Lynsanity

They know exactly what they're doing. Getting the biggest introvert in the game to open up to you is going to be like crack for a lot of people.

Support conversations finally confirmed. Not that there was much doubt, but we hadn't actually seen any footage of them until this point. BERNIE SUPPORT ALERT There's also a clear view of Gilbert, for anyone clamouring for him.

I've been thinking along these lines too. In the Rogersbase preview, the Nintendo rep is talking about Mercedes and hints that you may have to kill her if you pick a different house, but that recruiting her would be a way of "saving" her and changing that fate. It was surprising because I hadn't heard Nintendo say anything that explicit about having to kill other students yet. I couldn't tell if Chico from the Treehouse was being entirely literal or just echoing the sort of choices that were hyped up in Fates. But anyway, if you do end up fighting/killing a lot of the unrecruited students, 1) that's still pretty dark and 2) Thani's source could have been speaking about Lysithea dying in their playthrough of another house. I really don't feel like IS will bake in unavoidable deaths of your playable characters, with how much the gameplay invests in each one this time around. The roster isn't that big, and it would undercut player choices.

Well there's a neutral animation where Byleth looks at their hand like they're surprised to exist. I hadn't noticed this before but the fast-travel in this game is actually REALLY fast, like instant basically. Which is impressive because the engine has to load in an entire floor of the monastery. Similarly there's a "run" button when Byleth is exploring that makes them really hoof it. They're an olympic level athlete. Lysithea requires Mag and Faith to be recruited. Was that known already? The new PlayerEssence video cut off right before you saw her requirements, lol. The characters have some voice lines before you even speak to them. The player runs past Raphael who can be heard laughing to himself like a goof.

Keep in mind you can venture out and do optional missions every weekend of the month, so assuming the battles refresh often enough, you could end up doing 36+ in the single pre-timeskip year. It appears to be only a regular and a + rank, with no - ranks. So it's two times as many rankings, to account for how many more ways you have to build weapon rank now. I think if you set a student's focus to a weapon, then Instruct them in it, in addition to what they use in battle, you'll actually still go through those weapon ranks faster than before. Which could be useful because promotions are locked behind weapon ranks now. That said I do think the game will feel longer than other Fire Emblems, if only because of how much freedom you're given in how to spend your gameplay time.

So many big mysteries in this game. Who is the Flame Emperor? Where did Byleth’s crest come from? Why does Catherine’s sprite have that hat?

Not liking the implications of “Whose past we know nothing about”, it feels like a line lifted from Frederick, about Robin. Is Byleth not the child of a famous knight? Why would they not be known to the church at all? Did Jeralt raise them in the woods? The lengths they’ll go to keep the protagonist from having a history...

I’d love if they started showing post-timeskip portraits and footage of students, with maybe a blurb about what they get up to in the 5 year absence. The screenshots we got were nice but until I see their 2D portraits I don’t feel like I’ve really seen their designs. That might be too spoilery for some people, but it would certainly help keep the hype train rolling. If they do 3 a week that would only be time to show about half the students anyway, leaving some surprises.

Ouch, that Hubert HP. Lv 5, and 4 HP lower than Bernadetta and Petra, who are Lvs 3 and 4. Uh oh my guy. There's no seminar for helping students to be more thicc

Yeah, it's weird that armor knights are more associated with axes in this game. Luckily, for class change exams you don't need to meet every requirement to have a good pass rate. Bernie with a C in armor and an E in axes would probably pass into armor knight just fine (and then make use of her lance strength!) It might be tougher to get her into Fortress though. I'm still hoping for a 4th tier class that's both heavy armor and riding, or even heavy armor and magic-enabled.

The group tasks (weeding, stable duty, and sky watch) aren't Free Time tasks, they're during the week's instruction. They seem pretty clearly geared towards covering the 3 skill levels that you can't build in any way on the battlefield, namely heavy armor, flying and riding. They're pretty much the only way to train skill in those areas. Compare the selection screens for group tasks and free time: Weeding has armor rank listed for the students in your house, right on the selection screen. Choir practice doesn't list faith, only motivation level. That's probably because Free Time tasks all have a variety of purposes, like building supports (even with students not in your house), motivation, and also skills. But not every one of them is related to a skill, such as dinner parties. Now, the group tasks do grant support and other bonuses too. And it's true that blue arrows are used all over the game, so we don't have hard confirmation that Bernie has a strength in armor. But I'm almost positive that the arrows in the group task screen indicate skill proficiencies. Btw we know Edelgard has a strength in armor in Black Eagles as well.... and of course she's the only one you can't see in that screenshot, lol.

In before her post-timeskip design has Jeralt’s haircut. I dunno, between supports, character paralogues, dinner convos, stroll convos, choir practice, the anonymous problem box, lost items, and the rest, that’s a looot of text boxes the writers will have to fill. I’ll be impressed if they can do it without falling back on gimmicks like in the past.

Hear, hear. It's easy to fall into the trap of "OK here's what everyone looks like age-progressed by 5 years", but everybody ages differently, and I'm glad that many of the changes are more subtle. It's fun to have a disaster like Dimitri here and there or a late growth spurt like Caspar, but lots of people don't change much from ages like 16-25. I like Felix's update for instance - he already seemed mature and self-assured before, so it's cool that his look didn't change much.

