Calico

I mean, we've known that Sothis exists since the first trailer, and her design so obviously screams dragon that it'd be the biggest plot twist in all of Fire Emblem if she wasn't one. We can't say for sure if she'll be playable, but I think she will be. If you count dragons as beast units, then I'm almost 100% certain that we'll have beast units, because playable dragons are pretty much a series staple.

Ah, okay, so they were shown, but very late. Thanks for correcting me. Still, they're probably not going to be advertised unless they're central to the plot, which they most likely won't be.

Obviously, we'll get shapeshifters that are lions, deer, and eagles, to match the themes of the three houses. I definitely believe that we'll get beast unit/s alongside our usual manakete. The lack of beast units in the trailer really isn't anything to worry about. Looking at the pre-release material for Fates, I don't think beast units were even mentioned pre-release. Keaton and Kaden aren't even up on the official websites' character lists. I'm wondering more if we'll get different beast units from the different countries or not.

If each weapon rank (Including S) has a + rank, we'd have 12 weapon ranks total. Using Fates:Birthright as an example, there are 19 Katana, 17 Naginata, 16 Clubs, and 16 Yumi. (And this is excluding character-exclusive or enemy exclusive weapons like Raijinto). That's enough for each rank to have at least one weapon unlocked by reaching it. The number of weapons will probably be greater than that, since Conquest weapons pretty much double the number of available weapons, and even Awakening had 29 non-character locked swords. I don't think the number of weapons will be a problem. Though I still think the forging explanation is more likely.

I think the E+ and so on are meant to extend the weapon mastery progress. In the trailer, we can see that units now require more than 100 exp to level up, so they most likely wanted to extend weapon mastery too. Though if that's the case, why not just increase the amount of exp needed for each weapon rank? I think it might be that more weapons unlock at different ranks. Or maybe you can only use a forged E rank weapon and so on when you reach E+ or something. I kinda doubt that the E+ signifies that a student has trouble learning something, as in the trailer at about 3:48, you can see that Dorothea has an E+ in swords, which also has a strength icon next to it.

Linhardt appears to be a dude, you can tell from their voice in the trailer. And the blonde swordsman at the end is a woman(Pic here). Good analysis, I didn't notice that Leonie was holding a bow during the cutscene. Though if she is a bow user, that means that we'd start out with at least three bow users in the Golden Deer, alongside Hilda and Claude. Also, I wonder how you level up riding/flying proficiencies. Do you just equip one and they level up in battle, and with enough you can change your students into a mounted class? I wonder if pegasi/wyverns/griffons will belong to different factions. And when Lindhardt heals Byleth, he's not holding a stave. And the students aren't holding tomes when practicing magic, so I guess the magic system is more like Gaiden's.

Yeah, I'm not feeling her design. It'd be a ton better if they just covered up her exposed bellybutton and maybe more of her upper body. It kinda feels like they're trying to make the F!Avatar appeal more to male players than female ones, which is disappointing.

Here's hoping we're both wrong, and customization is in. On another note why are people taking the hearts in Dorothea's scene that there will be student/teacher romance? Like, I'm sure romance is still in in some way, but don't hearts just generally signal supports? Or it could be tied to an entirely different mechanic, like gambits. Am I missing something here?

Golden Deer, probably because Leonie is my favorite so far, and that's her group. Though I do think the noble alliance sounds interesting. Black Eagle is my second choice, again because I like some of the characters in it. Though of course this is subject to change once I actually play the game, as I'm sure there are some characters that I'll like unexpectedly.

But I want to change the main character's hair (and face). That's what I'm worried about. I don't care about accessories.

I like what I've seen of the game so far, and the new leveling/class? system looks really interesting. I'm just worried that the avatar's not customizable. I've seen several people point out that the avatar's face appears in animated cutscenes, which makes me really worried. I'm not really a fan of the default F!Byleth and was hoping I'd be able to change up her appearance a bit. (I don't like her outfit but I can fix that by class changing...) I'd be really disappointed if they cut out customization but left avatars in, because customization is what makes having an avatar fun.

It's highly unlikely, considering that you can already preorder it on Amazon, and there's only a single version listed. Plus, it's going to be the first entries in the series on a new console. Why scare off new potential buyers with multiple versions?

I hope not. One of the worst things about Fates was that nearly everyone was either royalty or retainers to royalty, and I felt that that made recruitment and character relationships feel a lot less varied. Hopefully, it's (supposed) focus on three royals versus ten from Fates will mean more kinds of characters will be a part of our army. We still know very little about the story, so it's honestly way too early to tell.

So I'm not sure if anyone's talked about it yet, but the Japanese website is up: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/anvya/index.html. There really isn't anything that we haven't seen yet on the website... except for this: In the top right corner, you can see a green crest/icon of some sort. No idea what purpose it serves though. Anyone have any idea for when the US/UK websites will pop up?

Undoubtedly. I just hope that the character customization is better than it was in Fates, and they show off the female version of the avatar soon.

