#admin: zebra

[historyoftheemblem]

Note for tomorrow’s queued post: It contains spoilers pertaining to translation changes in a timeskip monastery conversation in the Crimson Flower (Edelgard’s) route. The post will be tagged “spoilers”, “FE16 spoilers”, and “crimson flower spoilers” for blacklisting.

[historyoftheemblem]

1500+ Followers, and Ready for Three Houses!

Thank you, all of our followers! We’re steadily approaching our third anniversary (December 21), and we’re still going strong! We’ve been keeping an eye on the Three Houses news and are absolutely hyped for its release.

To that end, we invite everyone to join our Discord server, which is doing something special for Three Houses’ release!

We have three spoiler channels set up, one for each house, for gameplay and story discussion. You can be in as many, or none, of the spoiler channels as you wish -- the channels are hidden until you request to be placed in them, so this way players can avoid spoilers for other routes.

And to show your house pride, you can also request the role for your house’s color! (This is purely cosmetic and is separate from the spoiler channels. Those who don’t choose a house will get the purple Mercenary role.)

Further details are in the server’s Announcement channel.

 - Admin Zebra

[historyoftheemblem]

Three Houses Feb. Direct analysis

Admin Zebra here, with some of my observations from the new footage from the latest Nintendo Direct. I wrote some stuff about the first trailer, like commentary on Byleth’s sleeve inspiration from medieval fashion and the (maybe) symbolism behind the Japanese title, but this time I’ll be going all the way through.

First things first: We got an official logo. I kinda like the typeface on the old one (pictured below) more, to be honest.

Obviously this was a rough working title, given they didn’t even have the classic Fire Emblem logo on it, but the new logo’s typeface for Three Houses feels a bit too much. The capitalized T and H, sure, but having the everything like that, and with that kerning? Not feeling it.

Well, I got a degree in design so it’s my sworn duty to nitpick about these things, but this isn’t analysis, so let’s move on.

Lore

We’re introduced to the continent’s major powers and how they convene at the Monastery in Garreg Mach: the Adrestian Empire (Red Black Eagles, Edelgard), Faerghus (Blue Lions, Dimitri), and the Leicester Alliance (Golden Deer, Claude).

Each country has its own house at the monastery a la Harry Potter, and those houses are led by each country’s first-in-line for succession, whom we were introduced to in the first trailer.

Edelgard, as seen by the above picture, is the first-in-line for succession in the Adrestian Empire. Interestingly, they seem to use “Emperor” as a gender-neutral term for the ruler, as the narration calls her the future emperor rather than the future empress.

In the background, we can make out a few characters seen elsewhere in the video (from left-to-right): Dorothea, Ferdinand, Linhardt, Caspar, and Petra. (Edelgard’s the one with the red magic glyph.) Bernadetta is seen hiding under a book a few seconds later, so she’s in the Black Eagles as well.

We unfortunately don’t get a group shot of the Blue Lions, so the members of this house are largely unknown. I don’t think we see anyone aside from Dimitri in the background video in any other scene, either. There are a few kids whose affiliation we don’t see, like Annette, Mercedes (whom Annette calls Mercie), and Sylvain, so they might be in his group.

Lastly, Claude’s group. Pink-haired Hilda, who was seen as one of Byleth’s opponents in the first trailer, is in his group. Later in the video, we get the names for the large blonde man and the orange-haired girl: Raphael and Leonie.

The Church of Seiros is also headquartered in Garreg Mach as the predominant religion on the continent, and it has its own military force, the Knights of Seiros. The seem to be led by this woman, whom we get a better shot of towards the end of the trailer.

She resembles the woman depicted throughout the first trailer, but it’s hard to tell whether she got an updated look over the past few months, is another character entirely, or changed into another outfit.

We also get to meet the probably-manakete girl seen at the end of the first trailer and get a name for her: Sothis.

A cursory search on her name brings me to the Egyptian goddess/constellation name Sopdet, which translated into Greek as Sothis. (More info on that in the link.) Here, Sothis can communicate with Byleth, the main character, through their mind. How or why this happens won’t be clear until we see the game proper, but the narration suggests that it’s tied to the “unexpected incident” that revealed a “hidden power within” that leads to Byleth traveling to Garreg at the start of the story.

Speaking of which...

