game design How a Concealed Route-Split Cut the Black Eagle House in Two [Analysis/Essay]

[Moltz23]

A long while ago, I did analysis of each of Three Houses’ routes and all the minutia involved in them that plays a part in each one’s difficulty (level scaling, unit availability, available equipment, enemy composition, etc.) which I posted on reddit. One thing that struck me about it that I failed to mention back then, is that, of the four paths available, two - Silver Snow and Crimson Flower - feel lacking in terms of content and resources compared to the remaining half, a notion which has been brought up by the Fire Emblem fandom multiple times in the past by now.

The thing is though, data shows there’s room to argue this was done on purpose.

For those who are out of the loop on what I’m yapping about; Fire Emblem: Three Houses features four main routes/storylines: Crimson Flower, Azure Moon, Verdant Wind, and Silver Snow (which even serve as the basis for the game’s japanese subtitle: Wind Flower Snow Moon). In spite of this though, the game presents three paths at the start of the game: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer. The game handles this by having Azure Moon and Verdant Wind be the second half of the Blue Lions and Golden Deer routes respectively, and by having Black Eagles split into two different branches right before the second half of the plot starts: the Silver Snow branch (where the player sides against Edelgard); and the Crimson Flower branch (where the player sides with Edelgard). Black Eagles, according to developer interviews, was chosen to get this route split during early stages of development, and was not supposed to be directly advertised:

 

Quote

 

–On top of that, [Black Eagles] also had a hidden story branch.

Yokota: We kept it hidden, but the idea to have a story branch was there since the creation of the Black Eagle route.

–Did you have plans to implement a story branch for the other houses?

Yokota: No. We only decided it for the Black Eagle house and to keep it a secret. Edelgard is a character with a unique position, but we thought it would be more interesting to have two stories here, then we implemented the triggers for it.

 

 

Has anyone ever wondered how important this decision was from a design standpoint? If it feels shoehorned in? Or, if it’s impossible to divorce Black Eagles from it?

Well, for those who just wanna skip to the end of this whole analysis, the answer I’ve reached is the last one: Black Eagles does not feel complete when only one of its branches are considered, unlike Blue Lions and Golden Deer, which from the start were designed as more straightforward and standalone packages.

Thus, this analysis seeks to dwell further on the unique effects Black Eagles’ route-split caused to its design, how it’s expressed in various of its areas, and why the whole idea ran into some problems down the road that made this whole idea become ignored and forgotten. Just for this post, I also worked on a brief comparison document that highlights vital areas in which Black Eagle content was split (click here to see that breakdown for those interested). But for those seeking a more thorough analysis, I invite you to accompany me ‘till the end.

Before moving on, I feel it’s important to stress that, while I’ll be focusing mainly on gameplay-related factors, a few story elements will be brought up as well. Given the genesis of Black Eagles’ branching paths lie firmly in the story, this was inevitable.

1. Parallel War Arcs.

One of the first things that become apparent when you compare both Black Eagle branches, is  that each more or less does its own thing after Chapter 11. 

For the sake of this comparison, I’ll be focusing on factors like:

• Average Enemy Level between Chapters (+ their Suggested Level, which is directly related to the AEL).

• Available resources, and the timing in which new ones are unlocked and/or lost.

• When the game stops using Intermediate Classes for enemies (in a more conventional Fire Emblem context, this would be like saying when the game stops throwing Unpromoted Enemies at you).

On one hand there’s Silver Snow, the path that has you be the underdog fighting the invading Empire. In it:

• The Average Enemy Level almost always increases by 2 per Chapter, regardless of the chosen difficulty. The only exception of this is the transition between Chapter 16 and 17, as the average level difference of enemies between both maps is 4.

• The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated a third and last time in Ch. 14 (it’s previously updated first in Ch. 3 and Ch. 8 for those curious).

• Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 23.

• The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies by Ch. 18 for main story maps.

• The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear main story missions is 4 in Ch. 16 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 2 for Chapter 18.

• The difference in enemy levels between successive story missions is 1.

• And finally, the route ends in Ch. 21 with a Suggested Level of 42.

On the other hand, the Crimson Flower campaign has you support the Empire and undo everything the Church holds dear. In it:

• The Average Enemy Level almost always increases by 2 per Chapter, regardless of the chosen difficulty. The only shake-ups in terms of differences in average enemy level difference between story missions lie in the 2 Chapters which are done back to back:

  • Ch. 11 to Ch. 12: 4 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

  • Ch. 17 to Ch. 18: 2 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

• The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated one last time in Ch. 12.

• Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 25.

• The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies by Ch. 14 for main story missions.

• The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear story missions is 4 in Ch. 15 (3 if you play carefully), and then 5 for both Ch. 16 & Ch. 17.

• And finally, the game ends in Ch. 18 with a final Suggested Level of 37.

                                                       Numbers can be very useful.

If we dig a little deeper into other facets of the routes, it also comes to light how little maps - and in turn, plot beats - are shared between both branches, being the story each branch follows the key culprit behind the lack of overlap. The most we get between CF and SS are 3 shared locations (2 Garreg Mach maps and the Bridge of Myrddin), but besides this, the similarities end there.

 

 

Even the overall vibe feels different due to the in-game text.

In this regard, I’ll say the developers did a good job in making BE’s route-split drastically change the player’s experience. 

2. Available Resources.

Every resource involving Black Eagles & the Empire (characters, equipment, weapons, you name it) was distributed between both branches, splitting things in a way no Black Eagles path will ever be able to get everything.

For starters, Black Eagles locks you access to Cyril, Catherine and Seteth pre-Chapter 12. Afterwards, everything depends on whatever side the player picks:

• Crimson Flower’s side lets the player keep Edelgard & Hubert, recruit Jeritza after the timeskip, and obtain all of their associated resources and boons. This is due to: 1. Edelgard and Hubert leaving the party after Chapter 11 for story-related reasons, and 2. Their associated content being locked to CF’s half of the story (Hubert’s even the only House Leader’s retainer with this distinction).

  • From the paid-DLC side of things, while Anna is playable in both Black Eagle routes, her paralogue and its rewards are locked to Crimson Flower’s post-timeskip.

• Silver Snow’s side meanwhile, gets to keep Flayn, gives you access to Seteth, Catherine and Cyril, makes Ferdinand and Caspar’s associated resources available, and provides you access to Dorothea’s battalion, as well Rhea’s paralogue and its rewards. In Ferdinand and Caspar’s case, their paralogues rely on context absent in Crimson Flower; Dorothea’s dancer battalion is only obtainable during a story mission not available in CF; and Rhea’s paralogue hinges on her assisting Byleth after choosing to oppose Edelgard.

  • It’s worth noting that Ferdinand and Caspar’s paralogues, unlike Edelgard and Hubert’s, requires recruiting two out-of-house students to play them (Lysithea and Mercedes respectively).

One curious detail about the Silver Snow’s exclusive cast though, is that most of their resources are not locked behind the Church Route’s branch: 

• Seteth and Flayn’s paralogue is doable pre-timeskip with just Flayn (thus making Seteth briefly playable). Incidentally, Ferdinand and Linhardt happen to have matching crests for their Sacred Weapons as well, ensuring Black Eagles will always have units which can make the most use of them.

• Catherine’s paralogue can be accessed in Part 1 with only Ashe recruited (meaning Catherine also gets Seteth’s treatment), and her Thunderbrand is available in both Black Eagles branches, even if in Crimson Flower it’s in a limited - yet perfectly timed - fashion.

• While there are three Church battalions which can’t be purchased from the Battalion Guild in Crimson Flower (ie. Holy Knights of Seiros, Indech Sword Fighters and Macuil Evil Repelling Co.), it’s still possible to obtain at least one copy of them through doing Alois, Hanneman, and Manuela’s paralogues with all of them recruited.

One final detail worth mentioning surrounding the cast available in Black Eagles is that, by default, both branches happen to allow players to obtain a minimum of 16 units (or 15, if playing as Male Byleth) assuming they’ve not been actively trying to recruit other units:

                                      “Number 16? Can I get the number sixteeeeen?”

It is worth noting though, that this coincidental number is possible thanks to Jeritza being added to the game in the 1.1.0. update. Because of this, there’s solid grounds to claim Crimson Flower was missing content at launch due to Jeritza’s conspicuous absence (which is potentially[?] corroborated by datamining the game, not unlike how Rhea’s Tea Time data remained unfinished in the cutting room floor up until the version 1.2.0. update).

3. Miscellaneous differences/similarities Involving Black Eagles

Beyond the game design angle, Black Eagles and its two split branches noticeably stands out in many ways compared to Blue Lions and Golden Deer:

A. Event - Coronation.

The story event named “Coronation” in Black Eagles is the pivotal scene from Chapter 11 which decides whether the player can access the Crimson Flower branch after Chapter 11’s story mission or not. Not only is it very easy to miss (ie. ignoring the monastery during that chapter is enough), it can also play differently according to how many support points Byleth has with Edelgard.

The peculiar thing about it is that this story event is only present on the Black Eagles route. For contrast’s sake, Blue Lions and Golden Deer instead get an event called “Deep Underground”, which is unmissable and always takes place before “The Holy Tomb“.

                           The story events’ internal IDs, taken from fedatamine.com

B. Part 2’s Chapter Introduction logo

Starting Part 2, all routes feature the logo of your chosen House’s faction in a blazing background when a new chapter is introduced.

The Silver Snow route (and by proxy, also Azure Moon and Verdant Wind’s) has the faction’s icon colored yellow, while Crimson Flower has it painted red. As a result, Black Eagles is the only path in which your faction’s chosen emblem can be seen in both colors.

                              Which one fits the Twin-Headed Eagle Better?

