Cysx

I definitely think we'll have generics, in fact we have already seen generic soldiers, priests and students roaming about, primarily in the first trailer, at 1:10 for the student... aaah screw it have a shot: As for more unique npcs, it's hard to say at this point. The main issue is that since everybody's wearing a variation of the same uniform, there's very little reason to say the ones I brought up earlier couldn't be playable characters we simply didn't get introduced to imo. I don't think things look that boring myself, though we did get way too many dark classroom shots this time around. Oh and also, the japanese trailer has a different angle for the Leonie and Raphael scene, which reveals an additional student originally hidden by Byleth: Admittedly, that's starting to make a lot of them.

教員補正 Looks correct. Translates as "teacher correction"... Not that helpful, but it seems like it's tied to Byleth in some way... maybe we'll get to pick stats Byleth will be especially good at teaching? Or maybe it's tied to his or her current class? Edit: Oh, whoops, apologies... I did read most of your analysis... guess I missed that part somehow. At least we think alikeXD Thanks for the precision.

I had just noticed that too, actually. After several people pointed out differences in the japanese trailer I took a look, and that's one of them. I'm definitely not sold on + ranks being additional intermediary ones though, but eh, we'll see. But now I'm curious about what the kanji besides the hand translates to... save me, internet! Both of those seem possible, though the slow progression problem remains. I guess the values could change with time/levels, but as it stands, going through four full weapon ranks to get to C for example, sounds... lengthy. To me anyway. Edit: One could be use experience and one could be the "teacher points" or whatever they are, but that sounds a bit confusing for the same progress bar. Yeah, not too sure about that one.

Yeah, frankly, I don't think that's happening either. It makes more sense for each house to get equal representation. Perhaps 8 isn't actually the magical number like The DanMan said, and the Black eagles roster itself is still incomplete. Who knows.

Yeah, not sure I agree either. And also, while I definitely see the Hogwarts parallels, there don't seem to be any grades, and age doesn't seem to matter. Apparently, if you can learn how to fight, you can study there. Plus, we have a bunch of supposedly grown men that got revealed already, namely these guys:

I'm not really disputing that 12+ weapons is potentially happening(though a lot of the ones you are citing weren't readily available to the player and would have cluttered the shops if they were; and there's little reason to believe legendary weapons will require anything less than max rank), it's more like... that'd make everything way more complicated for basically no reason. I really doubt that they went for that.

I can definitely agree. If anything it was relief to see everyone making their own list generally agreeing. But we could all be wrong still. As I said somewhere else, I'm not too willing to assume that those two girls are part of the playable cast. They get bonus points for being confirmed Golden Deer, but unidentified students showing up back to the camera is just way too common in that trailer. And there's the matter of the other two behind Sylvain at 2:53. I'm not convinced they went ahead and created 3D models for unplayable characters, though that's obviously possible still. They could also be enemies. I do still think that Ashe is a Blue lion, just, him joining Hilda and purple in trailer 1 feels pretty significant as well.

I think the fact that the black eagles are repeatedly and distinctively shown to have 8 members is clearly at the center of most of our reasonings, for sure. And it does seem like a fitting number. I do think there's a solid chance that's how it will end up being for all three, I just don't want to jump the gun too much when there are some contradicting elements as well.

That's an interesting take on it, and would definitely make the earlygame considerably less overwhelming than if everyone could use everything. To be fair, if the strengths and the ranks are unrelated we're left with nothing to prove that D+ doesn't exist afaik... but outside of that I can definitely get behind this explanation. It's a bit of a roundabout way of communicating things, though. Yes, my main problem with that is... will there really be enough weapons to justify having in-between ranks to the 5 or 6 we already are bound to get? Sounds both overcomplicated and a bit unrealistic. The ability to use forges definitely looks like a possible explanation. But, another reason I'm not sure about intermediate ranks is that Petra's kill only gave her 3 weapon exp in swords, and that might be with a 1.5x bonus if it's one of her strengths, which seems likely as she apparently starts at D. Similarly, Dorothea needed a focus and a strength to go from 4 exp to 9 in reason magic, which is still not that much. In a context where you'd need to go through E and E+ to reach D, those gains seem very low to me.