Assuming that the first image, with Byleth traveling with the three house leaders and his father Jeralt, takes place at the beginning, it seems that the two images in a scene towards the end of the trailer are set before that -- the aforementioned unexpected incident.

In the second image, that clearly would’ve been a fatal blow on Byleth; his back is turned to the bandit, but then it rewinds to the point where the bandit lunges. Instead of having his back towards the bandit to shield Edelgard, Byleth knocks the axe out of the bandit’s hand with the power of weapon triangle advantage.

This likely indicates two things: 1) a return of the Mila’s Turnwheel function from SoV, and 2) Byleth has some sort of power to either see a bit into the future, or rewind time.

Gameplay

Byleth seems to be something of an avatar unit, which was already known from the first trailer when all the official material called them “Your character” instead of the name shown in the trailer. You get to pick between a male and female form, with no known option for further customization -- fair in that there seem to be quite a number of rendered cutscenes a la SoV (and the cutscene animations are by the same team), which would make customizations tough.

I'm more or less neutral about F!Byleth’s design, simply because I disagree with the avatar option to begin with. I prefer set-in-stone characters, and having an avatar whom we don’t have control over personality-wise makes me wonder why they’re even an avatar to begin with. (For example, I love Dragalia’s MC Euden, but I do not at all understand why we label him with a name of our choosing. I respect his personality and his reasoning, but he is not an avatar of me.)

Three Houses boasts greater interaction between not only the player characters, but as well as between characters as well. As depicted in the first trailer, there’s a semi open-world function that allows you to explore Garreg Mach and interact with characters there. I’m looking forward to it, though I do have my reservations depending on how it plays out.

Combat, First Trailer:

Combat, Second Trailer:

The action select screen seems to have changed, but aside from Attack to Atk, it’s hard to tell whether these are complete changes, or simply caused by having different functions unlocked, having different classes, or because Edelgard is a main character where Bernadetta is not (i.e. Formation and Equip). Combat Arts are now also selected on the attack screen, as seen a few seconds later.

Comparing the weapon selection screens, it seems to have been restructured to show values more clearly. Bernadetta also has the three green triangles next to her HP, which is shown throughout several battle screens in this trailer, but I’m not quite sure what that’s for yet.

The new level-up screen. As will be analyzed later, class options in Three Houses seems to be much freer than previous titles, hence the Class Mastery section in the level-up screen. Professor Level seems to be related to Training, which will be covered later. Battalion is, naturally, the troops following each character’s lead; it seems that battalions can be switched out.

Given the Withdraw and Confirm selections at the bottom-right corner, this seems to be an alternative to the Arena. I assume units can’t die here, because that would be pretty difficult to explain to parents. “Hey uhh your son died during a sparring session, whoops.”

Ah, studying. I’m so glad I’m out of school now. You can tutor students individually, as a batch (I assume that’s what Auto-Tutor and Group Task are), or change an individual student’s studying goals.

We get a look at Dorothea’s tutoring as an example. People have gotten fidgety about that heart on the completion screen as a sign of some sort of affection system with the main character, BUT.

Immediately afterwards, we see Linhardt’s goals screen. Looking at that top-right gauge, we see the >w< meter on Linhardt’s has 4 (full) gauges. Meanwhile, Dorothea had 3 maximum gauges, and the 1 gauge left is consumed during training. IF my deductions are correct (pleasebecorrectpleasebecorrect), the heart gauge may build up the training meter when you get good results from training.

Also notable from this screen is that Linhardt’s class is Noble, the same as Bernadetta’s earlier. (Edelgard’s class shown in the first trailer is Aristocrat, which is... similar?) It seems that most students will start off with a similar class and then progress through different ones based on player preference and their own particular strengths. As seen with Dorothea, it seems that Swords and Reason are two of her strengths, while Faith is a weakness.

We are also shown various skills that can be trained:

Weapons: Swords, Lances, Axes, Bows, and Fighting(?)

Character (unofficial term): Reason, Faith, Authority

Unit: Heavy Armor, Riding (Cavalry), Flying

I assume Fighting is a weapon-type skill because Caspar is shown using claws right afterwards.

