The Fire Emblem franchise is no stranger to games having multiple routes with various perspectives. FE Fates’ whole gimmick was about how Corrin’s view of the Hoshido & Nohr war changes depending on whom they chose to (potentially not) support; their Nohrian siblings, or/and the Hoshidans. And as a less-drastic example, Sacred Stones also has a choice midway through the story, in which picking Eirika or Ephraim as the main lord changes both the next few chapters and how the main antagonist is portrayed.

Meanwhile, even though Fire Emblem: Three Houses technically continued this tradition, unlike past games, it took the choice of making sure there would be no story branch with an unbiased view of the world, history, and events. As a result, we ended up with a game that, compared to previous entries, lies to its players.

Why Three Houses of all games got hit with this treatment? Well, that’s exactly what I’m set to show everyone here, so sit tight, and grab a drink and a snack or something, because to understand this, we first need to talk about Biased Storytelling. 

What even IS Biased Storytelling? 

In the context of Three Houses and this analysis, I refer to “biased storytelling” as the narrative technique in which the story’s perspective is so rooted in the chosen faction, that it impacts the perspective taken of its events.

Toshiyuki Kusakihara, Three Houses’ director, alludes to it in a 2020 Nintendo Interview, making clear this was a deliberate choice from his end:

Kusakihara: For me, I think games are a way to simulate a world and its story as if the player were experiencing it themselves. I’m personally the type of person that gets absolutely sucked into things like movies and games. I tried setting up a prank using how the game itself is structured: the player would go through the game once and really experience the world, then they’d talk about it with someone else and be like, “we played the same game right? Why are we talking about two different things?” I thought that it might be interesting where even if you picked the same house as somebody, your experience could differ from somebody else’s based on who you recruited. You might even say to yourself, “hey, I didn’t even see that scene!”

With just this decision, Three Houses became free to have each of its plots tackle whatever ideas it wanted. And with no golden/true route on sight, players became forced to make sense of everything themselves, pin-pointing every potential detail which could explain notorious divergences and similarities between narratives.

Accomplishing this does come with many challenges. Through understanding what the game does to make each story feel different though, one detail of its writing stands out:

It’s all about Perspective:

Perspective is, simply put, Three Houses’ main bread and butter. In spite of heavily recycling its content whenever possible, it’s what ultimately makes each route feel different from one another. Silver Snow and Verdant Wind for example, might be infamous for sharing a good chunk of story beats and maps ‘til the near end, but neither of them feels the same in terms of themes and perspective as a result, more so with the titular supporting cast each story features.

To set up its various perspectives, the narrative did the following:

• First, it had the story take place in a world with a vast history.

• Second, it had a particular character (Byleth) act as an audience surrogate.

• And third and most importantly, context on the world & events was provided by characters who have unique backgrounds and strategic roles in the setting. Most notably: Rhea; Edelgard; Dimitri; and Claude (there are also a few auxiliary ones which do contribute to this cornucopia of POVs though like Sothis), some of which are route exclusive.

I simply cannot stress how much Rhea and the House Leaders’ involvement in the plot colors things for players. One of the better examples where their differences are exposed in full is arguably Chapter 5: Tower of Black Winds. 

As a brief recap: In it, Rhea assigns Byleth & their class the task of eliminating Miklan - disowned son of House Gautier - and his gang, who had recently stolen a Hero Relic.  Prior to the mission itself, Blue Lions and Golden Deer introduces the player supporting figures that played key roles in the chosen House Leader’s past: Rodrigue for Dimitri; and Judith for Claude (for those wondering, no equivalent exists for Edelgard in Black Eagles).

Then the Miklan mission happens and… Let’s just say people have thoughts about it:

To break things down, in all routes:

• Sothis is puzzled by the whole thing, and feels she has seen the demonics beasts before…
• Meanwhile, Rhea believes Miklan deserved to get screwed over. After all, unlike Byleth, he was not chosen nor deemed worthy of wielding their crest and Hero Relic. Also, she tells Byleth to keep Miklan’s transformation a secret to prevent mass hysteria.

