General theorizing thread

[Errorik]

Isn't there always an info drought, then an onslaught of it 1-2 months away from release?

[Xandest]

I think what's going to happen is that you'll have to choose a path because the crests will fuel some evil power causing a unique problem in each of the lords' countries, and they'll have to leave Garreg Mach in order to fix the issues plaguing their countries.  I think eventually you will collect most, if not all the students after you fix the problems most relevant to your lord.

The Leicester Alliance has a pretty strong connection with the play King Lear, which makes me think that the story will either mirror King Lear or at the very least there will be some lore that justifies how many references there are to King Lear.  There are regions called Edmund, Goneril, Riegan, Gloucester, and Ordelia, each of which has a pretty clear counterpart in the play.  Also somewhat interestingly, Dimitri's last name (Bladud) is also the name of King Lear's father.  More on him/Faerghus later.  Anyways, I think there are a few ways they could go with Leicester being tied to King Lear.  It's been a while since I had to read this for school, so maybe someone more familiar with the play could correct me where my memory isn't great.

The first thing that came to mind was that the events of the game might mirror the events of King Lear.  King Lear fails to properly secure his succession by prioritizing his manipulative daughters Regan and Goneril over the more pure-hearted Cordelia, who is unwilling to play his games in order to win a bigger inheritance.  Regan and Goneril end up fighting over the inheritances they do get, and the country is tossed into war.  It's interesting that Claude's family, in this situation, would be associated with one of the evil sisters rather than the "good' one of the play.  This would be difficult to pull off given that there's a Leicester route, though given that you're probably teaching many of the potential rebels' children.

I think what's more likely, though, is that the King Lear references aren't trying to hint at the plot of the current game, but rather how the Leicester Alliance was formed.  This is where my memory of King Lear is somewhat fuzzy, but my recollection is that, after suffering heavy losses, the warring factions in Lear put aside their differences in order to fight a war against a much larger French force which has come to England in order to fight on behalf of Cordelia.  I think she marries the French king or something?  I'm not sure.

Using King Lear as lore also feeds in to another one of my theories, which is that there used to be a fourth kingdom that the Adrestian Empire conquered, and the remnants of that fourth kingdom will have turned toward dark magic in an attempt to resurrect their kingdom and inflict punishment on the kingdoms which allowed for its destruction to happen.

First off, the Japanese title of the game seems to evoke the four seasons, rather than three houses.  Another thread discusses this in greater detail but basically there very well might have been a fourth house which would have a wind & summer theme.  

Look at these neat maps.  The borders between the three houses tend to be designed around natural features -- there are rivers making up the Leicester/Adrestian and  Faerghus/Adrestian borders, and also there are mountain ranges making up the Faerghus/Leicester, Faerghus/other continent, and Leicester/other continent borders.  There's a big old mountain range going right through the middle of the Adrestian Empire, which seems like a pretty good place to divide up a kingdom.

That is, until the fire nation Adrestian Empire attacked.  Maybe this is just me, but I tend to think of empires as having colonies, or generally conquering other territories.  Kingdoms and Alliances seem a lot less warlike than empires, and I think that's reflected in the Adrestian Empire having such a large portion of the map.  I see a thousand-year dynasty not standing pat but instead expanding their borders where possible.  I think this fourth kingdom was weak and maybe had something of value to the Adrestian Empire.  I'm not sure what this means for the plot of the Adrestian Empire's route, but I'm getting the feeling it could be a situation where a relative of Edelgard's tries to steal the throne in a sort of Hamlet situation, and that new person may be manipulated by the power of the crests.

This kind of leaves out the Kingdom of Faerghus.  King Lear's father was a man by the name of Bladud, which is a nice coincidence because that's also Dimitri's last name.  Bladud contracted leprosy, and a major part of his legacy is "learning to cure it" by watching pigs wallow in mud.  We do see a sort of plague-doctor looking guy in one of the trailers, so maybe the Faerghus route involves preventing some sort of plague from spreading across Seiros.  I'm guessing that the challenge Dimitri has to face revolve around curing some disease spread by the big bad.  I see it playing out where the people who seem to have a cure to the disease are actually the ones causing it and using the disease as a way to rise in social status.  This would cause them to gain followers in regions most heavily impacted by the disease.

[SorrowOfAcheron]

19 hours ago, Xandest said:

Post.

This is really interesting stuff! I would love the idea of each house having it's own challenge to overcome; would be interesting to see how the other to houses play a role. 

If you think about it with the theories you have presented, the fourth mystery country could be responsible for each of the other countries' problem in each route

Adrestian Empire - 4th country wants revenge for being taken over in the past.

Faerghus - 4th country causing the spread of disease

Leicester - 4th country is the invading enemy the alliance is formed to battle (or already battled in the past)

[Jayvee94]

Nobody on Youtube seems to have speculated that combat arts uses WEAPON DURABILITY.

On this note, using an art with a SILVER WEAPON (20 uses under) is the worst mistake you can do in life.

[Guest Edelgard for Smash]

6 hours ago, Jayvee94 said:

Nobody on Youtube seems to have speculated that combat arts uses WEAPON DURABILITY.

On this note, using an art with a SILVER WEAPON (20 uses under) is the worst mistake you can do in life.

All you have to do is buy more of them.

This is modern Fire Emblem. LOL

[HappyHawlucha.]

I wonder since traditional Brave weapons will most likely make a return in 3H, how will they interact with combat arts? Will the combat art happen twice, one after the other, but double the cost of weapon durability? Or will it cancel out the brave effect of the weapon and just use the combat art once?

[Guest Edelgard for Smash]

19 minutes ago, HappyHawlucha. said:

I wonder since traditional Brave weapons will most likely make a return in 3H, how will they interact with combat arts? Will the combat art happen twice, one after the other, but double the cost of weapon durability? Or will it cancel out the brave effect of the weapon and just use the combat art once?

