I want an Awakening-style sequel to Three Houses

[lenticular]

I want an Awakening-style sequel to Three Houses. By which I mean, a sequel set in the far future of the world after all the characters and events of the original game have faded into myth.

Now, admitedly, it's not as if Awakening sets a good example here. For all the things that that game did well, respect for the source canon definitely wasn't one of them. But I think that Three Houses is a much better target for that sort of sequel than Shadow Dragon, Mystery of the Emblem, and Gaiden ever were. For starters, the world building of Three Houses is a lot more extensive, which makes it a lot easier to adapt without having to resort to making up a whole lot of nonsense.

Beyond that, though, I also think that a far-future sequel would work pretty well with the themes and ideas that Three Houses already has. There are all of the ways that Edelgard is a mirror of Rhea. There's Rhea's actions being motivated by her ancient trauma/ There's Rhea being named for one of the Greek titans, the generation that preceeded and were replaced by the Olympians. There's the contrast of Indech and Macuil deliberately retreating from the world and fading into myth compared to Rhea, Seteth and Flayn trying to be an active part in it. There's the way that, at least on Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind, we're actively fighting to try to create a new world order rather than just to maintain the status quo. There's even the way that the NG+ crest item for the Crest of Goneril is called the Kalpa Dragon Sign. The basic idea of repeating patterns in history is baked into the world already.

I don't know exactly what I'd want the plot to look like, since that would require a lot of work to even outline properly, but my basic thought is that Crimson Flower is canon, Edelgard won, she ended up becoming a religious figure as the leader of the gods who overthrew the previous generation of titans (despite not wanting to be) and the Church of Edelgard has now become greedy, corrupt, and nepotistic. Yeah, it's not exactly a super original plot, but I think it could be a cool way to further explore and reifnorce some of the themese of the original game.

[SnowFire]

Very belated reply: Hmm.  If an Awakening-like sequel was ever made, there's one aspect I'd really want them to do, but strongly suspect they wouldn't given their inclinations, but would almost rather them not do it all then do it without this.  And that's the general technological level of the setting.  If we did the far future of Fodlan, it needs to be notably different tech - doesn't have to mirror real human civilization precisely, but don't just have Renaissance-without-guns again.

In actual Awakening, the tech level seems flat, or even gone into reverse, compared to what existed in the time of Marth.  The Falchion is still just as important a super-weapon with no progression or differences in warfare despite the progression of a 1,000 years (well, aside from the discovery of fighting in pairs).  This is depressing, but it's also not out of theme or anything - it's a "Here it is again, but better!" nostalgia call, and disrupting the setting a bunch would work against it.

However, one of the elements in Three Houses is that the world has been in stasis for 1,000 years, and further that this is bad.  This was especially drilled in with the addition of the Shadow Library in the DLC, which talked about how Agarthan advanced technology was suppressed, presumably to prevent a repeat of the Zanado incident or the very VERY old war at all (i.e. even before Seiros, when the Agarthans were at their height - the Agarthans were already a shadowy underworld 1,000 years ago).  All of the routes - yes, including Dimitri's and even Silver Snow - have moving forward and letting the past go being a direct theme.  Given that, having roughly the same tech / social level would be really depressing, since it'd mean that all of the Lords failed in some sense.  (Or that the sequel isn't that far in the future, of course.)

Basically, if we go 200 years+ into the future, let's see some Industrial Revolution Fodlan, or Edwardian Fodlan, or even Cyberpunk Fodlan.  Don't have Paladins riding around on horses poking people with lances, still.

[Hrothgar777]

My fic idea for a Three Houses sequel game is basically this. It's like 700 years in the future, much of the fantasy world cast is descended from Byleth's classmates. They inherit their ancestral crests (admittedly I need to commit to some heavy edits to describe all this on the fanon wiki), and in 1 of 3 routes there's a 42 year timeskip where they have children/grandchildren. It's the Awakening thing but with combinable crests for the children as well, and with a synergistic effect from combining different ones. Admittedly this isn't so novel when you consider Genealogy had both children and something like crests, but fans haven't seen it in a long time at least.