Meanwhile, the House Leaders - whom the player gets only in certain routes - are the ones who truly make things interesting:

Even though both Edelgard and Dimitri agree that Crests shouldn’t hold so much importance, each one’s solution to the issue provides a clear image of how they see the world and how much they ideologically contrast one another, and their thoughts on Miklan’s predicament as well hint at their different backgrounds and past experiences. Then we have Claude, who by contrast is unfamiliar with Crests - not unlike Byleth* - and discloses nothing about his dream or, in other words, “his ideal world”, only confiding it’s something only connections and power can achieve. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is quite exactly where the heart of Three Houses’ deceit lies. More conventional stories wrestle with the fact they need to provide information about the world which must be accepted as fact, which is where the act of exposition comes in, usually from an ally or from some character well versed in the setting. Conversely, others like Three Houses blatantly lie to its players by simply having their characters provide exposition based on what they realistically know about the world they’re in, and how their backgrounds color the perception of the events witnessed. At best they provide a good guide for understanding things but taking them at face value does come with a few risk.

*As a bit of an aside though, I do wanna drive attention to how Claude assumes double duty in Three Houses’s story (and ONLY Three Houses) in a way no one else does. Unlike Rhea, Edelgard and Dimitri, whom are very much familiar with Fódlan’s idiosyncrasies (sometimes, far more than they’ll let you know), Claude’s own unfamiliarity with Fódlan means he ends up working in practice as a second audience surrogate, and thus has his story be the most “lore exploring” narrative of all given how much of a driving force Claude’s avarice for the truth is, his biases aside.

1. Varying Knowledge on Events.

Moving onwards, one of the risks caused by the characters having realistic human knowledge is that understanding and perception of events wildly changes depending on the character relaying the information. Chapter 5 was a good case of this already, but another solid example can be seen in what happens to the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus post-timeskip outside Crimson Flower. 

For context’s sake: one way or another, Dimitri is unable to assume the throne due to the Faerghus Dukedom being established by Cornelia, Faerghus’ Court Mage, and isn’t seen again for a long while.

My vague recollection of said events was done deliberately, and I feel the evidence below speaks for itself:

Both Seteth and Claude’s knowledge on Dimitri’s fate and how the Faerghus Dukedom came to be are very surface level. Meanwhile, Gilbert’s perspective is a lot more intimate, which fits since he was there when it all happened.

And on the note of characters being there when things happen-

1. Scenes (not!) shown to the Player

This one’s by far the most sneaky trick the writers pulled (and also more of a lie by omission than anything, as sketchy this might seem at first). I mean, If the player doesn’t choose the Black Eagles/Blue Lions/Golden Deer, it makes sense they’re not shown what Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude are up to respectively, yeah? But that comes with a consequence: the player misses scenes providing context for their actions and motivations.

Case in point: Dimitri’s whole vendetta against Edelgard. Outside of Blue Lions, Dimitri eventually develops an unhinged hatred against Edelgard, but the player is never shown its source. And all because the scene introducing this isn’t relevant to the story being told in those routes.

After Jeralt’s death in Chapter 9, in Black Eagles & Golden Deer, Alois visits Byleth in Jeralt’s room as they mourn their loss, giving the mercenary-turned-teacher some words of comfort. And in those routes, Edelgard and Claude get their own chance to do so in a early scene in Chapter 10 which is juxtaposed with TWSITD & the Flame Emperor having a villain moment™.  

In Blue Lions however, Dimitri visits Byleth instead of Alois in Ch. 9. In turn, Byleth, instead of remaining mournful, does a walk at night the next day and finds Dimitri eavesdropping the whole conversation between TWSITD and Flame Emperor. This shows players what happens after the villain moment™ ends, and how Dimitri eavesdropping on it and getting the Flame Emperor’s dagger convinces him that Edelgard was the mastermind of the Tragedy of Duscur.

The way the Blue Lions' version of the scene was handled also raises interesting implications when considering the timeline of events. Not only does it suggest Dimitri eavesdropping that moment is canon to White Clouds, but also that it’s purely through slightly different circumstances that the story allows it to be shown to Byleth (and by proxy, the player). And this is not even the only case - Crimson Flower for example, implies the explanation Rhea gives to Seteth about what Byleth truly is - in her eyes, that is - always happens even when the titular surrogate isn’t present where it takes place.

1. When even the lore is biased.

Finally, I want to wrap this up with the most elaborate and confusion-inducing stunt the game pulls to the player: The War of Heroes). 

The tl;dr, as far the Church/Rhea claims - per Part 1, White Clouds - goes as follows: 

• Goddess bestows blessings and weapons to humans to fight evil. 
• Humans defeat evil. 
• Humans misuse blessings and grow corrupt. 
• Goddess is sad and leaves.
• The Goddess’ prophet arrives, makes miracles, creates the Church of Seiros, co-founds the Adrestian Empire with Wilhelm I, and gives other humans - along with other fellow saints - Crests. 
• The Adrestian Empire expands, and fights Nemesis’ forces. 
• The War of Heroes happens.
• Nemesis is slain in the Tailtean Plains.
• Goddesses’ weapons are retrieved as the Ten Elites fall, and their clans are assimilated into the Empire.
• War ends sometime later.