C. Light/Darkness Juxtaposition in the War Arc’s Beginning/Ending Cutscenes.

It’s been pointed out that many of the introductory and closing cutscenes from Part 2 make heavy use of light and darkness for simbolism’s sake. In terms of execution, Silver Snow and Crimson Flower’s light/dark motifs are notable in the sense both could be argued to be parallels of one another: 

• In Silver Snow, the reunion cutscene between Edelgard’s Byleth (which is more of a Cutscene Boss than anything, but I digress) shows both characters bathed in moonlight as they fight. As for the ending, Garreg Mach is briefly depicted in darkness just before the sun’s light bathes the whole area after Rhea ends her berserk rampage.

• In Crimson Flower, the reunion event between Byleth and Edelgard shows both embracing one another while light and dark are blended, casting shadows at the scene. The ending movie meanwhile, has Byleth and Edelgard finish off Rhea while the showdown happens entirely during night, illuminated only by the fire of the battlefield.

                                                     Make of it what you will.

D. The first post-timeskip meeting with Edelgard.

On a related note, the first post-timeskip meeting with Edelgard starts very similar in both Black Eagle routes: Edelgard arrives at the Goddess Tower reminiscing of the past, and is caught off guard at Byleth’s sudden return. Then… stuff happens depending on whether you’re in Silver Snow or Crimson Flower.

                                            Same beginning. Different ending.

Azure Moon and Verdant Wind by comparison have no build-up whatsoever. After Byleth wakes up, they go to the Goddess Tower and… The route’s respective movie plays out immediately.

E. Differences between shared Part 2 Paralogues.

                                                              I really dig these.

Even though Bernadetta & Petra, and Linhard & Leonie’s paralogues are the only BE-adjacent side missions available in both story branches, both have some noticeable differences depending on whether they're being played on Crimson Flower or not:

• Bernadetta & Petra’s paralogue outside Crimson Flower features Hubert as the main boss as well various enemy Assassins and Dark Bishops in its enemy line-up. In contrast, Crimson Flower’s take of it has Catherine as the main boss and contains enemy Holy Knights and Warlocks instead.

• Linhard & Leonie paralogue works like any normal paralogue outside Crimson Flower. Within CF itself however, the player is given 2 handicaps:

  • 1. Edelgard and Hubert can’t be deployed on the map.

  • 2. If Seteth and Flayn die during Chapter 15’s story mission, the player is given only one month to do it.

F. The Final Boss.

                                       All paths lead to the Immaculate One.

Black Eagles’ Final Boss is always Rhea, regardless of the direction each story branch goes and who was and was not fought to get there.

Each version of Rhea’s fight also deviates with the set of skills used too, with Silver Snow’s version pulling a fake-out on the player before focusing on making the enemy explode with long range AoE attacks and Miracle hax, while Crimson Flower’s more strategic by silencing spellcasters after combat, targeting the enemy’s lower defensive stat, and consistently buffing nearby Armored Golems as the battle drags on.

G. Ending Themes

Silver Snow & co., plays the song “Edge of Dawn” during the game’s credits, while Crimson Flower uses a piano arrangement of its melody called  “Color of Sunrise” instead. Similar to the second point, this means only Black Eagles can play two different songs for this instance.

…There’s probably a ton more differences I’m missing, but I really don’t wanna drag things further.

So now’s the perfect time to talk about-

4. How everything went wrong.

In hindsight, I don’t think it should be a controversial take that giving Black Eagles a route-split was a shortsighted decision.

I mean, if you see it in a vacuum, Black Eagles’ succeeds in making each branch different. And yet, that is where the problem stems from.

The Black Eagles Route does not exist in isolation.

As a whole, Black Eagles has - arguably - content on par with Blue Lions and Golden Deer (heck, perhaps even more). If one sees all four routes separately though, Silver Snow and Crimson Flower suddenly end up in a fight they cannot win on their own. All thanks to the erroneous misconception that all four routes were meant to be equals.

In spite of the evidence at hand saying otherwise.

 

Quote

 

Q: Can you tell us which route was made first in order to expand and explore the world?

Kusakihara: The first and second parts of the Empire route.. which is called by the userbase as the “Church Route”, Silver Snow. The progression of Class Leader Edelgard to become the antagonist… that is what we initially decided upon. It was from there, that every route’s story and the progression of other Lords as characters were expanded by the Koei Tecmo Scenario Team. As the Class Leader would leave, the Black Eagles were initially decided to be the most difficult route as imagined (gameplay difficulty).

Yokota: Ahh, this is about losing access to the most powerful unit that you would be raising, right? This is pretty bad, yeah.

Kusakihara: In my personal opinion, I think that some cruelty from the parts of developers is necessary. This is because if we weren’t cruel/callous in any way, then, just like pre-established harmony where everything only interacts with itself, it would be easy for readers/players to predict everything that will happen. A scenario that would completely be predicted by the reader/player is not something that feels attractive. And that’s why we went all out that way, but the wish to walk with Edelgard was incredibly strong even in the development team. Walking with Edelgard in “Crimson Flower”, or rather known as the, “Supreme Ruler Route” is something we honestly meant to be much more difficult to enter. [...]

 

 

There’s something ironic in how Silver Snow, for being the very first route and having a clear advantage over Crimson Flower in quantity, was the Black Eagle branch which got the short end of the stick. The full extent of it can be grasped in my appropriately named document “No House Stands Equal - 3H's Difficulty from a Design Perspective“, but to give everyone a quick rundown:

• Azure Moon and (mainly) Verdant Wind cannibalized Silver Snow’s story missions and plot beats while building over it’s foundation, mainly through: exclusive characters which mostly never ditch your side (and even then, the one that does can return later), and a new shared chapter (Blood of the Eagle and Lion, which canonically happens in Silver Snow but goes unseen due to the Church’s underdog status in the plot). This by itself stripped much of Silver Snow’s novelty beyond the theme of betrayal and loss having an impact in the gameplay.

• Blue Lions and Golden Deer also need to recruit Caspar and Ferdinand respectively to access paralogues associated with their cast. In practice, this means playing through Silver Snow isn’t required to see Caspar and Ferdie’s share of Black Eagles’ content. Similarly, Rhea’s paralogue, as well Dorothea’s battalion, is also accessible outside Silver Snow.

• Finally, Edelgard’s route stealing all the stuff Silver Snow can’t get for story reasons leaves the latter, in terms of exclusive content, only with: Edelgard and Hubert being temporarily in the party during most of Part 1; Its last Chapter, Following a Dream (+ everything surrounding it, like the White Beasts and Funeral of Flowers); and Rhea’s S-Support.

Meanwhile, Crimson Flower doesn’t escape unscathed from the allegations that it is incomplete either, given its stunt of avoiding Silver Snow’s story beats means it ends up 3 to 4 Chapters short of the other paths, misses a few paralogues (including half of the Black Eagles’ resources) and can’t recruit the pro-Church cast due to story reasons. Besides those shortcomings, it’s whole shtick did give it some significant positives:

• First, Crimson Flower takes advantage of its different plot in order to keep Edelgard & Hubert for the 2nd half of the game, recruit Jeritza, and also gain access to their resources.

  • Speaking of which, it also ends up being the only Black Eagles branch which gets to keep access to Anna’s paralogue and its bonuses, seemingly because… the devs wanted Jeritza to be along for the ride in it??? (I honestly got no other explanation for it).

• And second, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind sharing much of Part 2’s content with Silver Snow makes stand out more how Edelgard’s route has its own set of exclusive Chapters between Ch. 12 to Ch. 18 and all they entrail, like: Ch. 12’s golems (normally unseen outside the Cindered Shadows DLC story); multiple exclusive battle conversations; ally NPCs from other routes being mandatory bosses; a few story events changing based on whether the player completed the map’s objective in certain ways or not; various unique monster weapons used in Chapter 17 & 18; and so on and so forth.

When all’s said and done, while the whole route-split of Black Eagles is a fun idea on paper, in practice, it ended up leaving one of it’s branches more or less neglected altogether for reasons beyond its control, while the other one got to stand out for all the right and wrong reasons, and for being given double duty of being a parallel to also another route of the game:

This explains far more than you would think.

5. Post-Mortem & Closing Thoughts

I’ve been very much fascinated by this game’s Black Eagles route ever since I first got the game back in 2019. As I played the routes under an order of my own design (Crimson Flower > Verdant Wind > Azure Moon > Silver Snow), I heard many comments from other players that Silver Snow “was the Black Eagles branch which was always meant to be in the game”, causing me a ton of intrigue. So when I finally got to try that path myself, after finishing it, my feelings about it were something akin to… confusion and bafflement.

“What happened here? Why is Black Eagles as a whole like this?” - Were my driving questions at the time.

Thus I began to dig in further into the game. I joined The Cutting Room Floor and examined the game’s datamine, then discovered fedatamine.com and used it to explore even more stuff, and then I focused on the developer interviews that were coming out at the time about the game. All for the aim of finding the answer to these questions I asked for myself.

And honestly? Reaching conclusions such as “Edelgard was heavily advertised pre-release just to trick players into doing the Silver Snow route”, “Crimson Flower doesn’t feel like it was ever meant to get more than 18 Chapters”, and now, that “both BE branches feel incomplete because the faction’s content was split in half” were not the stuff I ever expected I would find at the end of my road.

Writing this whole document also drove me to the realization that, much of how Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes’s content - Three Houses’ Warriors spinoff -  seems to have been distributed, appears to be based on common criticism and feedback obtained from Three Houses and how Black Eagles was handled in it:

• That game has only 3 routes, having no proper counterpart for 3H’s “Church route” in favor of keeping an Empire (Scarlet Blaze), Kingdom (Azure Gleam), and Alliance (Golden Wildfire) routes with relatively equal content and story chapters.

• Ferdinand and Caspar in that game became exclusive to Scarlet Blaze (thus making their old and newer resources exclusive too), while Dorothea’s battalion was also locked behind SB in spite of herself being recruitable in Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire.

• Finally, Scarlet Blaze itself took cues from both Crimson Flower and Silver Snow through:

  • Exiling the pro-church cast into Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire (with Shamir being recruitable the only common ground), similar to Crimson Flower.

