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Re Working Three House's story


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Three Houses story would have been a massive let down let for me if it was made by any other game developers but its pretty much what you'd expect from IS at the point.  Three House may be more ambitious then some of the previous titles but that just open the narrative up for more convelution.  I'd like to mention the only route ive played is Verdant Wind, the rest I've read sysnopses on but the finer details are lacking.  TheI'll start off by listing the main problems.

 

First up we have Byleth who's the worst rendition of the Avatar IS could possible come up with.  Byleth neither allows you to imprint your personilty on them or offers an intersting personality of their own.  Essentially you get the worst of both world here with Byleth's lack of personility being their personality.  Through out playing the game my main thought was the story would funtion allot better wuthout them.  The three lords are interesting enough in their own rights there's no need to take the spotlight of them to give this non character a chosen one story.

Secondly Rhea and those that slither in the dark being imortal beings playing 4D chess for 1000's of years or takes away the agency of the main charcters.  Havign the entities takes makes the main charcters seem small and unimportant.  The story would be much more grounded if Rhea is just the Pope and TWSITD are just a cult who try to manipulate Fodlan in the shadows.

Thirdly the routes lack logical alliances.  There is absolutely no reason for Dimitri to attack Claude in VW but he does anyways because the plot wants a three way.  Ethier give the charcters a reason to be pitted against each other or have the natural alliances form.

 

Now what id have done differently.

First of all would change Byleth from the chosen one to a regular mercenery.  The plot wont centre around them and their importance around in the story will be based on thier combat skill, leadership and tactical ability rather being the second coming.

Secondly would change the Fodlan's backstory to be more similar to lie.  Nemisis was an Almyran who conquerd Fodlan and enslaved their people.  Seiros and the ten elites were blessed by the Goddess with crests and given holy weapons to fight back.  After defeating Nemisis Seiros is then pronoucned Queen of Fodlan.  Generations later the descendents of the elites fight over Fodlan ending with the territories being split and the Church of Serois being founded to keep the peace.

I would give the main lords conflicting goal.  Edlegard want to take over Fodlan and get rid of the church.  Claude wants to be King of Fodlan and Almyra and wants to  open up the border, despite not beleiving in the religion hes happy to use the church for his gain.  Revenge will be Dimitri's main motivator but when the war breaks out he also doesn't want to let either of the other two lords to rule over the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.  Rhea's just a regular Pope who belives the church is needed to keep the peace and spread the good word on Seiros.

I'd also change the Leicster Alliance structure.  They're just an alliance of inderpendent lords, some more powerful then other but no leader.

Would change White Clouds by dropping the Flame emporer.  Have the plot revolve around disgruntled nobles without crests led by Miklan and unhappy with the central church and and the value they put on crests.  The are supported by the Western church who also dissagree with the central church.  The conflict will culminate with Milkan gathering his forces and leading an attack on the Church only to be defeated.  TTSITD will be a cult of extremists that perform crest surgeries to keep the bloodlines of the noble house pure.  They'll have little precesnce in the first act and mainly be invloved in the second.

Edlegard wanted to side with Mikklan but couldnt as he wasn't the empress yet.  She bides her time and builds up the empires army until her father dies and she ascends the throne.  Then she launches her attack on the church.  She then attacks the Holy Kingdom as they wont stand for the church being destoryed whilst the Leciester lords swear fealty to Edlegard.  It isnt until Claude comes out as the heir to Almyra and brings Almyran forces that the leicster lords swear to him.  Dimmitri barely survives the attacks on the Kingdom but is saved by TTSITD.  They brainwash him into a crazy revenge machine against Eddlegard as they can't have their beloved crest system destoryed.

 

I'll write the rest up later, as I haven't got all the details figured out yet but overall I'd say that set up the conflict to more balanced and doesn't pile everyone up on Edlegard.

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I think I'm the only player in the world who love Byleth as he is.