 

My storyline has Edelgard be the canonical winner, she dies young from her two crests, Hubert hides this while acting as regent for her son, he persecutes the devout, some northern lords rally behind a bats#!+ insane fundamentalist guy, who kills Edelgard's son in battle and becomes the new king. Then the new status quo ensues.

The backstory is that the planet's stuck in a time bubble that makes time pass 5,000x faster inside than outside. The humans were once slaves to dragon aliens, Sothis's race, but she led them to revolt and used the time bubble to effectively protect them from ever being attacked again. For instance, an invasion fleet that'd take 6 months to arrive means 2,500 years of peace.

If the player knows this is future Fodlan, then they see the world hasn't progressed at all. History seems not only cyclical but in fact things are moving backward. Nothing in this world looks as magnificent as Garegg Mach, to name one example. But whereas there's no good reason why Archanaea looks exactly like Jugdral looks exactly like Ylisse, this game would have a reason for it: one of the aliens, Sothis's (adult) twin sister and lookalike, is projecting herself inside the bubble, manipulating history at key points and making civilization self-destruct by getting world leaders to make stupid decisions at pivotal moments where they can't afford to be stupid. Like the Agarthans starting a nuclear war and whatnot, and then the religious guy overthrowing the Hresvelgs and installing a less competent theocracy than Rhea's. The aliens are hoping everyone will still be primitive and defenseless by the time they arrive. Which they would be, if not for the fact that key members of that generation have a magic connection to a bunch of high schoolers from 21st century earth.

 

I believe that my concept provides closure to Fodlan's tragic arc by giving it an explanation that something can actually be done about (and they do). On the other hand, that was kind of, sort of already provided in Three Houses by implicitly assigning blame to illiberal leaders like Rhea and making whoever wins the solution. My idea undoes that original victory by retroactively having the victor fail, but I make them fail for a reason that ties into the existing lore. Namely, it's suggested in Three Houses that Sothis came from the "Blue Sea Star" but we don't get any more explanation about the only manakete in all of Fire Emblem history to hail from frigging outer space.

 

As for your concept, you should probably start by asking yourself these questions: what specific themes or ideas do you hope to convey in your story? Why did the world refuse to fundamentally change despite a revolutionary seizing absolute control of it? Does that say something about the world itself? Or about the human condition? What does this game have to offer that's substantively different from its predecessor? If, to a large degree, it's bound to the formula of Three Houses, how does it improve upon such?

What I wrote is one possible example of how these questions might be answered. But whatever you come up with, I'd be interested to see it. Namely feel free to post your idea here.

 

[lenticular]

On 9/23/2023 at 12:55 AM, SnowFire said:

Given that, having roughly the same tech / social level would be really depressing, since it'd mean that all of the Lords failed in some sense.

For me, that's what I want. It's a feature, not a bug. Having all the Lords failing is what feels (for me) like the correct outcome of Three Houses. Possibly I just have a bleaker outlook on the Three Houses storyline than most people, but I do very much see a lot of it as a tragedy. The happily ever after style endings felt very out of place for me. From what discussion I've read, I think that I also see Edelgard as a reflection of Rhea to a greater extent than most people do. All the usual stuff about there not being a single correct way to interpret art certainly apply, but that was something that came across to me very strongly and obviously. Rhea had this horrific childhood trauma, went to war over it, won power, had good intentions, but then ultimately was corrupted by the power. So then we see Edelgard have this horrific childhood trauma, go to war over it, win power, and have good intentions... so my assumption is that she's going to be corrupted by the power and ultimately fail to achieve her goals.

But my basic idea is that history has repeated itself, and a core theme of my hypothetical sequel would be about trying to break out of that cycle. Let's have another sympathetic character who has this trauma and is going to war to prevent it from ever happening again, except that we can't let them.

If that would be unsatisfying for a lot of people and feel as if it invalidates the ending of Three Houses, then another possibility would be to put it in a future of a timeline different from any of the Three Houses routes. For instance, it could be a timeline in which Edelgard was pushed back and nearly defeated, undertook the Hegemon Husk transformation in desperation, and that was enough to see her victorious, but with her humanity shattered. Or maybe a timeline in which Byleth was lost after the Battle of Garreg Mach and never returned, meaning that nobody ever got a decisive advantage in the war which then lasted for decades, descending into a worse and worse quagmire where there were no winners.