  • Having a key decision in the story change how a late-game story mission plays out, turning it into a battle between the Empire, Alliance and Kingdom armies during the post-timeskip (a plot beat which in 3H was not available in Black Eagles).

    • Incidentally, this change makes SB the only route in which it’s possible for Claude to die, much like in CF.

  • Incorporate fighting TWSITD into the main story, which in Black Eagles itself was largely present only in Silver Snow (even if it amounts to just one Chapter there).

  • And finally, it has a remixed version of Silver Snow’s final map theme - Funeral of Flowers - play during Scarlet Blaze’s final battle.

                               A rare father-son bonding moment from Three Hopes.

As for my closing thoughts, I think Three Houses currently sits at a fascinating middle point in the Fire Emblem timeline. 

Before it, the previous non-remake entry was Fire Emblem Fates: a 3-route 3DS game that got so big in content, that each of its paths were chosen to be sold separately, and both its story’s concept and implementation was outsourced to various people. As for the game which came after, Fire Emblem Engage, it notoriously scaled down its ambition to an 1-route experience, and per development interviews, went on its way to avoid 3H’s conventions to the point the story was made in service of the gameplay, and not the other way around. Then, it’s kinda fitting that Fire Emblem: Three Houses ended up becoming the awkward middleground of the two: while even more ambitious in terms of scope, it also notoriously tried to both exploit Silver Snow’s material while also being heavily constrained by it, thus forcing it to base the 4 narratives stemming from it to revolve heavily under the unifying theme of perspective.

Perspective is such a fickle thing. Based on the information at hand, it can greatly change how we understand certain ideas and situations. And while I would love to say a ton about how 3H milks it for all that is worth, at this point, that is a tale for another day…

 

 

So what do you guys think? What's your take on Black Eagles (and only Black Eagles) getting a route-split? Should the idea be revisited in the future? Or 3H and 3 Hopes showed it's doomed to fail?

Edited August 23 by Moltz23
Nevermind! Found a way to salvage this post.

[lenticular]

For me, it seems that they made a lot of sacrifices -- to both gameplay and story -- in the name of making their one big plot twist work, but I don't really feel that they succeeded. For me at least, the big plot twist didn't really work.

And I think that a part of that is pretty much inherent to the medium of video games. If you're writing a book or making a film or working in any other non-interactive medium then you have much more control over how the story plays out. Let's say I'm writing a novelisation of Silver Snow. I am going to do my utmost to structure the first part of the story so that Edelgard is prominent enough and sympathetic enough that her betrayal stings, but not so prominent or sympathetic that the reader just gives up in disgust at that point. Maybe I fumble the execution or maybe it doesn't work for every reader, but I at least get to try to stick the landing on it.

For a game, that's much harder because there's a lot of variance in how people are going to approach the game and as a result a lot of variance in the exact version of the story that they've experienced up to that point. Some people are going to be very heavily invested in Edelgard (both emotionally and mechanically) to the point that losing her is going to make the game not be fun any more. Others are going to barely engage with her at all such that her betrayal is something they'll scarcely even notice.

(To a lesser extent this applies to Hubert and Flayn as well. For instance, I have a friend who, in her first time playing Three Houses, turned Flayn into her Dancer and then lost her when she went into Crimson Flower. This isn't completely game-ruining, but it's certainly a whole lot of no fun at all.)

I suspect (without any direct evidence, mind) that this is a substantial part of why the entry requirements for Crimson Flower ended up being so much simpler than they were originally conceived as being. Over the course of playtesting and focus testing, they probably faced a lot of instances of people who just felt deflated by losing the one character who they had invested the most into, and realised that these people needed to have Crimson Flower as an option or they'd likely just stop playing the game.

One of the consequences of this, though, is that it lessens the dramatic impact of the betrayal. If you're invested in Edelgard then you just follow along with her the same as you always have been, and not all that much changes. If you don't care about Edelgard then, sure, she leaves, but so what? You already didn't care about her. The whole thing just falls kinda flat.

(And I'll share my own personal experience here. My first run of the game was with the Black Eagles, and I hadn't seen any spoilers, so I didn't know what was coming. When I reached the Holy Tomb, Edelgard's betrayal, and the choice of routes, I was more confused than anything else. I didn't particularly trust either Rhea or Edelgard, so when the choice came up, I chose to protect Edelgard, under the logic that this was the less drastic and less permanent choice and that way I'd be able to hear out both perspectives after the battle. Except no, the choice is permanent, and I wound up on Crimson Flower by default rather than by any sort of actual decision. It was all very underwhelming.)

11 hours ago, Moltz23 said:

So what do you guys think? What's your take on Black Eagles (and only Black Eagles) getting a route-split? Should the idea be revisited in the future? Or 3H and 3 Hopes showed it's doomed to fail?

I think that route splits in general are fine, but I don't want to see a repeat of "your main protagonist betrays you in the middle of the story" any time soon. Partly because I don't think it worked well in Three Houses, but partly also because it's been done. If they bring the same idea back in the next Fire Emblem game then it won't be nearly as much of a surprise as it was in Three Houses, and it will also mean that we'll just be looking out for it from then on. We definitely don't want "don't invest in the main character because they're only going to betray you" to become a thing. It's already bad enough knowing that dad is going to die and dragons are going to go crazy.

There are plenty of other ways of doing route splits, though, and I don't have a problem with those. Some of them even can manage to have characters fighting against their former allies, and that is fine too. Admittedly, FE has tried that several times now and never really managed to make it work in a truly satisfying way, but I'm not inherently opposed to it. But I do think that the lessen from Three Houses is that if you're going to do multiple routes then you probably shouldn't try to do too many of them at once.

[Etrurian emperor]

I'm in two mind on Crimson Flower. One one hand its clearly the most unfinished route, but paradoxically its also the route that seemingly has the most work put into it. Because Verdant Wind, Silver Snow and even Azure moon are mostly the same routes. The same collection of stages in the exact same order with just a few changes here and there. But Crimson Flower is its own unique route and for that I think it should be valued. Even the stages it shares with the other routes typically have you fight that battle from the other side which is cool.

Given the popularity and her ideals I think its a good thing that there's a route that deals in fighting for those things, and showing a path where Edelgard wins. However to some extend its also a bit cowardly that they didn't fully commit to this. The Edelgard in Crimson Flower is more ''moe'' then the iron emperor you see in the other routes which they really didn't have to do. Making Rhea go completely cuckoo to further make Edelgard look good wasn't really required either.

Rhea going crazy, Edelgard going moe and the slitherers keeping Edelgards hand from going too dirty all weren't needed. Edelgard can stand on her own without all that. 

But the ones most led down by Crimson Flower are Claude and Dimitri. They're depicted as weaklings who Edelgard can easily crush the moment she got sempai at her side. For the Alliance and Kingdom each you've got one stage fighting them and BAM! you're already knocking down the doors on the capitol. Actually given how quickly the nations fall its weird she even needs sempai to begin with. Dimitri is also strangely a non entity in the route. Edelgard not sharing Dimitri's obsession and instead deeming Rhea her main enemy is fitting, but Dimitri not at all being a thing in her route is inherently odd. Even if just as Rhea's champion its Edelgard and Dimitri who are the main rivals, and in Crimson flower that's just not the case. 

[vikingsfan92]

I have always been of the opnion that the Golden Deer should have been the class that got the route split and that being which faction Claude and Byleth side with in the war the empire or the church.  I think even Azure Moon would be improved with this change as it would make it feel more unique than all routes vs the same side.

My main reason simply comes down to 3 main points. 1) when you choose a house you are picking a charcter you want to see their story.  You don't pick Golden Deer because you want to see huge amounts of Dimtri lore becoming the main plot. No you pick it to see the story of the face lord Claude and his perspective throughout the story.   While this is probably more of an extreme  version that didnt happen of what happened with the Church and Edelgard during silver snow it is both deviating from what people who picked the route want to see the charcter they made their original choice. I feel like these kind of choices can work but not when their already was choices to see which charcters route we wanted to see in the first place and there are no other major major major differences with the rest of the story.

2) it actually gives the alliance a purpose and not feel like a third wheel who is always choosing the same thing two other routes do. 

3) it would actually allow us to explore the whole main conflict as a whole in more depth as both try to win the Golden deers support. We see both sides engage in propaganda and explain their perspective in ways they don't have to if we immediately join their sides. 

Going back to original game and what we actually got I do feel like the Black Eagles did get the worst end of the stick due to the multiple paths and their unable to commit to either path to hard.  Sure recruits to any house do have this happen but it's much worse when it happens on the route is showcase your story.  The noble black eagle kids for instance relationships with their parents are kind of forced to be held back a bit by the split.

Edited August 22 by vikingsfan92

[vanguard333]

@lenticular I think you got it absolutely right with the problem with trying to do this type of twist in a Fire Emblem game. On paper, a Fire Emblem story where the protagonist is betrayed by their lord sounds very clever and shocking, but it doesn't complement the gameplay, as investment in any character depends entirely on the player, so the twist would only work for players that were invested in Edelgard as a character but not as a unit.

Edelgard was one aspect of Three Houses that caught my eye the most before release; I knew that the Black Eagles were going to be the first route I play largely thanks to Edelgard, and also because I thought the idea of a route where the protagonist sides with the empire faction and the empire faction aren't necessarily the villains was very interesting. If I hadn't known about the route split and had accidentally gotten the Silver Snow route, I would've been deflated and angry. But, at the same time, knowing that the Black Eagles route had a route split also meant that I knew the twist in advance.

And I think there lies another problem: this twist only has its effectiveness on the first playthrough. A good twist retains most of its value even if the player already knows it in advance, and while this twist has significant story and gameplay impact, its impact as a twist is largely lost on a repeat playthrough.

 

Ultimately, Crimson Flower was the route I enjoyed the most, as it was the most unique. Even now, five years later, I haven't even gotten to part 2 of a Silver Snow playthrough, much less completed one. Each time I try, I get bored.