If you look closely throughout the video, you’ll see female generic soldiers, which is a nice touch, personally. While this is more story-related, it’s interesting that the enemy is labeled “Western Church”. This either suggests that there are different branches of the Church of Seiros, or that this is a split faction (perhaps the “rebellions” the narrator speaks about earlier in the video as one of the enemies you must fight).

This is the customized class screen mentioned earlier. As is apparently from the side list, it seems that characters can access all of those classes, and aren’t limited to just a few. Obviously, characters will probably lean towards certain classes, but it opens a lot of possibilities. Also, Edelgard can now lawfully pillage villages now with the Brigand certification exam. All this time we thought they were just brutes, but apparently it’s a meritorious profession!

This seems to be how supports will play out in Three Houses, which is fine by me. Having stronger bonds between characters provides a so-called “Gambit Boost”, which seems to provide a boost to combat arts. (Edelgard, in some unknown class, uses Coordinated Gambit.)

The rest of the trailer is mostly just cutscenes, one part which I already addressed earlier. The other shots are too vague to really comment on. If there’s one thing I didn’t really like about the trailer, it’s that it didn’t really give us a sense of an overarching conflict. All we know is that there’s a delicate balance between the three nations, it’s probably getting broken, goddesses/dragons are involved, and the crests are to blame.

[historyoftheemblem]

Three Houses Direct: JP vs. EN

 While looking at the Japanese version of the new trailer, I noticed that several scenes were different from the English version. (Plus, I caught onto some things I hadn’t noticed in my previous analysis.) VincentASM on SerenesForest gave a similar analysis, so I’ll gloss over some things here.

Differences:

As has been noted by others before me, the house names in Japanese have ruby characters that read the house names in German. (Disclaimer: I don’t actually know German, I’m working off memory of the tweet that mentioned this plus the transcription on the Japanese 3H article.)

Black Eagle = アドラークラッセ (Adlerklasse)

Blue Lions = ルーヴェンクラッセ (Löwenklasse)

Golden Deer = ヒルシュクラッセ (Hirschklasse)

In terms of actual meaning, they’re basically the same; Japanese version just replaces the color name of the English version with Klasse (class). Also as a fun fact, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, Hirsch means deer/stag, but can also mean idiot/jerk (in slang, of course).

This scene is recorded at a different angle between the English and Japanese version. Also, that’s a cozy-looking fireplace, but I hope nobody accidentally drops something in there or loses their balance around it...

The tutoring scenes have a significant difference in their gauges. The English version has no change in expression between Dorothea and Linhardt’s. Furthermore, Linhardt’s gauge is maxed out while Dorothea’s was at 3 maximum, and went from one to none.

In the Japanese version, however, Dorothea’s gauge has a pink, extremely happy face that goes down from 3 (max) gauges down to 2. Meanwhile, Linhardt only has 2 max gauges, only has a moderately happy face, and is also lower-leveled.

Not pictured, but EN shows you training Doro’s Reason, while JP has her train her Swordsmanship. (Her two focuses, however, are still Swords and Reason.)

JP version of Linhardt’s training scene also has two female soldiers and one male soldier of some sort (generic Brigands?) in the background. EN only has two male soldiers.

In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene, you’ll see that their menus were different on the days these scenes were recorded, and the generics dining behind them have also changed seats.

Mmm... that chicken looks yummy... though that’s a pretty huge chicken leg, isn’t it? Maybe it’s turkey? Fodlan turkey?

Gambit Boost characters are shown in a different order, and possibly a different class for second guy? I assume that the first/third person is Byleth, which means they get some class variety like the others do. Also, given that Edelgard is consistently last on both screencaps, perhaps the person triggering the gambit always shows up last?

Things I missed:

Sylvain, Annette, and Mercedes seem to be in Dimitri’s Blue Lions. SerenesForest has a list of characters and affiliated houses up already, for those who want to double-check who’s where.

It took me a while to get screencaps of this scene, but Edelgard seems portrayed in an oddly... demonic(?) light. Of course, this seems to be playing the cutscene in reverse, and inverted colors for a mystical effect (perhaps an ability to rewind time?), so we won’t know the full context until another trailer or the game’s release.

Also notable is that Edelgard is clearly wielding a dagger here, which she hasn’t been shown to use elsewhere. Not sure if dagger will count as a Fighting-style weapon or a Sword (a la GBA Thief/Rogue animations where they’re equipping swords, but are most certainly not wielding one).