For reference, here's a regular E and a D: These E+ seem to appear on weapon skills the character has a blue arrow pointing up on, which is referred to as a "strength" by the game and gives an exp boost; but either it's unrelated, or I don't see the advantage in getting an exp boost if your special rank requires more exp too. And if it's unrelated, well, I'm just not quite sure what they're about.

That's what I thought originally, but this is somewhat contradicted by there being two more characters visible in the Blue lions classroom(if it really is that): That doesn't guarantee anything but it's worth considering. I'm also not sure the two girls we see from the back in the Golden Deer scene will necessarily be playable(I think they will, I'm just not sure), because we see way more unidentified backs throughout the trailer than the reasonable amount of unrevealed student units could be, I feel: As a result, as long as they're not put in focus, I feel like it's unsafe to assume someone will be a part of the playable roster. Which goes for the two I pointed out above as well I suppose, though at least they have models. Finally there's also this character in the back to consider: ...Which I just realized could be Mercedes, but eh.

Who knows, the short promoted shot we see of him is still a magic user, apparently. Bows and magic are a pretty rare combination, but the system we've been shown seems like it'd allow it, at least in their starter class. Outside of that, purple haired gentleman seems to be using a lance, judging from his stance. You're right! I must have been in full tunnel vision mode to miss that. Especially considering how many times I've watched the original trailer. Hmmm, guess there'll always be time to update the thread it it's confirmed incorrect. For now there seems to be a consensus, like you said. I'll drop the part about Hilda and purple guy in the reasoning though. It doesn't make sense as a result. Sorry in advance if I'm misleading everybody.

Manaketes are probably happening, but the only "beast" we see is a dragon... and outside of that, they might. They weren't into beast units lately(until recently), if Heroes and Warriors are anything to go by. Echoes as well, even though that was to be expected.

That sounds a bit hasty to say, considering we know nothing about anyone's personality or background at this point. I joked about the academy being only for the rich before, but I don't actually think all of these are nobles... despite their starting class saying so. The narration didn't make it sound that way, in any case.

Until we know what the house decision entails, it's really tough to say. I doubt that choosing the Dark eagles would make everyone else inaccessible, that's way too many characters left in the dust, buuuuut by the time you get them, they may not in the base noble class anymore. Still, there's many of them already, enough to make up a good part of the playable cast. So in a way yes, the students are the bulk of your army, but also no, only the first ones will be customizable trainees. And... I'd be fine with that.

Very quick disclaimer, there is now a dedicated character page in the Three Houses section of the site, it's a pretty good place to go if you want more than just portraits: https://serenesforest.net/three-houses/pre-release/characters/ Black Eagles: Edelgard: Post-timeskip: Hubert: Dorothea: Ferdinand: Bernadetta: Caspar: Petra: Linhardt: Blue Lions: Dimitri: Post-timeskip: Dedue: Felix: Mercedes: Ashe: Annette: Sylvain: Ingrid: Golden Deer: Claude: Post timeskip: Lorenz: Hilda: Raphael: Lysithea: Ignatz: Marianne: Leonie: Protagonist: Byleth: Byleth v2.0...?: Sothis: Church of Seiros/Knights of Seiros: Rhea: Seteth: Tomas: Manuela: Hanneman: Jeritza: Jeralt: Catherine: Alois: Gilbert: Shamir: Etc: Seiros: Nemesis: Thales: Soron: Klonie: Flame Emperor: Kostas: Death Knight: Lonato: Flayn: Cyril: Rodrigue: ???: Anna: Anna:

Just to address the samey outfits/lack of armor complaints real quick, keep in mind that most of what we saw likely was earlygame stuff, and characters seem to pretty clearly begin in trainee/villagers classes of sorts, which may or may not last very long. Also: ... so basically I wouldn't worry about it too much.