I think, if they wanted to do a game built around this twist, then it should only have had two routes: church and empire. Trying to do both the presented three nations at war plot and build it around the empire vs church twist means that, unless the player really wants to see Rhea's s-support and doesn't want to just watch it on YouTube, there's no real reason to play the church route. But getting rid of Azure Moon and Verdant Wind wouldn't fix all of the twist's problems; it would just mean that all players would have to experience it in some form.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, vikingsfan92 said:

1) when you choose a house you are picking a charcter you want to see their story.  You don't pick Golden Deer because you want to see huge amounts of Dimtri lore becoming the main plot. No you pick it to see the story of the face lord Claude and his perspective throughout the story.   While this is probably more of an extreme  version that didnt happen of what happened with the Church and Edelgard during silver snow it is both deviating from what people who picked the route want to see the charcter they made their original choice. I feel like these kind of choices can work but not when their already was choices to see which charcters route we wanted to see in the first place and there are no other major major major differences with the rest of the story.

That's only really the case for people who had followed the game closely prior to playing it, I think. I hadn't particularly followed all the pre-release marketing and hype cycle, and I certainly hadn't seen much of the characters in-game, so I didn't really feel I knew the characters nearly well to make any sort of informed decision at that point. So it is at least possible for someone to pick the Black Eagles but end up having no interest in Edelgard. But honestly, having the choice between the houses being too early is another different problem with the game, even if it does slightly and accidentally mitigate the problem you mentioned. (Though at least it's better than Fates here, since you have to choose there before you even buy the game.)

45 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Edelgard was one aspect of Three Houses that caught my eye the most before release; I knew that the Black Eagles were going to be the first route I play largely thanks to Edelgard, and also because I thought the idea of a route where the protagonist sides with the empire faction and the empire faction aren't necessarily the villains was very interesting. If I hadn't known about the route split and had accidentally gotten the Silver Snow route, I would've been deflated and angry. But, at the same time, knowing that the Black Eagles route had a route split also meant that I knew the twist in advance.

This does bring up another issue, in that many people were going to hear spoilers, one way or another. I know that a few of my friends asked me which route they should start with, and it was always such a difficult question for me to answer. I didn't want to directly give them the big plot spoiler, but I also didn't want to recommend that they start with the Black Eagles, since it does have the potential to screw you over if you are unlucky with your choices. So I normally ended up recommending either Golden Deer or Blue Lions (depending on the person), which had the effect of steering them away from the one choice where the twit would have had the most impact, but oh well. And that's almost the best case for someone wanting to know which class to play first, which I have to assume was a very common question.

52 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

unless the player really wants to see Rhea's s-support and doesn't want to just watch it on YouTube, there's no real reason to play the church route.

It is pretty pointless, but I don't think it's quite that pointless. The unique endgame with the fight against The Immaculate One and the white beasts is pretty interesting (mechanically if not narratively) and is worth seeing at least once. I also think it's the best route for both Ferdinand and Caspar, since it's the only way to both start off with them and see their paralogues. So it's not totally useless, just mostly useless.

[vanguard333]

51 minutes ago, lenticular said:

This does bring up another issue, in that many people were going to hear spoilers, one way or another. I know that a few of my friends asked me which route they should start with, and it was always such a difficult question for me to answer. I didn't want to directly give them the big plot spoiler, but I also didn't want to recommend that they start with the Black Eagles, since it does have the potential to screw you over if you are unlucky with your choices. So I normally ended up recommending either Golden Deer or Blue Lions (depending on the person), which had the effect of steering them away from the one choice where the twit would have had the most impact, but oh well. And that's almost the best case for someone wanting to know which class to play first, which I have to assume was a very common question.

It is pretty pointless, but I don't think it's quite that pointless. The unique endgame with the fight against The Immaculate One and the white beasts is pretty interesting (mechanically if not narratively) and is worth seeing at least once. I also think it's the best route for both Ferdinand and Caspar, since it's the only way to both start off with them and see their paralogues. So it's not totally useless, just mostly useless.

Yeah; we are in an age where it's easier than ever to hear spoilers, whether intentionally or by accident. A good twist will still work even if the player knows the twist in advance, and this one, on a number of levels, really doesn't.

Yeah, that's fair. Thinking back, the main reason I've tried to play Silver Snow is to play that final boss fight (and also just for completeness), but I keep losing the will and momentum to keep playing before I even reach the part where I have to pick Silver Snow.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Good, detailed writeup, I enjoyed it. Particular shoutout to the excellent use of the free choice meme.

As far as the Black Eagles route split goes, I'm a bit mixed about it. On the one hand, I agree with the criticisms voiced by lenticular and vanguard333 that the "lord betrayal" plot twist, doesn't actually work very well, because the players who would be most stung by the betrayal either sidestep it, or are annoyed they missed a requirement for sidestepping it. And I think Silver Snow absolutely suffers for being a bit of an afterthought* in terms of execution (which is funny, because it's implied to be the first route in concept). I am of the opinion that Silver Snow badly needed Rhea to feature in a prominent, lord-like role, because really, the Big Choice at the Holy Tomb comes down to whether you trust Rhea or Edelgard more, in my view. Though I do wish the wording was a little less loaded, it being "protect vs. kill" feels kinda like the writers putting their thumb on the scale (though you can definitely argue that there are thematic reasons for those being the choices).

Having said that, I do actually like that there is a choice there? I think it's a powerful moment: either you make the decision to turn against the student that you have (presumably) grown close to (certainly Edelgard has far more interaction with Byleth than any other pair of character on the Black Eagles route, even if a given player might be more attached to another), or you make a decision to stand with her even if it means making an enemy of the church which has been your workplace and support. Both are bold choices which shake up the game. The scenes immediately after siding with Edelgard are, for me, some of the most powerful in the game: Rhea's righteous anger, the sheer relief Edelgard feels, Hubert finally trusting you and unburdening himself. And I think they're MORE powerful because it's a choice you have to make, not something the game is railroading you into doing. There's a scene shortly after the split where Edelgard outlines her determination and asks Byleth if s/he really wants to go along with her, and Byleth's reply is "I chose this path too". It lands so well because it's true.

So as much as I dislike Silver Snow, if I was given a choice between "delete it from the game" and "leave it as is", I probably choose the latter, even though I fully understand why the sequel, when setting up a similar thing, did not bother with such a split. (Obviously, as mentioned earlier, I would like it even better if Silver Snow actually featured Rhea prominently to give it more of a distinct identity worth playing the game for, instead of its current status as a hollowed out version of Verdant Wind.

As for the artifacts of the split, some do not particularly bother me. I put very little value in number of animated videos a route has, and even the number of chapters is not particularly important to me (Crimson Flower, the "short" route, still has 19 storyline maps and 8 available paralogues even for a player who has no DLC and recruits zero out-of-house students, and 27 maps is pretty close to the median for Fire Emblem, at a guess).

21 hours ago, Moltz23 said:

Silver Snow’s side meanwhile, gets to keep Flayn, gives you access to Seteth, Catherine and Cyril, makes Ferdinand and Caspar’s associated resources available, and provides you access to Dorothea’s battalion, as well Rhea’s paralogue and its rewards. In Ferdinand and Caspar’s case, their paralogues rely on context absent in Crimson Flower; Dorothea’s dancer battalion is only obtainable during a story mission not available in CF; and Rhea’s paralogue hinges on her assisting Byleth after choosing to oppose Edelgard.

One point I am a bit more sympathic on is the Ferdinand and Caspar paralogues, because I agree it's weird that they don't a paralogue on CF, the only in-house characters that's true for. Caspar's, unfortunately, is an artifact of the fact that The Face Beneath isn't really a Caspar paralogue... it's a Mercedes/Jeritza paralogue where Caspar is shoehorned in, and it very much feels designed for the Azure Moon route (even changing a main-story scene if you get it), while an afterthought for poor Caspar. If I were in charge of the game late in development, I would have recommended two changes:

• add Caspar into the paralogue with Hubert (or Edelgard, but I think he fits Hubert's better, and it would give that paralogue a battalion award, which it currently lacks... though you'd have to buff Bergliez War Group to make this a relevant point in gameplay). You'd have to add some lines for him and do some minor rewrites, but I think it works well and would mean he has an available paralogue on both CF and SS.
• make some minor rewrites so that the Lysithea/Ferdinand paralogue works on CF. It's an incredible shame that not just Ferdinand lacks a paralogue on CF, but Lysithea as well (the only student who can be recruited post-timeskip). The changes would not need to be major.

I would not change the availability of the Rhea paralogue, because it makes sense that Rhea's paralogue is only available on a route where you side with her. (In my dream version of the game, Rhea's paralogue features her playable and is only available on Silver Snow.)

As a side note, I don't really think of the Opera House Volunteers as "Dorothea's battalion", because it can be obtained even if she's dead or unrecruited.

7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

But the ones most led down by Crimson Flower are Claude and Dimitri. They're depicted as weaklings who Edelgard can easily crush the moment she got sempai at her side.

It's interesting that you feel this way, because one of the things I like about Crimson Flower is that IMO it has the best treatment of the out-of-house lords in the story. Sure, Dimitri is secondary to Rhea, and is less important than AM-Edelgard because that rivalry is written to be one-sided, but he's still a big deal as an opponent, being the climactic foe of the dramatically rich Tailtean Plains map and getting an ending that hints at his past relationship with Edelgard. Compare that to VW-Dimitri, who appears as a secondary foe at Gronder then dies offscreen moments later. And Claude... admittedly this is somewhat contingent on seeing his final scene (which requires defeating him with either Byleth or Edelgard), but I love his role in CF. The mid-battle surprise attack by the Almyran forces is a great moment and I really bought his gambit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I also love this line: "If you're as smart as you seem, I bet you've figured out why I was able to summon Almyran reinforcements. Wouldn't it be better to let me go and have me in your debt?" As someone whose first experience with the game was two simultaneous playthroughs, one Crimson Flower and one Azure Moon, it was CF that got me much more excited to see more of Claude. And I definitely don't think he's portrayed as a weakling, certainly not compared to a route where he's an afterthought at Gronder then requires you to save him a side force of the Adrestian army.