THREE HOUSES SPOILERS (I didn't played Verdant Wind so Idk if they talk about all of the lords backstory in that route, read this at your own risk)

Spoiler

Ok, I get it, he's basically a fucking god and that's kinda meh for an avatar, or even just for a protagonist, since he become so overpowered he becomes even boring.
But I actually like the fact he's basically just a corpse, a vessel for a goddess and nothing more, making his story one of the most tragic out of the characters in-game.
Claude was bullied and rejected for his whole life for his origins, and that's sad.
Dimitri did lost all his beloved ones and was betrayed by the only member of the family he had left, and that made him lose his fragile mind, that's even more sad.
Edelgard was used for inhuman experiments, leaving her with such wounds which led her to become a cold-blooded, crazy killers, and that' probably the saddeststory of the three lords.
But Byleth? He is not even a person, he is just a slave of the Church of Seiros, he is basically just a corpse for Sothis revival. That's not only sad, that's tragic, it basically make him an useless being without the goddes inside him.
I would have LOVED if the writers decided to make an arc about this, about Byleth slowly realizing he is nothing but a vessel, and that his entire life was taken away the moment Rhea placed the Crest of Flames indie him. Yes, she did it to let him live, as Sitri asked before dying, but was that the right choice? Is it better to die, or to live a life that's not even yours, as a slave of a greater being?
Such a thing would have make Byleth even more interesting as a character, in particoular in Crimson Flower, since he *Crimson Flower spoilers*

Spoiler

ended up killing Rhea and so his divine self, returning to a normal, human being.
And that would have at least made a good excuse to choose Edelgard over Rhea, because I honestly think there's no really a good excuse to do so in the game if not because you want to play that particoular route or you just hate the Church because it's a religious association.

I even like him a silent character. He looks like the most stoic, badass avatar I did ever saw in a videogame; Corrin was a dumbass and Robin, as much as I like him, was kinda disappointing, always the good guy and so on...
And Kris was kinda forgettable.
Maybe some dialogues from him would have made him more "human" (kinda ironic...), but by being always silent, with such a serious face and voice, he really screams "badassery" and... in a certain way, steadiness. Unlike Corrin, who was a crybaby whatever path you decided to choose, always regreting his decisions, Byleth looks like a firm guy, and that's something you want to see in a leader.
I was kinda afraid they would have pulled another stupid avatar always whining about his choices (... like Corrin did), in particoular in Crimson Flower, but by making him a mute avatar they just did cut the problem out. Yes, it is lazy writing, but I prefer this version of Byleth to a bad-written one.

 

Quote

I would give the main lords conflicting goal.

I think the fact they all have the same goals but wants to use differents way to achieve it is the best part of the story.
I mean, all of them wants a peaceful and unite Fòdlan where justice reigns, but they have such different methods they end up fighting for it. And I honestly like it, because in this way there is not really a "better goal" in any route.

 

 

I want to point that my english is not so good since I am not an english native speaker, so if my comments is confusionary or it has a really bad grammar, let me know, please.

 

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Nemesis being an Almyrian actually would have been great for making him feel like he has more of a purpose being in Claude's ending. And Rhea's condemnation of Almyrians as heathens would come off as much more petty and vindictive as opposed to just generally being the sort of things religions do.

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The story really doesn’t put that much focus on Byletb. Byleth is very beneficial to the war and whatever side they join but the story is barely about them beyond a “oh and Byleth was there too, very strong and good”.with the exception of Silver Snow but that’s one route and wouldn’t require messing with them on every route.

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i feel like this is less trying to work with whats there and more so just tossing out the babys with the bath water.

for byleth really all you need to do there is let them actually be the character they're alluded to be as someone who begins the game emotionally detached, sheltered by jeralts paranoia, and generally unresponsive into someone gaining independence and becoming more emotional and responsive through their role as a professor. Then you get the route split, silver snow focuses the most on that growing sense of self person in byleth, azure moon and verdant wind are more so about their respective lords and how their struggles shape byleths own self actualization, and crimson flower is the route were byleth instead reverts and becomes more emotionally unresponsive and dependent to symbolize and emphasize that routes nature as a truly self destructive one.

theres really no need or reason to have nemesis be from ancient almyra, his general design already doesnt mesh well with the established almyran cultural emulations [persia] well nemesis is more so going for a conan the barbarian look. Personally, if i had to pin him id pin him to ancient sreng instead but its not exactly relevant either way. The church, or rather the governments and people of fodlan, don't need much else in terms of reasoning for being wary of almyra outside of almyra being aggressive and expansionist in its history with fodlan.

i do agree that twistd don't add much though, but i feel the better solution then nutering them even more would be to just remove them outright and have edelgard/hubert be solely responsible for the specific atrocities the group otherwise carried out. They might as well be after all. Emphasize the whole flame emperor and human experimentation thing instead of just dropping it once the timeskip hits effectively.