It was as low effort as it gets. But there's little reason to think they'd be in charge when it comes to Three Houses' plot. Not that this guarantees a good plot either, but, you know.

Something interesting is how little the two trailers complete one another. And I'm not just talking about stuff that is now confirmed as placeholder, but more about the general themes, characters, focuses... The only thing that's consistent is the barely visible characters being barely visible again. Though I couldn't spot Mercedes. But. - The first trailer focuses on legends and dragons. The second one has none of that, it's grounded and is about humanity first and foremost. - Trailer 1 focuses on the church. It's barely even there in trailer 2. - We saw a grand battle and a potential continental scale conflict last time. Today we saw school life for the very rich. Similarly, no mention of the crests this time around, except for that one beast Edelgard throws cavalry at being equipped with one. Also, the first trailer gave the impression that we were going to travel around the world at many points. This time around we're told pretty much directly that nah, the academy is at the center of it all, and we'll never really leave it for long. - Byleth was secondary, this time he's central and Edelgard + "Seiros" are in the background. - Ironically, we spend much more time in the academy and at first glance, are shown way less. Mostly just classrooms. The academy was a place, today it's a glorified menu. - Even the music went from epic and ominous to casual. None of that is criticism by the way, it's just super weird, the way they did things. That being said... it's potentially good news, because assuming none of what we saw in the past got scrapped, it looks like there's a lot to this game.

Thanks! Gamexplain will probably be thorough enough that we won't need to do our own digging this time around, but, you know, just in case...

Well, that was something. That's gonna be a lot to dissect. They had me really worried that they were about to announce three versions for a while

That's a long one. - Played Tekken(3...?) once in my life, as a teenager. Heihachi had a move called "Silver Cyclone". Liked the sound of it. Within the same week I started playing my first mmo, The 4th Coming(usually known as T4C). Named my character CycloneSilver. - Months later, I moved on to Dark Age of Camelot(another very old mmo). In that game, characters started with a first name, and at level 10(iirc) they got a last name to complete it. I naturally went with Cyclone and planned to pick Silver as a family name when the time came. But obviously, "Cyclone" by itself, being a very generic name, was already taken. So I went with Cyclon instead. - CyclonSilver just stuck as my pseudo for a few years. A few really old accounts of mine are still named that. - Once I stopped being an edgy teenager I started thinking it sounded a bit ridiculous, so I tried to shorten it. As a result nowadays I mostly name myself just Cyclon, but at some point I juggled between that and CSX(short for CyclonSilverX, yup, so much for being more mature). I named myself the latter when I played Animal Crossing for the first time. - For those who don't know, characters in Animal Crossing have automated pronunciation for all of their dialogue, but really sped up. As a result, they pronounced CSX something like "Ceesx", which grew on me after hearing it a few hundred times. I made my Serenes account around then... and here we are.

Lyn seems a bit complicated. End of Lyn mode is way too early, and so is the liberation of Caelin in the main part of the game. Maybe give her a new personal bow that triggers it, obtained upon defeating Uhai, perhaps? Or rejoining with Rath(who would have to be recruited automatically then)? Seliph could logically happen at Chalpy/getting the Tyrfing back, but that's very late.

I feel like yours is a relatively uncommon preference. I rarely see anyone ever make the distinction between each of them... Anna is a special case for sure, but whenever a new one gets announced, we do not lament/rejoice that it won't be the same... most likely because for all intents and purposes, it is the same. Though yes, those from Awakening have one-liners, and Heroes' is a bit more serious most of the time, outside of that, all of them are greedy and witty.

I look forward to being proven wrong about Dimitri, because yes at the moment he doesn't look all that interesting to me either. Regardless, spotlight is pretty clearly what matters most when it comes to CYL, and the Three Houses cast is sure to receive a lot of it.