buckle down and go really in depth with the life sim aspects that have kinda hovered around fire emblem for a while now. if three houses does well i could totally see them implementing stuff like that more often (i kinda wanna sit down with sigurd or marth and have tea, even if it is inane honestly.)

cant see the school thing being a common recurring thing though, but bigger and better bases and a heavier focus on personalization i could totally see being pulled forward as well. 

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probably about as much influence as every previous entry has had on the series thus far, it is not uncommon to see ideas used again, but I do feel that it depends on the general vision for future entries, I think it is too soon to say if we are sitting on a thracia 776 or a genealogy of the holy war with regards to impact on the series proper.

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Hard to tell without having played the game. My best guess would be that the Persona-like time management element will stay and be expanded upon. Since Awakening happend romancing is one of the key elements of Fire Emblem, like it or not.  If we get more than Three Houses and maybe an Echoes entry on the Switch I expect it to be very iterative. Same engine as 3H, same skills & battle system but new setting and chars .

After that it's more the hardware that Nintendo will put out that will shape how new entries look and play. This is a hallmark of Nintendo in-house design. Three Houses looks the way it looks and (if the developers are to be believed) is massive in size, because they treat it as a home console entry rather than a more bite-sized handheld game. 

Let's say we get a new controller after the Switch generation, expect the game to be build around that. We get a AR, expect the functionality to be baked in most of Nintendo games etc. Frankly though with FE you never really know. Radiant Dawn made no use whatsoever of the Wiimote.   

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15 minutes ago, know_naim said:

 Since Awakening happend romancing is one of the key elements of Fire Emblem, like it or not. 

While I am a veteran of the old games (yay 4 ) as much as the new ones I do appreciate the relation management that awakening finally got refocused on.

Genealogy was such a interesting foray into this that I always found it odd how the sequels stripped it down and outright killed it with PoR and RD.

I do not share the sentiment that the Gamecube games are some of the best games that many voice, while I do like them Gameplay, these Aspects are seriously lacking. RD had the worst support system ever, it also was way too long and unfocused and it nearly killed the series.

why the quote and the rant? Well, the thing is that i do see a lot of these sentiments being voiced and while I do not share the distaste some people share about fanservice that Fates brought (including the petting, i have the Japanese version and there is nothing problematic with it period, the controversy was way oveblown) I do see that Fanservice in itself is also not a real part of Fire emblem nor does benefit the series in any way that it should become a staple of the series.

 

Fates however, while having said Fanservice and the absolutely worst story (and localisation) in the damn series, made some of the best efforts to revamp the systems of the Series and make a challenging, varied and Balanced experience and I really appreciated that (let's ignore statues for now ...).

After backlash, some earned some not imho, we got SoV which I found incredibly bland compared to Fates the stylistic direction, some of the balancing the story pacing... boring dungeons, bad characters

I do not blame it too much as it is a remake of a old game, i also liked it but it is certainly one of the weaker titles.

And what do we see? A regression to the old Support system.

This seems to be the case in three houses as well doesn't it? if the statements we have regarding the support levels, with some even ending in a B rating (which is especially wierd due to the low amount of characters per house, but oh well) this feels way more like a regression than an advancement.

So what will Three houses bring to the series?

My take is that it will loose the goodwill of a lot of players introduced in the awakening/fates era (as much as some of the genealogy players) as a lot of the systems that brought them to the series are lacking. (Also, if they lure some heroes players over they too will be probably disappointed as it also relies heavily on fan service but... well.). This includes the non-customisable Byleth, also regressive even more as he/she doesn't even speak hardly a real protagonist either.

On the other hand I really hope that at least the Strategy focus crowd can hope that it can be an excellent strategy game, from what I have seen however I'm slightly worried due to map design, the both open class system with a lot of flexibility that on the same time regresses back to sex locked classes and railroads with traits and low character pool.

What I am really looking forward to is the Story i wish they had the guts to make it a Full on War Epic and from my point of view that is where the games currently looks best, however both a "school" setting and the last entries in the series still makes me a bit worried.

I am really looking forward to the game, and while the critique i already have sounds harsh it comes from a place that hopes that I will be proven wrong.

The Legacy however of the game however will depend on its success, if my worries are warranted then the series will revert back to it's old values which nearly killed the series if it flops it may spell its end anyways.

I Simply do not understand why all three things can't exist together. Good Story, Relationship management (with childs, or without everything is fine depending on the story) and a satisfyingly challenging Strategy game?

4 was the only one that seemingly managed it.

/rant over

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So here's my bet :

- They keep the batalion mechanic, or at least the concept of main units each leading a small group of soldiers and expand upon it / make it look better;

- they revisit the setting of Fodlan in a sequel/prequel/interquel/whatever : the sheer amount of worldbuilding is just too good to waste it on a single game.

- I can see them keeping the skill strength/weakness system to further differentiate characters beyond their base, growth & personal skill.