I'd like to have a non-royal protagonist, especially after Fates(way too many Royals: the game). It's honestly pretty unlikely, considering that Fire Emblem as a whole is for some reason obsessed with royalty, but I can dream. Possibilities: 1. You (the protagonist) are the head of a small mercenary group or a young up-and-coming soldier in a country's army. Bonus points if it has choices that can change the direction of the story. 2. The heir to the kingdom is killed, and the protagonist has to act as their stand-in. 3. You join a rebellion to overthrow the corrupt rulers of the kingdom and install a better system of government than one predicated on having dragon's blood. And there's no nice secret heir or anything, you're just overthrowing all of the royalty.

Okay, now we know that it's rather unlikely for Hidari to be the artist for the next game. He is apparently doing the illustrations for the Record of Lodoss War 30th anniversary project, and I'm guessing that that will have taken up all his time.

Yeah, that leak is incredibly fake. No way Pokemon's next two games are called Nuclear and Chemical. (And what exactly were they supposed to be datamined from?) I wonder when we're going to get more news. I'm not impatient for it or anything, since I don't even own a switch yet, but I do enjoy some of the speculation that happens whenever new info for a game comes out. I thought they might hold a Fire Emblem direct to showcase it and the last batch of Warriors DLC, but it doesn't really look like they will. They could do something on the anniversary, but that's also when Labo launches, and I don't see them wanting to distract from that.

I'm not sure who I'd want to be the lead artist/character designer of the game. I like Hidari and Kozaki, and I think I'd be fine with either returning. I'm honestly just hoping that the next armor designer will give female armor knight pants(and cavaliers too, but armor knights need pants most of all). Going off of Heroes artists, I definitely wouldn't want Maeshima Shigeki to be the designer, though. His designs embody the worst parts of Kozaki's with none of his charm. Surtr is another blatantly evil dude with dark skin, Loki looks like she was designed off of a sexy checklist, and Gunnthra's design confuses me the more I look at it(what even is her hair?!) I don't like being negative, but I'm just really not a fan. Maybe they'll pull in a new artist that hasn't worked on Fire Emblem before, not even in Heroes! I think that could be interesting, though I don't really have any super-strong preferences for who.

Oh, and I can't believe I forgot about this: No more locking the difficulty level at the start of the game. Let players freely choose the difficulty at any point in the game. Fates at least let you drop down your difficulty if you thought it was too hard, but what if a player starts off on easy but doesn't feel challenged enough? I don't know why the option wasn't implemented before, but it's definitely something that should be done.

What I absolutely don't want in the next game: Ditch the creepy incesty bandit twins. FE is attempting to do better by gay people, but that's hard to do when your reoccurring villains are... that. Literally no one would miss this archetype. Stop making the villains look so obviously evil, especially by giving them darker skin. Don't let characters that look twelve like Percy or Midori get married, and especially don't let them have kids. What I'd rather not have: Any reincarnations/world-hoppers like the Awakening trio or the kids. I don't want to meet old characters again and again, I want to meet new ones. Some references or shout-outs are fine, but I want new designs and character dynamics! I'm not fond of status-dropping attacks, like with the shurikens. It makes things too complicated for my liking. Long gimmick maps like with Revelations. Gimmicks should be fun, not a slog. Please, no shoving kids into easy bake oven dimensions and having them pop out a week later ready to fight for you. If there are kids in the new game, have a better explanation for them that doesn't turn most of the cast into abusively neglectful parents. No female characters inexplicably obsessed with the lead character, please. I think we've seen quite enough of that. I'd also like to see something be the final villain besides an evil dragon/person controlled by evil dragon.

So, about those original characters... Also, not a fan of the dude's hair and the girl's outfit suffers from Monster Hunter syndrome. I do like the aesthetic that their outfits are going for, weirdly large and pointless belts aside, but it just hasn't completely clicked with me yet. I at least like the other original dude shown off, even if I'm thinking he'll die/turn evil at some point.

Question about spell lists: So the site lists certain characters as learning spells once they reach a certain level, but sometimes the level for the spell is higher than the level by which they can promote, such as Silque learning invoke at level 18 when she can promote at level 12. If I promote the characters before they learn those spells, will they automatically learn them once they are promoted, learn them as they level up in the promoted class, or are those spells now unobtainable? Also, where am I supposed to find 5 steel lances for that one quest? Are there enemies that will drop it somewhere?

Thanks for answering. That sucks about the difficulty thing. Guess I'll start out on normal and save hard for any replays. Just to clarify, what are the time constraints on the Alessio quests? Is it to complete the requests within a certain number of days/turns, or is it to complete them before a certain point in the story?

So, two questions: 1. Is it possible to change the difficulty during the game at all? Like if I start off at hard, decide it's no fun, and want to switch off to the easier mode, or vice versa, can I do that? Or is it like Awakening where you have to start a new game if you want to play on a different difficulty level? 2. Are there any missable quests? I heard one person say that one quest asks you to kill a certain kind of enemy in a certain place, but that kind of enemy stops appearing after a certain point in the story. Are there any others like that?