Last note on the final scene:

People have been speculating whether the scene towards the end of the trailer is an indication that the three houses will eventually turn against each other, the actual setting for this scene seems to be more like a melee a trois between the houses after Byleth chooses one: hence, in the first trailer, Edelgard’s “Let’s measure your worth as an instructor”, after which you direct her to attack Mercedes (Blue Lions), and later attack Hilda (Golden Deer).

The trees in Claude’s background seems to indicate Hilda (and the Deer in general) haven’t moved far from their starting spot. Perhaps they’ll wait out the confrontation between Black Eagle and Blue Lions?

[historyoftheemblem]

Valentia Accordion: Python’s Backstory

Most of Python’s profile isn’t anything that we can’t find out through the base game or DLC, but we get some interesting context for his personality.

A member of the Deliverance who hails from a provincial town and is childhood friends with Forsyth. His father was a talented carpenter, but his alcoholism drove Python to leave his house in disgust and live a hand-to-mouth life. It was Forsyth's invitation that led him to quit that lifestyle to become a soldier. Unlike his friend, who is eager to serve Zofia, Python has no dreams or ambitions of his own and is perfectly content to live an uninteresting, repetitive lifestyle. He loves hearing about love affairs, though, and his eyes gleam when he gets word of juicy gossip. This has gotten him reprimanded by Lukas on several occasions.

[historyoftheemblem]

Valentia Accordion: Deen’s Backstory

Thanks to seaboundshrine on twitter / @bubblegumteas​ taking photos of their copy of the Valentia Accordion artbook, I managed to translate Deen’s profile, which has a very interesting expansion on his backstory.

Deen was raised in a provincial Zofian city to a long lineage of soldiers, and underwent his father's relentless training from a young age. He joined the Zofian Army when he came of age, and became engaged to a feudal lord's daughter. He would inherit the lord's peerage, and everything seemed set for a happy ending.

However, while he was away for a mission, the mansion was attacked. As he rushed back upon hearing the news, he himself was attacked and lost his left eye. When he reached the mansion, he found his wife, whose form had completely changed. To kill his beloved fiancee and enact revenge on the man who took his eye, he took the lord's heirloom Brave Sword.

There may be errors in my translation, so I would take it with a grain of salt and wait for Kantopia’s translation, but I’m more or less 95% sure this is what it says.

[historyoftheemblem]

I really wish we got to see more prototype GBA portraits. L’Arachel and Tethys are the two best examples (in FE8) where the portraits were significantly changed from their prototype, with most of the prototype’s design going to a new character instead.

As you can see, all of Tanachel’s head and neck went to Tana. Meanwhile, while the tunic’s palette and decorative design stayed on L’Arachel, the collar was modified by the shoulders to expose them, while they were just covered in the prototype. (The whole collar of L’Arachel’s dress was lowered overall.) Interestingly, Tana also kept the V-cut in her tunic, but gained some shoulder pads to make up for L’Arachel’s now-exposed shoulders.

With Nethys, the only things that carried over to Tethys’ final portrait was the hair palette and the earring(s). Nethys only had one earring, which was converted into one shoulder plate for Neimi. Gotta have that fashionable asymmetry. They also took her top and converted it into a hoodie; you can even see the original top band was converted into a decorative element for the hoodie. The hair was also rounded out and filled out in the back, giving her an overall softer feel. More shadows were also added to Neimi’s face and neck, and the colors in the hoodie allowed for more shadows to make the eyes look more “balanced.” (Nethys’ pupils are not at all even, and a bit obviously so.)

[historyoftheemblem]

Hi! Are you still doing Valentian Accordion translations? If so, could you do Fernand's profile if you're not busy? He's an underrated character and was wondering if his profile had new info on him. Have a good day.

It in fact does! I’ll just translate the first paragraph, since that has all the new info while the second paragraph is just a summary of what he does in the game.

A knight in the Kingdom of Zofia. He was a fellow member of upper nobility with Clive and Clair, so they’ve been like family since they were young children. Because he lost his mother when he was young, he was raised by his older sister and a private tutor (who later became his stepmother). Though he’d always looked like he had a hot temper, he lost his former cheerfulness after the death of his family and grew to despise commoners. It was from this that his view began to split from Clive’s.