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On 4/11/2021 at 4:34 AM, Francis said:

I think I'm the only player in the world who love Byleth as he is.

I like Byleth as well too. I find Byleth's lack of characterization and emotion to be interesting because there's an in-world reason for it. It felt like IntSys had a problem, and then they turned it into a strength instead of a weakness. Well, they tried to anyways. 

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On 4/12/2021 at 12:40 AM, NobodiePichu said:

i do agree that twistd don't add much though, but i feel the better solution then nutering them even more would be to just remove them outright and have edelgard/hubert be solely responsible for the specific atrocities the group otherwise carried out. They might as well be after all. Emphasize the whole flame emperor and human experimentation thing instead of just dropping it once the timeskip hits effectively.

So in your version of the story Edelgard would be trying to change the world so that nobody would have to suffer from human experimentation like she did by... doing human experimentation herself? 🤔

At the moment there are only two times human experimentation is actually needed for the plot, instead of just being something attributed to evil people because they're evil:

-It's done by Rhea in order to revive Sothis

-It's done by TWISTD to create their Seiros-killer (Lysithea presumably being a earlier test run).

Needless to say, Edelgard and Hubert can not be responsible for any of these. If you're removing TWISTD then the need for the second point is gone, so either you also remove the experiments on Lysithea/Edelgard entirely (a rather drastic change to their characters and Edelgard's motivation in particular), or you attribute them to someone else, e.g. Arundel, as part of a political power struggle within the Empire. I could definitely see the latter working, but it's a pretty serious rewrite.

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12 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

So in your version of the story Edelgard would be trying to change the world so that nobody would have to suffer from human experimentation like she did by... doing human experimentation herself? 🤔

At the moment there are only two times human experimentation is actually needed for the plot, instead of just being something attributed to evil people because they're evil:

-It's done by Rhea in order to revive Sothis

-It's done by TWISTD to create their Seiros-killer (Lysithea presumably being a earlier test run).

Needless to say, Edelgard and Hubert can not be responsible for any of these. If you're removing TWISTD then the need for the second point is gone, so either you also remove the experiments on Lysithea/Edelgard entirely (a rather drastic change to their characters and Edelgard's motivation in particular), or you attribute them to someone else, e.g. Arundel, as part of a political power struggle within the Empire. I could definitely see the latter working, but it's a pretty serious rewrite.

Human experimentation wasn't exactly happening on mass for it to really be a cornerstone of her rhetoric. She could just do it because she's meant to actually have a point about societal inequality.

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On 4/14/2021 at 9:27 AM, Jotari said:

Human experimentation wasn't exactly happening on mass for it to really be a cornerstone of her rhetoric. She could just do it because she's meant to actually have a point about societal inequality.

I wouldn't be so sure it wasn't more widespread when we have such a limited view on Fodland and TWISTD.  Heck I wouldn't be surprised if people outside of TWISD are doing some experimenting given how desperate people are for crest. Haneman's backstory for instance involves his sister being mistreated because of the fact she has crest and wasn't producing offspring with crests and that was when Edelgard and the rest of the students were babies. If people were that desperate for crests back then you better believe some of the more evil people were willing to do even more to get crest bearing children even if they never met with Thales and co.

Going back to Lysethia and her being experimented on we don't even know how many people where experimented on before they started on her. We just know she is one of the successful ones but we have no info on how many people were before her or after. Just because they succeed with her doesn't mean they stopped testing to ensure that the method wasn't a one time success or a success unique to Lysethia.

Edited by vikingsfan92
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Hell that even the point of Mercedes and her brother Emile ( Jeritza) the death Knight. He killed their father when their mother couldn’t keep getting pregnant and give children with crest and their dad was thinking of raping 10 year old Mercedes.  Jeritza killed and developed a split persona that is the death Knight from it. That was when edelgard was a newborn. Imagine the presente 

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