Edited by Modirufa6317
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28 minutes ago, Lord of Riva said:

ates however, while having said Fanservice and the absolutely worst story (and localisation) in the damn series, made some of the best efforts to revamp the systems of the Series and make a challenging, varied and Balanced experience and I really appreciated that (let's ignore statues for now ...).

Just thought I'd point out fates localization is better than awakenings and echoes added a bunch of memes in the translation like awakening too.

I think that it's a bit to early to say how much of an impact three houses until it comes out and even then it's hard to say what they'll actually keep, pair up looked like it might be a feature they'd keep using after it returned in fates, but echoes and three houses didn't bring it back and the next game probably won't either. So even if battalions or having full control on what classes the characters are come back in the next game it could just be something they use in a few games and then it disappears for the most part.

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6 minutes ago, Cc920 said:

Just thought I'd point out fates localization is better than awakenings and echoes added a bunch of memes in the translation like awakening too.

Let's say the localisations were bad in any case, it may be that the story of Fates is just so cringy in itself that it stood out more for me. 🙂

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It really depends on how much of a banger this entry ends up being.

If it's a moderate success, I won't expect it to be imitated much until maybe a decade or so later.  They'll still use the basic engine, but they won't try to

If it's a massive success, what I hope they'll take it as is fans of the series enjoying political intrigue and moral complexity (that's done correctly, hopefully).  Though I feel what they might take from this is more the gameplay elements.  Maybe not the school system, but the way you raise your entire army, use battalions to aid your units, and combat arts/skills to flavor up your attacks so it isn't always just a case of "I hit you, you hit me".  I could also see them reusing the beast bosses' mechanics, because they're a fairly good way of making bigger enemies more dangerous and fun to fight.  And they may also use the three-way enemy system, where the red and yellow armies are actually hostile with each other as well as with you, to make conflicts more interesting.  In fact, I hope they do, because I'm honestly sick of cases such as the opening chapter of Fates: Revelation or Chapter 13 of the same game where there are supposedly three hostile factions fighting, yet those hostile with you all just pile dog on you instead of fighting each other.

Either way, I can't help but expect a Genealogy remake because of how the story (they referred to the three house leaders, but I primarily think of the crests) seems to be so abundantly inspired by that game.  Fates was inspired by Gaiden's primary conflict of Zofia vs. Rigel, and then lo and behold we got a remake of that game.

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I hope they will wait a while with tve Genealogy remake precisely because of the similarities to Three Houses. Between the main characters' backstory, the crests/holy blood and the dramatic timeskip there's just too much that would make new players say "this game is just like Three Houses". I think a Genealogy remake would have an easier time standing on its own if you waited a bit longer to do it.

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With the game still not released yet, it is difficult to say what will be influencing the series to the future. I do expect at least the next Fire Emblem game to be similar to 3 Houses in design. Where most aspects of units are customizable. Also an increase in the amount of visual novel storytelling with alternative routes focused on a certain character.

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It's way too early to really define what's going to be accepted by the masses.

We, here, are the enfranchised fan, we're a key part of the game's success but not where the voice will really be heard.

My early bet is lower cast size on non-Echo games, since romance from Awakening was a big add to the lay player, a lower cast pool means less of a strain on the writing. Which is really what hurt Fates having so much cast and so many supports to write it needed a ton of resources (Awakening had this problem but less so). That way if they want to add bi options you still won't hit the massive nonsensical support convo counts of Fateswakening.

My second bet is we'll be seeing managerial (teacher) mechanics from here out. The ability to better sculpt and hone your team into what you want. It improves replayability and adds depth to team building. Also it offsets the fact that my first item is a decreased character count. Those seem like the two major pushes in this game separate from the series as a whole? That'll do the most good.

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13 hours ago, Humanoid said:

"A bold, experimental take that fundamentally changes how the series works going forward"? I haven't seen anything that would indicate this being the case. Aside from graphically, it seems a fairly safe, iterative step in the series. Not saying that's an inherently bad thing, mind you.

I wouldn't call a lot of what's in the game safe, drastically overhauling how the game structure even works, along with not even having the usual identifiable archetypes. 

We have a FE here, where most of our cast is seen out the gate even in terms of beginning gameplay (unusual), where we have some Langrisser like mechanics (the battalions but they don't work like Langrisser either).  We have a massive focus on character customization like say Final Fantasy 5, taking inspiration from Fire Emblem Echoes in how a number of things got directly taken, like Combat Arts. The weapon triangle being a vastly under-focused aspect of the combat. 

DnD like magic where you can only use spells a set time before not being able to, no purchasing and learning them on level up. Removing pair up (the new system is more like an exp share), and S supports (outside of Byleth). Which was fundamentally what the new fanbase was used to.

We have a Princess Maker like calendar management system, a Hub World that we can explore in full 3D. 

I wouldn't call this traditional or safe in any sense of the word. 

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