This isn't even getting into how both Dimitri and Claude are treated on Silver Snow, where Claude doesn't even appear post-timeskip, and Dimitri only appears as a ghost or hallucination.

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

It is pretty pointless, but I don't think it's quite that pointless. The unique endgame with the fight against The Immaculate One and the white beasts is pretty interesting (mechanically if not narratively) and is worth seeing at least once. I also think it's the best route for both Ferdinand and Caspar, since it's the only way to both start off with them and see their paralogues. So it's not totally useless, just mostly useless.

I agree about having a unique fight (though it's a bit depressing that it's just the one). I'm inclined to disagree about Ferdinand and Caspar, though. Firstly because finishing their support chains with Edelgard and Hubert is IMO more important than their paralogues. (Particularly Ferdinand. He proposes public education! And the support with Hubert is both a rich comparison and contrast between two men of similar ideals but very different tempraments, and also very gay.) But also because this is only relevant if you play the game exactly once. If you do at least two playthroughs, you can get 99.9% of content for both characters by playing Crimson Flower, then recruiting them on either Azure Moon or Verdant Wind. This is mostly a nitpick, though, I obviously agree with your overall statement.

*I'm happy to explain why Silver Snow is the route that specifically feels like an afterthought if anyone is curious, but I've done that before and this post is already long enough.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Great analysis! I think you have a very sound take on the route.

One addendum I'd give is, people often criticize Crimson Flower as the shortest route, and reasonably so. But 3H has an interesting issue where it's simultaneously a really short game... and a really long one. Like, even in the longer routes - 22 chapters is on the shorter side for the series. But contained within those chapters is Monasterying, possible Aux battles, tutoring, inventory management, class certifications, and the Paralogues. As a result, my playthroughs will run anywhere from 90 to 150 hours - well above any other title in the series!

So even on CF, I don't think the game is too short, exactly. Rather, it turns into a question of distribution. The pivotal moment of the game, and narrative "halfway point", occurs after chapter 12. That's when the timeskip happens, and your style of campaign dramatically changes. Unfortunately, all the routes are "front-heavy", with fewer chapters, including paralogues - and basically no new recruits - beyond the halfway point. But CF takes this to an extreme, with only 6 chapters post-skip, compared to 12 chapters pre-skip. Even if you argue that the "crux" is before chapter 12, a ratio of 11:7 isn't much better.

So, what's the solution? I enjoyed how every month was its own chapter in the pre-skip, so I wouldn't want to reduce that count. But plenty of others have stated ways, in other threads, to "trim the fat" - streamline the Monastery, simplify instructing, and ultimately put more emphasis on the "main battle" each month. But I'd add to this: migrate more paralogues to after the timeskip. The Ingrithea one could work fine there, as could Seteth/Flayn (perhaps as a SS exclusive, to give the route more of its own identity?). And make more post-skip recruitables! Fleche on CF and Judith on GD are obvious ones, but you could also do more "re-recruits", like how Ashe and Lorenz work (and let them keep their enemy class and level, dammit!).

All told, I love the game - and even on it's "shortest" route, it's a lengthy commitment. But I do think they could've done a better job with the distribution of time, and things to do.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Great analysis! I think you have a very sound take on the route.

One addendum I'd give is, people often criticize Crimson Flower as the shortest route, and reasonably so. But 3H has an interesting issue where it's simultaneously a really short game... and a really long one. Like, even in the longer routes - 22 chapters is on the shorter side for the series. But contained within those chapters is Monasterying, possible Aux battles, tutoring, inventory management, class certifications, and the Paralogues. As a result, my playthroughs will run anywhere from 90 to 150 hours - well above any other title in the series!

So even on CF, I don't think the game is too short, exactly. Rather, it turns into a question of distribution. The pivotal moment of the game, and narrative "halfway point", occurs after chapter 12. That's when the timeskip happens, and your style of campaign dramatically changes. Unfortunately, all the routes are "front-heavy", with fewer chapters, including paralogues - and basically no new recruits - beyond the halfway point. But CF takes this to an extreme, with only 6 chapters post-skip, compared to 12 chapters pre-skip. Even if you argue that the "crux" is before chapter 12, a ratio of 11:7 isn't much better.

So, what's the solution? I enjoyed how every month was its own chapter in the pre-skip, so I wouldn't want to reduce that count. But plenty of others have stated ways, in other threads, to "trim the fat" - streamline the Monastery, simplify instructing, and ultimately put more emphasis on the "main battle" each month. But I'd add to this: migrate more paralogues to after the timeskip. The Ingrithea one could work fine there, as could Seteth/Flayn (perhaps as a SS exclusive, to give the route more of its own identity?). And make more post-skip recruitables! Fleche on CF and Judith on GD are obvious ones, but you could also do more "re-recruits", like how Ashe and Lorenz work (and let them keep their enemy class and level, dammit!).

All told, I love the game - and even on it's "shortest" route, it's a lengthy commitment. But I do think they could've done a better job with the distribution of time, and things to do.

I think Crimson Flower has one of the shortest speed runs of any Fire Emblem game. People have genuinely beaten it in about an hour by power leveling Edelgard and Byleth alone, skipping all monastery stuff and paralogues and just assassinating every boss with Wyvern Lord Edelgard. You're right that the front load is the problem though, for all routes, just most proununced in Crimson Flower. By the time Part 1 ends it feels like you're only just starting the story but that's like 60 or 70 hours in for conventional playthroughs. I'll also add, as I've complained about before, that the intermediate prf classes for Dimitri, Edelgard and Claude are wasted and they could have just come with their advanced prf classes right from the start of Part 1, Byleth already has Enlightened One before Part 1 even finishes. This definitely hurts the Emperor class the most as, unless you've saved all your paralogues for end game, you have like four chapters to use it (genuinely unlocked Flickering Flower when fighting Rhea and couldn't equip it because it was mid final battle).

13 hours ago, lenticular said:

(To a lesser extent this applies to Hubert and Flayn as well. For instance, I have a friend who, in her first time playing Three Houses, turned Flayn into her Dancer and then lost her when she went into Crimson Flower. This isn't completely game-ruining, but it's certainly a whole lot of no fun at all.)

Made Edelgard my dancer in my first playthrough, and I gave her my movement ring before she ditched me >.>

[lenticular]

15 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I agree about having a unique fight (though it's a bit depressing that it's just the one). I'm inclined to disagree about Ferdinand and Caspar, though. Firstly because finishing their support chains with Edelgard and Hubert is IMO more important than their paralogues. (Particularly Ferdinand. He proposes public education! And the support with Hubert is both a rich comparison and contrast between two men of similar ideals but very different tempraments, and also very gay.) But also because this is only relevant if you play the game exactly once. If you do at least two playthroughs, you can get 99.9% of content for both characters by playing Crimson Flower, then recruiting them on either Azure Moon or Verdant Wind. This is mostly a nitpick, though, I obviously agree with your overall statement.

Well, the relative importance of different elements is always going to be subjective, so there's no point arguing over that. It's entirely fair and reasonable if you favour the Edelgard and Hubert supports over the paralogues and the out-of-house supports that aren't available in CF. What I will say, though, is that I find Ferdinand to be possibly the single most awkward character to recruit to other houses, due to the combination of his requirement for armor training and the impossibility of working around it with a B support. While you certainly can recruit him to the Golden Deer, I find it's generally a lot easier to recruit Lysithea for Silver Snow. Plus, even if you do recruit him, the requirements mean that you're not going to be doing it quickly and he's going to be quite a way behind on training and masteries.

That said, though, I absolutely agree with you that there should have been a version of that paralogue that was playable on Crimson Flower as well.

14 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So even on CF, I don't think the game is too short, exactly. Rather, it turns into a question of distribution. The pivotal moment of the game, and narrative "halfway point", occurs after chapter 12. That's when the timeskip happens, and your style of campaign dramatically changes. Unfortunately, all the routes are "front-heavy", with fewer chapters, including paralogues - and basically no new recruits - beyond the halfway point. But CF takes this to an extreme, with only 6 chapters post-skip, compared to 12 chapters pre-skip. Even if you argue that the "crux" is before chapter 12, a ratio of 11:7 isn't much better.

I don't think that this is inherently a problem. For comparison, I'd say that the pivotal moment of Radiant Dawn is From Pain, Awakening. That's similarly transformative to Edelgard's rebellion and is about three quarters of the way through the game (31 chapters up to that point, and 11 afterwards) but I can't remember having ever heard anyone complaining that RD Part IV needed to be longer.

The problems, I think, come from two different angles. One is that White Clouds is (almost) the same on every route and so is prone to get repetitive. The second is that there's such a sharp break and a disconnect at that point. Yes, Edelgard and Hubert have clearly been plotting and planning to get to that point but we the player have not been involved in that at all. It's too sudden a shift. Again, this is one of the negative consequences of aiming for a shocking twist for the sake of a shocking twist.

But let me propose an alternate hypothetical version of the game. Instead of just having the one big reveal, the depths of Edelgard's opposition to the Church come out over time. There are various events throughout Part 1 in which you gradually start to build up your trust with Edelgard, and she gradually starts to open up to you more and more and reveal her plan to you. By the time you get to the Holy Tomb, you're already completely committed to team Edelgard, and act alongside her. In this version, I don't think that the timing would be a problem. I think it would be fine to have a long period of scheming and planning and then a fairly swift actual execution of the plan.

Basically, I think the pacing issues are mostly an implementation problem.

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think Crimson Flower has one of the shortest speed runs of any Fire Emblem game. People have genuinely beaten it in about an hour by power leveling Edelgard and Byleth alone, skipping all monastery stuff and paralogues and just assassinating every boss with Wyvern Lord Edelgard.