On 9/23/2023 at 12:55 AM, SnowFire said:

Basically, if we go 200 years+ into the future, let's see some Industrial Revolution Fodlan, or Edwardian Fodlan, or even Cyberpunk Fodlan.  Don't have Paladins riding around on horses poking people with lances, still.

But with all that said, I do think it's an interesting thought exercise to imagine what a Fire Emblem game would look like if it did have a setting with a tech level based anywhere after the 14th century (or thereabouts; FE tech isn't supposed to mirror real world tech very well, but rather have a general medieval vibe, sometimes brushing into early modern). I do agree with you that it's unlikely that they ever will do this, but it is interesting to think about what it would look like. Personally, I don't think I'd want to see firearms (or at least not many of them) because I don't think that they could really be implemented in a way that feels satisfying but doesn't alter core FE mechanics too much.

What I think could be an interesting direction, though, would be to really push into the direction of magitech. There's already a decent amount of this in Three Houses, with stuff like the Titanus, so I think the setting is ripe for completing a full on magepunk future with automata, ornithopters, magic laser swords, and so on. I'd be down for that sequel as well, even if it would be very different from my original idea.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I wonder - would a far-off-into-the-future sequel to Three Houses even need to canonize any particular route? The four routes have some key commonalities - they all see the continent united into a single political entity, Teach always survives as a major influence, and both the Nabateans and Agarthans broadly displaced from their positions of influence. A "centuries later" sequel could lean into these commonalities, without explicitly stating which side won. Maybe a successive ruler of a united Fodlan saw continuing tensions over the war, and instituted a heavy-handed "damnatio memoriae" in an attempt to pacify and unify the people?

Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude might be mythologized as "friends who all saw flaws in the status quo, turned enemies based on their disagreements on how to change it, leading them into a bloody war where came at each other's throats". Teach could be "the stoic teacher whose belief in their students turned a tragedy into a new beginning for Fodlan". There could still be individual "cults" or "churches" associated with each figure - and maybe a revived (?) "Church of Seiros", too - that are all fighting this sort of "history war" with each other.

On 9/24/2023 at 11:23 AM, lenticular said:

What I think could be an interesting direction, though, would be to really push into the direction of magitech. There's already a decent amount of this in Three Houses, with stuff like the Titanus, so I think the setting is ripe for completing a full on magepunk future with automata, ornithopters, magic laser swords, and so on. I'd be down for that sequel as well, even if it would be very different from my original idea.

Hm, perhaps Morfis could be the center of this "magitech" industry? We obviously never get to see it in vanilla 3H, but we know their country to have a strong association with magic. It would make sense for them to develop new spells, as well as magical weapons, and even more advanced versions of the Golems or Titanus. In any case, having a plot that visits Morfis, Dagda, and Albinea - or whatever their names are in the future - would be a welcome expansion to the world of 3H, IMO.

[lenticular]

On 2/9/2024 at 4:31 AM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I wonder - would a far-off-into-the-future sequel to Three Houses even need to canonize any particular route?

I like this idea. At first, I was thinking of it as a sort of subversion of "as you know" writing. It would be pretty funny if the characters kept alluding back to the events of Three Houses but without ever actually stating the outcome. Because why would they? Everyone (in world) knows it already! So we could get lines like "this is just like when Edelgard declared war on the Church of Seiros, and we all know how that turned out!" or "Edelgard and Dimitri grew up as friends and I'm sure you don't need me to remind you what happened to them!"

But the more I think about it, the more I like it. You're absolutely spot on to bring up the "history war" element of things. The idea that history is written by the winners is a pretty prominent one in Three Houses, and it would be really interesting to see that developed further. In fact, I think it would be fun if we had multiple different factions pushing their own interpretations of history, but that we -- as players of Three Houses -- would know for a fact that none of them were fully accurate, regardless of which route of Three Houses actually happened.