Very interesting that all of the crests from the 10 Elites are with students from the Blue Lions and Golden Deer, and none from Adrestia. Except for Mercedes, who is notably some kind of refugee from Adrestia. There must be some plot relevance to that. Is Adrestia historically the baddies? Or the opposite, and the Elites weren't so Great to begin with? No wonder Edelgard thinks the crests are to blame... Also I'm starting to wonder if the initial info we got on Felix wasn't a typo. He's literally the only character in the game outside of the protagonist who starts with a major crest??

The hidden talents definitely have my eye. Especially when they're like the Hubert example given, where he actually gets a unique attack if you invest in lance training. I would feel like I was missing out if I didn't unlock that. The added layer of difficulty in training up a unit with low attack to use physical weapons, only for a payoff later, feels very Fire Emblem to me. Like every unit in this game will have a little delayed gratification Donnel in them. Except Bernadetta. Regardless of her hidden talents I'm making her an armor knight archer. Hey, maybe it could be good! (It won't be good.)

Well a “romantic” is one way of putting it. I might use a different word for someone who is like “Hey teacher, there sure are a lot of pretty girls at this school eh? Such as [proceeds to list all the girls with big boobs]”

I know what you mean, but the first cutscene we saw from the game literally involved rewinding time after a ruffian attack. Sothis is a central character and has timey-wimey powers that let you undo turns, so it's not a big stretch to think the game could escalate those ideas with time travel. I actually like it! I mean black is a neutral tone and the main complementary color there is the light red or pink details on the armor, which goes great with light green. We've seen that with Tiki's design, and those colors might actually be an intentional homage or hint to the character's background. But if your main problem is with the black then maybe the whole outfit should be red and pink

I kind of hope it gets romanized to Ignaz, that feels more distinctive. Maybe then I'll stop confusing it with Ingrid.

I too was hoping for a Lucina or Mulan or (perhaps most appropriately) Pidge from Voltron situation, if for no other reason than to achieve Thanos voice ~perfect balance~. But there’s a couple big strikes against that theory: - What would their motivation be? The bio makes it clear Ignace is the 2nd son, so there’s no succession issue. It could be to get into Garreg Mach, but the school is totally co-ed. Heck, one of Ignace’s classmates is a 15 year old girl. - If Ignace was worried about passing as a boy, they would probably make more of an effort, y’know? Like even !Marth was more masculine. - Shotacon is a thing, and we know IS likes to have something for everybody.

Big 1st party games on Switch thus far with doggos in them: - Breath of the Wild - Mario Odyssey - Fire Emblem: Three Houses

This is part of why I don’t think we should be taking the “war between houses” direction as 100% confirmed. In particular, the detail that you can only recruit 1 student per house is still the least believable part of this leak to me. We’ve seen plenty of interaction between the houses already, including supports. IS is unlikely to spend all this game time characterizing these charming kids, just to make you kill 2/3rds of them. Even Fates didn’t go that far, and it was more telegraphed, and you barely had any interaction with the non-royal units of the other nation (certainly not supports). It was all they could manage to set up a sad boss or two like Flora. I’m not holding my breath for a fakeout that big. Yes, the emphasis on peace between nations is setting up a conflict, but that doesn’t mean all the characters in the game will be at fatal arms against each other. They could just as well be on the same side against a big bad or trying to prevent full-scale conflict. Ultimately IS knows the player wants to feel heroic, not bummed out.

I didn't notice Felix is a +5 damage effect, that sounds amazing. He looks to be a fast myrmidon type, so if he's doubling enemies frequently (or just equipped with gauntlets) it'll actually be +10? And all you're giving up is a battalion, which he has a weakness in anyway? That really makes Hilda's super conditional +3 effect look like trash in comparison. Of course, he could have low strength growths. But that skill would still be enough to push a strength-screwed unit from bad to usable.

I think 9 is far too few for an entire arc of the game. In most Fire Emblems you're controlling more than that by like the 5th battle. And what happens if you lose a couple characters with permadeath on? Fire Emblem has always been designed with unit redundancy for that reason. So either you go without that for prolonged stretches of the game, or there's an unprecedented number of characters in Three Houses, taken all together. That's what I'm skeptical about. Designing and writing characters is a lot of work.

The combination of an unavoidable character death, and only getting to recruit ONE student from each other house, just seems impossible to me. Where the heck are all your playable characters going to come from? I’ll be happy if there’s a sizable number of characters we haven’t even glimpsed yet, but how many are we supposing IS has developed? To get to the usual 25+ characters in a Fire Emblem run, after starting with 8, then recruiting 2, then having 1 get a plot death... will it be Lowman Emblem? Will there be 15 unique post-house characters for just one route, some of which are presumably unique to the Blue Lions path, or Golden Deer path, etc... Did IS develop like 50 new characters for this game, and what level of characterization can we expect for each one if that’s the case? Elements of this leak are very credible but math and Occam’s razor are really pointing towards all the students being recruitable, and those 24 making up the bulk of the cast. The pace of character reveals lines up with that as well. I remember IS leaving some characters unspoiled for past games, but half the cast?

I wonder if the Flame Emperor's name and the Pokemon TCG fire symbols on his epaulettes, as well as the RBY color scheme of the game's heroes, suggests the existence of an Ice Emperor and Thunder Emperor.