As promised, the “Fire Emblem Castle Conversations” video is now available to watch, via both Nintendo and Nintendo Mobile’s YouTube channels.
As expected, it contained a lot of fun chatter and insights from the 7 voice actors.
However, there was something strange in the video that has gotten fans talking.
At the 30:35 mark, while Christian LaMonte is talking, the video shows off some footage of post-timeskip Edelgard and Claude, but they’re wearing their fully promoted costume, which is impossible in the game.
This has led to speculation that more DLC for Three Houses could be coming–or maybe even an enhanced/definitive edition, similar to Persona 5 Royal. Incredible as Three Houses was, it had a lot of rough corners and bags of content that never made it into the game.
That said, the truth may be more boring than that. Twitter user @rycalochka pointed out how Edelgard’s model resembles her model from some of the earliest footage, suggesting the models in Castle Conversations are from beta footage.
With this tip in mind, I dug through the old footage myself and I’m fairly convinced that they’re correct. Notably, in the February 2019 Nintendo Direct, when they’re showing the Gambit Boost, the models are different in the English and Japanese trailer.
Back then, I postulated that the Japanese trailer used older assets, because earlier in the trailer, when they’re fighting in Zanado, the Red Canyon, the English trailer had improved textures and shadows.
Fast forward to today, if you compare Edelgard’s eyes in Castle Conversations and the actual game with her eyes in both versions of the Nintendo Direct trailer, her eyes in Castle Conversations closely match those from the Japanese trailer (which seems to use older assets).
My best guess is that maybe during development, the House Leaders were meant to be fully promoted during that cutscene? Later on, perhaps they decided to delay their promotions for some reason and ended up reworking the cutscene.
Update: Here’s some more circumstantial evidence that supports this theory. For some reason, the House Leaders’ middle classes (Armored Lord etc.) are located near the end of the internal class list, past the fully promoted versions. This suggests they were added later in development.
It’s possible that, early on, the middle classes did not exist (at the least, they weren’t implemented in the game). Thus, at one point, there’s a good chance the House Leaders were in their fully promoted classes instead, during the battle at Gronder. Which is where the beta footage came from.