It will almost certainly cancel out the effect of the weapon.

You have to choose whether you use a skill or a regular attack, and brave weapons will only activate if you choose regular attack.

[Jayvee94]

4 minutes ago, Guest Edelgard for Smash said:

brave weapons will only activate if you choose regular attack

Or arts will have a chance to activate each "swing".

[Guest LSM]

As "Arts" and "Atk" appear separately on the... action select screen (does this have a proper name?), I think Edelgard for Smash is most likely correct.

[Guest Edelgard for Smash]

18 minutes ago, Jayvee94 said:

Or arts will have a chance to activate each "swing".

I doubt it considering there will probably be more than one combat art per weapon or you will be able to use more than one combat art at a time somehow.

[Jayvee94]

Continuing with arts. While it is given that you learn each art from certain weapon, do you think that the art will be locked to the same weapon?

It would feel weird to me that certain arts would be locked on a non-legendary weapon ie Iron weapons.

Also, what about class specific arts?

[Ayra]

4 hours ago, Jayvee94 said:

While it is given that you learn each art from certain weapon

Is it a given? I know SoV does it this way, but do we have any indication that it's actually the case for Three Houses? It might be faulty memory on my side, but I don't recall anything pointing toward arts being learned from specific weapons. 

I kind of assumed that combat arts would be learned via either getting a weapon skill up high enough, or learned from being/leveling certain classes.

[whase]

Story:
My guess is that the crests will cause a war between the 3 countries, and while the 3 houses try to stop the war from escalating (since they became friends at the academy and don't want to fight each other or something similar) they uncover a plot by the church that started the war using the crests. Now we have to stop the church while maybe the church manipulates the countries into defending the church.

Academy:
The academy mechanic will be there all game long, serving as a base from where you train and prepare for battle. After you train all the right weapon types and have reached the required level characters can take an "exam" as a form of class change to a specific class for skills and/or stat bonuses.

Combat arts
To activate it for a single combat you pay in weapon durability once, then combat commences regularly with that ability active. I'm actually hoping this game simply reduces stats of a weapon on 0 durability, and it being repairable afterwards for gold, though that's just wishful thinking...

Supports
No S support shenanigans, just the good old C to A. Maybe some pairs having the A support lead to couples. (but no kids!)

[zuibangde]

Nintendo Hong Kong uploaded the Direct Trailer with official Chinese translation and there are a few points about Sothis that I find interesting.

1. The Chinese translation had Sothis use the character '汝' to address Byleth. It basically means 'you' but that word is no longer used in modern Chinese. 

2. She says "What...are you doing there?" as opposed to English's 'What could've brought you here?'

So this supports the theory from the Japanese trailer that Sothis is really old. But I think not only is she really old, but she also has little to no prior contact with ANYONE and Byleth showing up is a bit of a shock to her. I think Sothis might've been banished or sealed into that throne room by something or someone related to the church. 

After Byleth was discovered to be able to contact Sothis, he was invited to teach at church not because he's exceptionally good at fighting or because he have special powers but because the church can monitor him (and Sothis) closely. 

Edited March 1, 2019 by zuibangde

[Guest Callum]

On 2/28/2019 at 11:29 AM, whase said:

Supports
No S support shenanigans, just the good old C to A. Maybe some pairs having the A support lead to couples. (but no kids!)

Disagree S is here to stay it can still make couples without kids.

[Guest Lae]

5 minutes ago, Guest Callum said:

Disagree S is here to stay it can still make couples without kids.

Completely agree it's more to cement your pair which is optional if you want to which some still don't get its very simple.

[Lord_Grima]

Okay... Just found something very interesting...

 

This evil crest appears several times: On the Old Man in the E3 trailer, on Sothis, and almost everyone on the Special Edition.

But what if I told you that it was hiding somewhere else, just out of sight. 

Behold! The Seal of the Divine Seiros has hidden a dark truth. It you look at the positioning of the Wings (dragon, Pegasus, and Seiros) they outline a familiar shape. (It's not perfect because I don't have a good clean copy of the evil symbol) Anyway, This does add into the whole, "Church is evil theme." Not sure what this could mean, but if it is hidden in the mural, then something dark is hidden within the Church.

[Jayvee94]

1 hour ago, Lord_Grima said:

Okay... Just found something very interesting...

 

This evil crest appears several times: On the Old Man in the E3 trailer, on Sothis, and almost everyone on the Special Edition.

But what if I told you that it was hiding somewhere else, just out of sight. 

Behold! The Seal of the Divine Seiros has hidden a dark truth. It you look at the positioning of the Wings (dragon, Pegasus, and Seiros) they outline a familiar shape. (It's not perfect because I don't have a good clean copy of the evil symbol) Anyway, This does add into the whole, "Church is evil theme." Not sure what this could mean, but if it is hidden in the mural, then something dark is hidden within the Church.

Does this mean Sothis is also evil?

[Cysx]

3 hours ago, Jayvee94 said:

Does this mean Sothis is also evil?

Is everyone evil?

Really nice catch, though, so nice it feels like you potentially just spoiled a plot twist:o

[Guest Boatcat]

On 3/2/2019 at 6:09 AM, Cysx said:

Is everyone evil?

Really nice catch, though, so nice it feels like you potentially just spoiled a plot twist:o

Good Rule of Thumb for secrety plot stuff: if you can find details like this with 140+ days until release, they want you to find it. Either that or we’re all crazy.

I for one am very happy with how that plot line is going: whip sword man is tied to the church, so either the church, him included is good and we have this awesome whipsword fighter on our side, or all of them, Sothis, the church, whipsword man, are all evil and we get a battle from the inside against Seiros.