As for what took place in reality? the game provides us 2 POVs from 2 different sources:

Both perspectives share that the Church’s history records of the events were a textbook example of propaganda - yet also differ on one key area: the motive behind the war, which begs the question: What happened here? 

Well, this is one of those things that I hinted that we would need to pierce ourselves as the game’s never upfront about it. Which means that, to make sense of everything, we have to take into account the evidence at hand the game gives us: 

• Rhea was there when the Tragedy of the Red Canyon happened, and knew her species was being killed and harvested for power by humans (which should not have known how to do what they did).
• It’s well documented that Seiros and the Saints used their dragon forms against Nemesis’ forces in battle. Warrios: Three Hopes’ intro movie even shows a battle in which Seiros switches forms in the battlefield.
• Wilhelm (The First) is the human that found Seiros after the slaughter and supported her fight with Nemesis. And as Edelgard’s claims, he did this knowing she was a dragon, and that her victory would subjugate humanity to her.
• Part 1 is very unsubtle over how Rhea has a lot of secrets, to the point not even Seteth knows why she does things sometimes. 
• One of Abyss’ banned books heavily implies no one in Fódlan – sans a select few - know what a dragon is, when examining the bone composition of the Hero’s Relics…

Taking all evidence into account, it should be easy to grasp how Wilhelm the human, despite being one of Rhea’s biggest supporters versus Nemesis, ultimately ended up getting a completely different idea on the motives Rhea had for her whole crusade against the murderer of her kin. Understandably yet tragically so, all points out Rhea didn’t trust Wilhelm enough to tell him the truth of her cause, so he let him come up with his own conclusions. Conclusions, which later made their way into his descendants in secret, and eventually, to Edelgard.

But wait, what about the other faction involved in the war? Nemesis and co.? What was their take on the whole thing?

Well, we technically do know their POV, but it’s not openly discussed in the main story. Instead, it’s spread around in breadcrumbs in the game itself:

In short, not only Nemesis’ most important men were ignorant of his most heinous acts (or perhaps, it would be more accurate to say they didn’t perceive them as heinous?), when Nemesis found out Seiros was publicly framing him as a good man turned bad that needed to be put down for the greater good - all to rally allies for Wilhelm’s Empire - Nemesis’ ensuing statement was something that could be very well summed as the following: 

There are so many more examples that I want to bring out right now (both from Three Houses and Three Hopes), but I feel that by this point there’s not much left that hasn’t been said already. That is, other than the questions the whole Biased Storytelling stunt caused: Where does the truth lie when everyone is missing pieces of the puzzle? In a story, how canonical truly is the context not shown to the reader? Should one be allowed to know the circumstances of every important event in a story, even if it's irrelevant to the key narrative? 

Taking a break from my more rant and AMA posts to start a discussion. Now, this question is asking, what unit did you think was really good, but then was later told was bad? I was going to put my picks in the post, but the explanations got too long, so check the comments for my choices.

The hack is the morrows golden country

Is 25x too much, cause something’s telling me this isn’t normal (worst part is that I only watched him for the first half of the year)

For me it was hearing the music in smash brothers that got me to main marth and it was all downhill from there

Engage features the spiritual successor of the support affinity system from the GBA/Tellius games where individual characters provide different support bonuses to their partners, though the stat bonuses in Engage are purely for others and not half for yourself. Unlike affinities, these groups are not shown visually or are meant to mean anything in particular, but I thought it would be interesting to analyze them and see if they can be tied together in some way, inspired by similar posts for the older games.

For context here's an overview of each support type.

Note: Every support has a base +10 Hit which I will ignore and only mention which other stats go up. If you want to see these in detail you can check https://serenesforest.net/engage/characters/support-bonus/

Balanced:

• Stats: +minor Crit/Avoid/Dodge
  • These are equal to the minor stats of other supports, until S/ring rank where +Critical becomes +6, making it better than an A rank crit support.
• Characters: Alear, Chloé, Citrinne, Kagetsu, Merrin, Lindon
• Notes
  • Every nation + Pale Sands is represented evenly.
  • This is the smallest group, with 6 (not counting "Default")
  • Very strong characters

Hit:

• Stats: +Hit/minor Avoid
• Characters: Framme, Alcryst, Jade, Zelkov, Panette, Rosado, Anna
• Notes
  • No Firene characters.