I was curious enough to go and look this up, and Crimson Flower is somewhere around the middle-to-fast side of things. Counting only mainline games (exclusive of Heroes and Archanea Saga), with 4 runs for Three Houses, 3 for Fates, and 2 for Old Mystery, Crimson Flower is 10th out of 23. Or 7th if you allow NG+. Or 11th/8th if you allow skipping the entire game using a sound test in SDatBoL. The fastest game by far (excluding the SDatBoL skip) is Shadow Dragon (DS) where the world record is under 17 minutes, due to the absurdity of warp skipping in that game.

Full list of world record times on speedrun.com:

Spoiler

1. Shadow Dragon (DS) -- 16m33s
2. Awakening -- 32m44s
3. Fates (Birthright) -- 34m21s
4. New Mystery -- 36m46s
5. Fates (Conquest) -- 42m04s
6. Fates (Revelation) -- 42m12s
7. Sacred Stones -- 1h03m06s
8. Binding Blade -- 1h06m59s
9. Engage -- 1h08m04s
10. Three Houses (CF) -- 1h09m39s
11. Blazing Blade -- 1h10m54s
12. Three Houses (VW) -- 1h15m39s
13. Shadows of Valentia -- 1h16m12s
14. Three Houses (church) -- 1h16m47s
15. Three Houses (AM) -- 1h17m47s
16. Old Mystery (Book 1) -- 1h24m19s
17. Path of Radiance -- 1h48m17s
18. Thracia 776 -- 1h49m18s
19. Old Mystery (Book 2) -- 2h12m45s
20. Radiant Dawn -- 2h33m19s
21. Shadow Dragon (Famicom) -- 3h32m18s
22. Genealogy -- 3h51m16s
23. Gaiden -- 5h48m49s

 

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

Made Edelgard my dancer in my first playthrough, and I gave her my movement ring before she ditched me >.>

Ouch. Anyone have a tale of dancer!Hubert to complete the trifecta?

[Moltz23]

@lenticular Can't disagree on that. One of Silver Snow's biggest weaknesses in terms of writing is that the story's tragedy heavily banks on the player getting attached to Edelgard before she turns against you, without really doing anything else in terms of failsafes. So if the player just doesn't vibe with Edelgard, then much of what's trying to do just doesn't work.

 

I wonder if that's why the devs had Silver Snow's story maps feature one deployment spot less than Azure Moon and Verdant Wind after Chapter 11. Hmm...

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

By the time Part 1 ends it feels like you're only just starting the story but that's like 60 or 70 hours in for conventional playthroughs. I'll also add, as I've complained about before, that the intermediate prf classes for Dimitri, Edelgard and Claude are wasted and they could have just come with their advanced prf classes right from the start of Part 1, Byleth already has Enlightened One before Part 1 even finishes.

Fun fact about that! There's evidence pointing out the House Leaders' intermediate lord classes were added fairly late during development, meaning Byleth only having one "lord class" is a remnant of a time everyone was meant to get just one of those.

18 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

And I think Silver Snow absolutely suffers for being a bit of an afterthought* in terms of execution (which is funny, because it's implied to be the first route in concept).

I had the same thoughts about it as well pretty early on. After digging a bit further into the game's code, everything points out Silver Snow's was barely revisited late in development compared to the other routes. And by that, I mean the devs:

• Hastily removed a feature in which the Black Eagles not named Bernadetta could return later as enemies if fallen in battle during Part 1 on Classic mode (setting their status as unrecruited manually through save editing is enough to add it back).
• Setting a brief exchange between Bernie and Ferdinand in Chapter 15 to be triggered or not depending if Dorothea's paralogue was done in Part 1 (everything surrounding the paralogues point out those were one of the very last things added to the game).
• Lowering down the difficulty of Silver Snow's final map a bit.

Edited August 23 by Moltz23

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

4 hours ago, lenticular said:

Full list of world record times on speedrun.com:

Good reference! It seems like it's less a question of "how much mainline content is in the game?", and moreso, "to what degree can you skip enemy phase?".

Interestingly, out of all the semi-modern (DS and onward) titles, Three Houses doesn't go especially quickly. It's losing to DSFE and Fateswakening, in all cases. CF does cleanly beat SoV, at least, which the other routes are clustering around.

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

don't think that this is inherently a problem. For comparison, I'd say that the pivotal moment of Radiant Dawn is From Pain, Awakening. That's similarly transformative to Edelgard's rebellion and is about three quarters of the way through the game (31 chapters up to that point, and 11 afterwards) but I can't remember having ever heard anyone complaining that RD Part IV needed to be longer.

I don't think these are directly comparable. Part I of 3H (White Clouds) makes a big deal out of the Calendar system. Each of the twelve chapters takes place within a new months, which gets a name and seasonal description. Sometimes its own holidays. So when I've played 12 months through "Part I", and see that I'm entering into "Part II" now, I expect an experience that's gonna be another 12 chapters over 12 months. An unrealistic expectation, perhaps, but it's what I feel primed for by the game itself. And finishing a war over as few as 6 battles across 6 months... to me, that's unsatisfying. A good meal, yes, but not a filling one.

RD, of course, gives us four parts, each of varying lengths. By the time we reach Part IV, we've had "medium", "short", and "long" already, so it's not clear what to expect next. Part IV pre-tower has relatively few chapters, but they each take very long due to being Rout maps with a ton of reinforcements, or sand holding you back. Gee, thanks.

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

But let me propose an alternate hypothetical version of the game. Instead of just having the one big reveal, the depths of Edelgard's opposition to the Church come out over time. There are various events throughout Part 1 in which you gradually start to build up your trust with Edelgard, and she gradually starts to open up to you more and more and reveal her plan to you. By the time you get to the Holy Tomb, you're already completely committed to team Edelgard, and act alongside her. In this version, I don't think that the timing would be a problem. I think it would be fine to have a long period of scheming and planning and then a fairly swift actual execution of the plan.

I mean, I think I'd still take issue personally with the relative brevity (and the "nothing new to discover in the Monastery" issue) of the War Phase, but if this could help your and others' appreciation of the game, then sure I guess.

My own "dumb, probably controversial" idea is "make CF exclusive to NG+". This could actually work with your idea - because it's NG+, Teach knows that Edelgard is going to take her stand against the church. At least on some level, Teach retains their memories, and has the option of using them to get closer with Edelgard. In this case, "White Clouds" could diverge earlier, as they begin covertly working with the "Flame Emperor".

18 hours ago, Jotari said:

I've complained about before, that the intermediate prf classes for Dimitri, Edelgard and Claude are wasted and they could have just come with their advanced prf classes right from the start of Part 1, Byleth already has Enlightened One before Part 1 even finishes.

My pet theory is, they didn' want Dimitri to get his "redeemed-looking" Great Lord class at the start of Part II. And if Dimitri warrants two personal classes, then so do the other two Lords.

Seriously, even the mastery isn't an excuse. The Advanced classes get a nigh-useless skill, while the Master classes grant a combat art. But classes have given both of these upon mastery before! Like Assassin, Grappler, and all the Beginner classes. So one class could do both.

[Dark Holy Elf]

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

What I will say, though, is that I find Ferdinand to be possibly the single most awkward character to recruit to other houses, due to the combination of his requirement for armor training and the impossibility of working around it with a B support. While you certainly can recruit him to the Golden Deer, I find it's generally a lot easier to recruit Lysithea for Silver Snow. Plus, even if you do recruit him, the requirements mean that you're not going to be doing it quickly and he's going to be quite a way behind on training and masteries.

I definitely agree that it's harder to recruit Ferdinand than other students, and it's certainly requires considerable effort to recruit him early enough that he doesn't feel "behind"... but it isn't actually hard to recruit him if your goal is just to see the paralogue. He requires a D+ rank of armour, which is, at worst, 9 faculty training sessions (potentially lower depending on RNG luck and the question of the sauna). This is a big ask early on, but not so much at the end of White Clouds, by which point you likely have 8 or more points for exploration and can afford to burn some of them. Azure Moon/Verdant WInd even let you do recruiting in Chapter 12, as nonsensical as that is storywise. As long as you start on the armour training in Chapter 10 you should be fine.

As a side note, I have on occasion actually gotten the armour rank early (Chapter 5 is possible, though 6 is fair bit easier), and Weight-3 plus the Armour Knight certification for 12 defence are certainly appreciated on Byleth... but it does require a serious commitment, yes.

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

So when I've played 12 months through "Part I", and see that I'm entering into "Part II" now, I expect an experience that's gonna be another 12 chapters over 12 months. An unrealistic expectation, perhaps, but it's what I feel primed for by the game itself. And finishing a war over as few as 6 battles across 6 months... to me, that's unsatisfying. A good meal, yes, but not a filling one.

I feel like if you added 2 to 6 post-timeskip chapters to each route, the game would feel very bloated, at least to me. For what it's worth I definitely was not expecting that many. Instead, what I was expecting was that Part 1 would end sooner than it did. When I saw the Zaharas scene, I figured that was the end of part 1. Then when Edelgard was revealed as the Flame Emperor, I figured surely that was. I guess I'm arguing that Part 2 isn't too short, but maybe Part 1 is a bit too long.

The only way I think a longer Part 2 would work for me is if you streamlined part 2 a fair bit. Get rid of the monastery at that point, perhaps replacing it with a Hopes-like war camp. Get rid of the system of weeks and free days: you go to the camp, then battle. Get rid of all the quests (the dark merchant can just show up in Chapter 16 or whenever). Get rid of instruction, or replace it with something much faster. Not only would this speed the game up, I think it would improve the tone: it would add to the feel that we're at war now, and we don't have time to mess around. (Just... maybe still let me take characters to tea time in their post-timeskip outfits, please.)

All of these take effort to develop, though, and it's pretty clear the devs ran out of time as is, so I'm not surprised we didn't get it.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

My pet theory is, they didn' want Dimitri to get his "redeemed-looking" Great Lord class at the start of Part II. And if Dimitri warrants two personal classes, then so do the other two Lords.

Seriously, even the mastery isn't an excuse. The Advanced classes get a nigh-useless skill, while the Master classes grant a combat art. But classes have given both of these upon mastery before! Like Assassin, Grappler, and all the Beginner classes. So one class could do both.

Yeah, Dimitri's promotion at the very least serves a narrative purpose. But considering you aren't compelled to actually use his intermediate class, unlike the narrative promotions of Ike and Roy, it runs into "cute but a bit unnecessary" territory. What they could have done, though it'd be a bit unconventional, is just mechanically give him only one exclusive class but simply change the model after his redemption begins. The game already has the ability to play classes using different models as an option and you kind of get the best of both worlds if you do that. It's also subtler. As it stands you can visually ignore his Great Lord class and have him finish the rest of the game still looking like a murder hobo (though there's a good chance you'll be having him look like a dracoknight both before and after Rodeigue dies).

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

Well, the relative importance of different elements is always going to be subjective, so there's no point arguing over that. It's entirely fair and reasonable if you favour the Edelgard and Hubert supports over the paralogues and the out-of-house supports that aren't available in CF. What I will say, though, is that I find Ferdinand to be possibly the single most awkward character to recruit to other houses, due to the combination of his requirement for armor training and the impossibility of working around it with a B support. While you certainly can recruit him to the Golden Deer, I find it's generally a lot easier to recruit Lysithea for Silver Snow. Plus, even if you do recruit him, the requirements mean that you're not going to be doing it quickly and he's going to be quite a way behind on training and masteries.

That said, though, I absolutely agree with you that there should have been a version of that paralogue that was playable on Crimson Flower as well.

I don't think that this is inherently a problem. For comparison, I'd say that the pivotal moment of Radiant Dawn is From Pain, Awakening. That's similarly transformative to Edelgard's rebellion and is about three quarters of the way through the game (31 chapters up to that point, and 11 afterwards) but I can't remember having ever heard anyone complaining that RD Part IV needed to be longer.

The problems, I think, come from two different angles. One is that White Clouds is (almost) the same on every route and so is prone to get repetitive. The second is that there's such a sharp break and a disconnect at that point. Yes, Edelgard and Hubert have clearly been plotting and planning to get to that point but we the player have not been involved in that at all. It's too sudden a shift. Again, this is one of the negative consequences of aiming for a shocking twist for the sake of a shocking twist.

But let me propose an alternate hypothetical version of the game. Instead of just having the one big reveal, the depths of Edelgard's opposition to the Church come out over time. There are various events throughout Part 1 in which you gradually start to build up your trust with Edelgard, and she gradually starts to open up to you more and more and reveal her plan to you. By the time you get to the Holy Tomb, you're already completely committed to team Edelgard, and act alongside her. In this version, I don't think that the timing would be a problem. I think it would be fine to have a long period of scheming and planning and then a fairly swift actual execution of the plan.

Basically, I think the pacing issues are mostly an implementation problem.

I was curious enough to go and look this up, and Crimson Flower is somewhere around the middle-to-fast side of things. Counting only mainline games (exclusive of Heroes and Archanea Saga), with 4 runs for Three Houses, 3 for Fates, and 2 for Old Mystery, Crimson Flower is 10th out of 23. Or 7th if you allow NG+. Or 11th/8th if you allow skipping the entire game using a sound test in SDatBoL. The fastest game by far (excluding the SDatBoL skip) is Shadow Dragon (DS) where the world record is under 17 minutes, due to the absurdity of warp skipping in that game.

Full list of world record times on speedrun.com:

  Hide contents

1. Shadow Dragon (DS) -- 16m33s
2. Awakening -- 32m44s
3. Fates (Birthright) -- 34m21s
4. New Mystery -- 36m46s
5. Fates (Conquest) -- 42m04s
6. Fates (Revelation) -- 42m12s
7. Sacred Stones -- 1h03m06s
8. Binding Blade -- 1h06m59s
9. Engage -- 1h08m04s
10. Three Houses (CF) -- 1h09m39s
11. Blazing Blade -- 1h10m54s
12. Three Houses (VW) -- 1h15m39s
13. Shadows of Valentia -- 1h16m12s
14. Three Houses (church) -- 1h16m47s
15. Three Houses (AM) -- 1h17m47s
16. Old Mystery (Book 1) -- 1h24m19s
17. Path of Radiance -- 1h48m17s
18. Thracia 776 -- 1h49m18s
19. Old Mystery (Book 2) -- 2h12m45s
20. Radiant Dawn -- 2h33m19s
21. Shadow Dragon (Famicom) -- 3h32m18s
22. Genealogy -- 3h51m16s
23. Gaiden -- 5h48m49s

 

Ouch. Anyone have a tale of dancer!Hubert to complete the trifecta?

Completely unsurprising Shadow Dragon is way out in front with it's warp skip nonsense, but there are some other very surprising things there. Though the more I think of it the more it makes sense. Awakening does let you power level Robin and skip basically everything that way, and Fates still has pair up so if you're playing on easy mode you can probably do that too.

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

don't think these are directly comparable. Part I of 3H (White Clouds) makes a big deal out of the Calendar system. Each of the twelve chapters takes place within a new months, which gets a name and seasonal description. Sometimes its own holidays. So when I've played 12 months through "Part I", and see that I'm entering into "Part II" now, I expect an experience that's gonna be another 12 chapters over 12 months. An unrealistic expectation, perhaps, but it's what I feel primed for by the game itself. And finishing a war over as few as 6 battles across 6 months... to me, that's unsatisfying. A good meal, yes, but not a filling one.

I saw something in reddit (a cursed place no one should ever go) the other day that described generic complaints for Fire Emblem and one of them about Three Houses was "nothing happens in one half of the game". A comment pointed out that that applies to both halves. Which is bizarrely true. I mean, looking at all of the stories as a whole something definitely happens, but looking at each individual part both feel lacking. A lot more stuff certainly happens in part 1, but it all feels like set up and almost excuse plots like Flayn's blood. While in the second half it's basically just "war" with very little plot progress beyond beating all enemies. That's probably why it's said Azure Moon is the closest route to feeling like it has an actual complete story since at least Dimitri gets some sort of arc even if it causes him to flip like a light switch.

[Etrurian emperor]

Caspar and Ferdie being Black Eagles only in Hopes always interested me since they always struck me as the most likely students to defect to other houses. Ferdie because of his one sided rivalry with Edelgard and his house being disbanded, and Caspar because fighting for JUSTICE is his thing, him showing disinterest in Edelgard's views, and him(along with Linhardt) seemingly having the weakest bond with Edelgard among the Beagles. 

Though it does make a certain amount of sense if you look it through the presence of Count Bergliez. Through most his scenes Caspar serves as his understudy so he can't be removed as easy without having to put in extra work for the count's cutscenes. 

[vikingsfan92]

19 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

My own "dumb, probably controversial" idea is "make CF exclusive to NG+". This could actually work with your idea - because it's NG+, Teach knows that Edelgard is going to take her stand against the church. At least on some level, Teach retains their memories, and has the option of using them to get closer with Edelgard. In this case, "White Clouds" could diverge earlier, as they begin covertly working with the "Flame Emperor".

If any route should be new game + it should be silver snow.  I get that you are going for some more unique changes for CF but the idea you have to play an entire playthrough you don't really want to do just one you do doesn't sit well with me considering other routes have the same fight against the same faction and only one of the three has to jump through this hoop.

A better way to do it probably would be to have more choices that actually matter and give you additional scenes. Either way the holy tomb chapter kind of needs a rework regardless for black Eagles at it is akward and clumsily done for a route split spot.

It does make CF a bit more annoying to get into but doesn't force people to do something they don't want to.

On 8/22/2024 at 4:49 PM, lenticular said:

That's only really the case for people who had followed the game closely prior to playing it, I think. I hadn't particularly followed all the pre-release marketing and hype cycle, and I certainly hadn't seen much of the characters in-game, so I didn't really feel I knew the characters nearly well to make any sort of informed decision at that point. So it is at least possible for someone to pick the Black Eagles but end up having no interest in Edelgard. But honestly, having the choice between the houses being too early is another different problem with the game, even if it does slightly and accidentally mitigate the problem you mentioned. (Though at least it's better than Fates here, since you have to choose there before you even buy the game.)

Given how the only non recruitable chacrters are the lords, Hubert and Dedue (and some weirdness of Black Eagles and Hilda) I think this very much is a point in favor of the face lords stories mattering the most when it comes to house choice.  You can see pretty much any other charcters story no matter what house you choose and we were told this from the start. 

 

Edited August 24 by vikingsfan92

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, vikingsfan92 said:

If any route should be new game + it should be silver snow.  I get that you are going for some more unique changes for CF but the idea you have to play an entire playthrough you don't really want to do just one you do doesn't sit well with me considering other routes have the same fight against the same faction and only one of the three has to jump through this hoop.

A better way to do it probably would be to have more choices that actually matter and give you additional scenes. Either way the holy tomb chapter kind of needs a rework regardless for black Eagles at it is akward and clumsily done for a route split spot.

It does make CF a bit more annoying to get into but doesn't force people to do something they don't want to.

Given how the only non recruitable chacrters are the lords, Hubert and Dedue (and some weirdness of Black Eagles and Hilda) I think this very much is a point in favor of the face lords stories mattering the most when it comes to house choice.  You can see pretty much any other charcters story no matter what house you choose and we were told this from the start. 

 

If Silver Snow was New Game+ exclusive it would be the most widely hated thing in the game by quite a stretch. The exclusive post game route is...less content than one of the standard routes it's nearly identical to.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I think making any of the existing routes NG+ only is a terrible idea. You undermine the CF/SS choice if it's one you're not even allowed to make until beating the game once.

To me, the only type of route which would make sense for NG+ would be some sort of "golden" route. One interesting thing about NG+ is that unlike most games, 3H arguably has a lore-compliant explanation for it: maybe NG+ is like a Super Divine Pulse that takes them Byleth the way back to the prologue. Since it's a big part of Byleth's limited characterization that they form strong bonds with their students, I think it's reasonable that Byleth would want to find a way to save all of them (in particular, there is no route where both Dimitri and Edelgard survive, and surely Byleth would want that), so you could build a NG+ route around that. But... that's a lot of work for content many players won't even see, in an already big game. And there's something to be said for not having a golden route, as it can end up undermining the stories of the other routes.