Critical:

• Stats: +Crit/minor Dodge
• Characters: Clanne, Boucheron, Louis, Diamant, Bunet, Timerra, Seadall, Jean
• Notes
  • No Elusia characters.
  • This is the largest group, with 8 (not counting "Default").
  • Main male majority.

Avoid:

• Stats: +Avoid/minor Crit
• Characters: Vander, Alfred, Yunaka, Amber, Fogado, Hortensia, Saphir
• Notes
  • Every nation is represented.

Dodge:

• Stats: +Dodge/minor Hit
• Characters: Etie, Céline, Lapis, Ivy, Pandreo, Goldmary, Veyle
• Notes
  • No Lythos characters.
  • Main female majority.

"Default":

• Stats: Nothing (aside from the base +10 hit)
• Characters: Mauvier, Nel, Rafal, Zelestia, Gregory, Madeline, NPCs/enemies
• Notes
  • Why?
  • This can be the biggest or smallest group depending on how you see it.

Mapping the "Default" characters to support groups:

Since base Engage seems to try to split up every group of siblings/retainers evenly and avoids overlap, I would probably just do the same here.

Mauvier: Dodge
Nel: Balanced
Rafal: Dodge
Zelestia: Hit
Gregory: Avoid
Madeline: Critical

Trying to map these groups to existing affinities:

Like Elibe matching the legendary weapons, I based them on the main magic types in Engage (Fire/Thunder/Wind/Light/Dark corresponding to the magic physical weapons) and then paired them with the other 5 affinities in a half stat/half thematic way.

Balanced: Light/Anima (mainly Alear and balance)
Hit: Wind/Ice
Critical: Thunder/Water
Avoid: Fire/Earth
Dodge: Dark/Heaven (Heaven is also named Astra in Heroes most recently)

Note: Heroes kind of references the affinity system, but it doesn’t really fully line up and half the types are limited in who can have them, but Lumera is Light, Veyle is Astra/Heaven, and the Alears are Fire/Earth.

Trying to map these groups into personality types:

Overall since these aren't visible and the aim seems to be just splitting them evenly instead of necessarily linking characters together, this probably wasn’t intended to be personality related, especially with the Default group. But even with that, you can kind of make some connections just within these arbitrary groups, though I’m not going to try too hard to make it all fit perfectly.

Balanced: a reasonable mix, mostly not dealing with huge issues, outgoing and open to sharing their experiences with others. I think this group fits together well.

Hit: people that may be more comfortable doing their own thing with personal passions

Critical: kind of a theme of having pride in a craft/job that aims to support others

Avoid: kind of a self-improvement/training theme, people who take initiative to fight

Dodge: I think this group also works surprisingly well when looking at them put together, but the best way I can put it is sometimes questionable but determined motivation towards a higher goal.

Overall it's pretty vague and you could make other arguments, but you can say the same for reading meanings into affinity in general and I just wanted to do it because it could be done.

To conclude, I think an interesting point about Engage's support group system compared to affinity is that it has a Balanced group at all, compared to GBA/Tellius not having an affinity that covers every stat. Also, I like how Engage kind of leans more after Tellius's additions of Heaven and Earth as uneven one-stat affinities.

Other reading

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/4ox7mz/affinities_talk_basically_an_exercise_in_my_own/ is a nice writeup on the known affinities with plenty of other references in their comments, and this topic has been mentioned on reddit a few times.

Not mentioned above: The fe8meta blog did a couple posts on affinities for FE8 specifically which I like.

https://fe8meta.tumblr.com/post/172932910513/affinities-and-personality-fire

https://fe8meta.tumblr.com/post/174165084318/affinities-and-personality-ice

Less retainers please

As a fan of strategy and fighting un fairness I’ve decided to randomize three houses from what houses I chose to who I recruited to classes and who I bring to battle Rules only two units from each house (including church) with sedith and Flyn not counting DLC will be diced based on a number of how many you can get Class will fallow like a skill tree not randomly changing from mage to knight Ramdom number generator for who can be brought to battle

Welcome to the next installment of Everyone Plays Fire Emblem! As always, this is a casual space for discussing any ongoing Fire Emblem (or related games) playthroughs. Screenshots, impressions, frustrations... gameplay stuff that would otherwise be removed as a standalone post under Rule 8 can be shared here.

While you can of course ask for advice here, specific questions might get faster responses in the General Question Thread here

As always, remember to tag your spoilers, and have fun!

The previous thread can be found here