9 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Caspar and Ferdie being Black Eagles only in Hopes always interested me since they always struck me as the most likely students to defect to other houses. Ferdie because of his one sided rivalry with Edelgard and his house being disbanded, and Caspar because fighting for JUSTICE is his thing, him showing disinterest in Edelgard's views, and him(along with Linhardt) seemingly having the weakest bond with Edelgard among the Beagles. 

A major difference between Hopes and Houses is that Houses provides a logical reasons for some of the Eagles to defect... i.e. they disagree with her methods, or can't abide her reluctant alliance with the slithery folk, or just deeply trust Byleth and go along with his/her choice. All of these impetuses are absent in Hopes, which leaves little reason to think that Ferdinand and Caspar would wake up one day and say "y'know what, I'm going to fight for the Church!".

I think Hopes generally went with "who could reasonably be convinced to fight against their own country" (under threat of death, in some cases), rather than an ideological reason for defection. And Ferdinand/Caspar do strike me as the hardest Eagles to convince to do this. Linhardt is weakly tied to Edelgard (as you note) and would scoff at the idea of dying for his country; Petra will do what she can to survive as long as it means not betraying Brigid; Bernie can be scared into it; even Dorothea, who is arguably the most strongly ideologically aligned with Edie's goals, is the type who would do whatever she has to in order to survive. But Ferdinand and Caspar both strike me as the types who would choose death over betrayal. So, for that matter, do most of the Faerghus characters, which is so few of them are recruitable.

[Jotari]

What would have been great about Silver Snow is if you had to recruit the Black Eagles Hopes style by encountering them in battle. Because Silver Snow is honestly a bit of a disservice to them. That, Hubert aside, they all unanimously betray Edelgard makes their loyalty seem a lot more wishy-washy (granted Edelgard did just try to murder them all, but she does that in Crimson Flower too, which is its own issue). And because Silver Snow then swaps focus to the church Fernand and the others are just left being ignored by the story. Having some, if not most or even all of them reappear as enemies you need to convince would at least give them more presence in the story. Of course there are gameplay issues to just suddenly taking away most of your army, but, feck it, were already being experimental, give us church unit promotes to compensate. It would at least give Silver Snow more gameplay distinction to Verdant Wind. As right now it's only Different Endgame Boss+No Grinder+No Claude+No early recruit Catherine (ie Verdant With but with less content).

[Moltz23]

On 8/24/2024 at 11:55 AM, Etrurian emperor said:

Caspar and Ferdie being Black Eagles only in Hopes always interested me since they always struck me as the most likely students to defect to other houses. Ferdie because of his one sided rivalry with Edelgard and his house being disbanded, and Caspar because fighting for JUSTICE is his thing, him showing disinterest in Edelgard's views, and him(along with Linhardt) seemingly having the weakest bond with Edelgard among the Beagles.

Perhaps not so much considering how Three Houses handles both. Besides following the pattern of the other Black Eagles always sticking with the Empire without Byleth's influence (due to Silver Snow existing, they're the incidentally the sole playable faction with this distinction), both are the only two recruitable characters in the game whose requirement requisites can't be lowered further like everyone else due to their B-Support being locked to the post timeskip.

From a more story angle, there's the fact Ferdinand was planning to deliver his father to justice before Edelgard's coup robbed him the chance to do so, which becomes the basis for both his B-Support with Byleth in CF, and his mini arc in Three Hopes' Scarlet Blaze route. While for Caspar, dude admits various times that he's terrified of the idea of ever fighting his dad willingly, and there's the whole irony angle of how the student most concerned with bringing the Death Knight to justice ends up working with the guy after the timeskip (I bring this up mainly because the scenario in question does exists in Silver Snow as well, but went unused due to the whole "defecting defeated Black Eagles" mechanic getting axed late into development).

 

[vanguard333]

On 8/24/2024 at 11:55 AM, Etrurian emperor said:

Caspar and Ferdie being Black Eagles only in Hopes always interested me since they always struck me as the most likely students to defect to other houses. Ferdie because of his one sided rivalry with Edelgard and his house being disbanded, and Caspar because fighting for JUSTICE is his thing, him showing disinterest in Edelgard's views, and him(along with Linhardt) seemingly having the weakest bond with Edelgard among the Beagles. 

Though it does make a certain amount of sense if you look it through the presence of Count Bergliez. Through most his scenes Caspar serves as his understudy so he can't be removed as easy without having to put in extra work for the count's cutscenes. 

I don't see Ferdinand as likely to defect at all. He does disagree with Edelgard, but he does so because he feels that is the best way to act as her second and one of her advisors. He is ultimately very loyal to the empire and to Edelgard. This can be best seen in his supports with Hubert: both are very loyal; where they argue is how best to express that loyalty. Ferdinand even criticizes Hubert for carrying out actions behind Edelgard's back that they both know Edelgard would not order either of them to do.

[Original Alear]

23 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

To me, the only type of route which would make sense for NG+ would be some sort of "golden" route. One interesting thing about NG+ is that unlike most games, 3H arguably has a lore-compliant explanation for it: maybe NG+ is like a Super Divine Pulse that takes them Byleth the way back to the prologue. Since it's a big part of Byleth's limited characterization that they form strong bonds with their students, I think it's reasonable that Byleth would want to find a way to save all of them (in particular, there is no route where both Dimitri and Edelgard survive, and surely Byleth would want that), so you could build a NG+ route around that. But... that's a lot of work for content many players won't even see, in an already big game. And there's something to be said for not having a golden route, as it can end up undermining the stories of the other routes.

I think reason for no golden route was...an allusion. To other games made by Omega Force, let alone those games' source materials. They tried to make it obvious by making 3 Hopes a Warriors game. You can draw some lines of comparison between 3 Kingdoms and 3 Houses/Hopes, not just that there happen to be 3 in all of those. Of course, there are some elements in 3 Houses/Hopes that make a few references to Suikoden III, another 3 protagonist game that had a shared, positive, non fatal ending for nearly all the stars but Luc and Sarah. Edelgard perhaps most obviously has similarities to Chris from Suiko 3.

But as the Flame Emperor she also has similarities to bandit leader Clant from Suikogaiden (specifically mask), who I don't think survived his game (maybe he did though), let alone made common cause with other major characters. Nemesis's backstory bears some similarities to the original Flame Champion, though of course Nemesis was not exactly portrayed particularly sympathetically. And Rhea and Byleth is probably most easily compared to Hikusaak and Luc/Sarasai/other clones, and seems to be a potentially more villainous personality in later Suikos than Rhea (though the Suikoden series never directly addressed this).

All in all, I think the devs made hints to the player in terms of comparisons to earlier works that there would be some permanent divisions over the course of the game that the characters would get swept up in and would find themselves unable to mend.

I don't see ANYTHING about Jeralt in either Suikoden III or Dynasty Warriors/Three Kingdoms lore though, except that he looks very slightly like Mua, a "free knight" from Suikoden III who got almost no development in that game.

It's true you could say that no golden route was because of a content size issue. But IMO, they specifically wanted there to be no golden route as opposed to having one - otherwise having conjoined routes or just one route with three lords like in FE7 would've prevailed.

Also: for some reason, I was convinced that there was a Ferdinand ending where he loses his rights to his territories. I guess I imagined it, cuz I can't find it anywhere.

[vikingsfan92]

On 8/24/2024 at 7:54 PM, Jotari said:

If Silver Snow was New Game+ exclusive it would be the most widely hated thing in the game by quite a stretch. The exclusive post game route is...less content than one of the standard routes it's nearly identical to.

 

I don't think new game + routes should be a thing either. I was mainly just pushing back against the idea of CF being the new game+ route idea more than anything in a forced new game+ scenario and giving my personal stance on it.

Also tbh isn't it kind of already the route that most people dislike the most. Golden Deer fans in particular probably have the most reason to dislike it as their route is an akward clone of it that could have been more Alliance focused.

 

On 8/24/2024 at 8:29 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I think making any of the existing routes NG+ only is a terrible idea. You undermine the CF/SS choice if it's one you're not even allowed to make until beating the game once.

I might be in the minority here but I personally don't value the choice having much value. Is it worth something yes but not sure I would value it over having a vastly improved narrative for all routes.

Plus this game already has a ton of other paths that oppose the one choice so I feel like it's a choice of unique route versus slight variation of other routes which is only a pseudo choice to begin with when the whole game is taken into account.

Edited August 29 by vikingsfan92

[Dark Holy Elf]

26 minutes ago, vikingsfan92 said:

I might be in the minority here but I personally don't value the choice having much value. Is it worth something yes but not sure I would value it over having a vastly improved narrative for all routes.

I'm all for improved narrative, of course, but if we're talking about the game more or less as is, it does not make any sense to me to take either CF or SS and turn them into a NG+ route. I am arguing that basically the only reason for SS to exist is the choice surrounding it.

32 minutes ago, vikingsfan92 said:

Also tbh isn't it kind of already the route that most people dislike the most.

In the polls I've seen for favourite route it tends to garner far fewer votes than the other three. The in-game-use data we have (gifts and tea times by month, etc.) also imply it as the least-played.

On 8/25/2024 at 6:19 PM, Original Alear said:

Of course, there are some elements in 3 Houses/Hopes that make a few references to Suikoden III, another 3 protagonist game that had a shared, positive, non fatal ending for nearly all the stars but Luc and Sarah. Edelgard perhaps most obviously has similarities to Chris from Suiko 3.

If I had a nickel for every time I encountered a game which featured: three core point-of-view characters who exist in parallel stories and sometimes come into conflict with each other,

• one being a woman in a position of martial authority with silver hair and pale purple eyes,
• one being a tall man with an eyepatch and an association with thunder,
• and one being darker-skinned young man with green eyes whose stat build emphasizes speed

... then I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's strange that it's happened twice.