Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Has My Hopes Up

(Note: This post contains little if any spoilers for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, save for a few generalities and a couple words you wouldn’t be familiar with at the start of the game. Either way, if it interests you, I’d strongly suggest trying the game for yourself sometime soon!)

When Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes was first announced last February, I was pretty much ready to gloss over it. The Dynasty Warriors series as a whole never managed to catch my attention, and the Nintendo-flavored spin-offs, for one reason or another, never tickled my fancy. The original Hyrule Warriors seemed more like a non-canon celebration than a proper story, and Fire Emblem: Warriors’s multiverse-themed plot didn’t do much for me after getting burned out by the brief emphasis on Outrealms in Awakening and Deeprealms in Fates. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity seemed like it might have been able to break my disinterest, but the plot-subverting use of Time Travel ended up turning me off from it.

For a couple months, Three Hopes was looking to be much the same as Age of Calamity (and I’ll admit, it still may go that route): a golden ending-style spin on a story that already had satisfying enough conclusions. The second “Mysterious Mercenary” trailer released in April not only slapped that presumption out of my head, but showed that it could be more than I ever thought it’d be.

Now that we’ve had months of speculation, new trailers, and new haircuts to feast our eyes on, I figure it’s time I put my thoughts into words.

OLD IS NEW, AND NEW IS MORE

In my opinion, the continent of Fodlan, from its lore and world-building to its lovely cast of characters, has made for some of the most immersive and fascinating settings I’ve had the joy to experience in a video game. While not particularly grandiose compared to other title’s settings, it’s all the little intricacies—like how even the most minute or mundane character trait can have an extravagant explanation attached to it—that make it feel satisfyingly full. For now, I’d like to reserve the full extent of my complements for the upcoming volley of Fire Emblem-themed blogs; all you need to know right now is that I’m a big fan.

From the looks of it, Three Hopes isn’t just going to retread where Three Houses has already trod. With a new protagonist complete with their own in-house deity partner—plus a main rival/antagonist in the form of the previous game’s protagonist— entering the fold as a student alongside the game’s three lords and their allies (rather than as their professor), it’s going to be very interesting to see how character relationships, dynamics, and arcs unfold and contrast to the previous game’s. Add the fact that we may be skipping the timeskip (or making it shorter) and we could find Fodlan and the war looking quite different from what we’re used to.

That being said, I think there’s a particular reason this excites me more than even the opportunity to go back 100 years to an era literally all of us hoped to see in Breath of the Wild: Age of Calamity—something I’d argue is more exciting in the grand scheme. While I can’t say it’s the definitive reason, I have a hunch it has a lot to do with the fact that Koei Tecmo was much more involved in the production of Three Houses. Unlike BOTW’s Hyrule, they had an especially direct hand in shaping and designing Fodlan and its characters, and maybe that familiarity with it is particularly resonant with me.

ENDS THAT GLITTER…

While talking about Three Hopes, I also wanted to talk about a certain topic that’s been the subject of a little debate since Fates introduced the notion of branching paths: golden endings. I honestly wanted to make this whole blog about the concept—and the fact that I wasn’t a fan—but instead, I figured it’d be better to just talk about Three Hopes and cover it a little, rather than letting it overrun the whole post.

It comes naturally that you would wish there was a “happily-ever-after” scenario for characters who have such traumatic pasts in light of their ultimate destinies should you not choose their path. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, I’d say it’s a complement to just how effective the game is at establishing its characters and making them sympathetic and likeable. However, it always feels like although we might WANT a golden ending, actually getting it might not be all that it’s made out to be.

If you ask me, the problem with golden endings is the fact that they turn all other endings, which were designed with equal parts tragic sacrifice and emotional satisfaction in mind, into effectively worse endings. After all, your choice of one over others is pretty much undermined when a new, TRUE ending is advertised. In that regard, Fire Emblem: Fates is an easy target (especially in light of its sillier writing choices), but I understand that the entire experience was designed with Revelations in mind as the capstone to the overall narrative of the Fates’s story.

With all that said, I wouldn’t expect Three Hopes to offer any such ending. Between this being its own separate experience from the original, the return of a branching narrative, and the fact that such a thing would end up being framed as a result of the original story’s hero being either a villain or non-variable, it would be very… foolish, to give this game that kind of conclusion.

HOLDING ONTO HOPE

Other than that, I suspect there’ll be a plethora of differences beyond just gameplay, from the likely absence of cross-house recruiting to curiosity about where Arval fits into the lore of Fodlan (perhaps the Agarthan pantheon? Those ears aren’t particularly Nabatean), all the way to fascination and fear as to where “Monica” will end up fitting into all of this.

As you can see, what marketing we’ve received up to this point has already succeeded in exploiting my love for the original Three Houses and monopolizes it by presenting a product that might prove itself to not only be a revisit of Fodlan, but a genuine expansion of its lore and themes. It ends up giving me the impression that this won’t just be Dynasty Warriors with Fire Emblem flair, but instead a full Fire Emblem experience with Dynasty Warriors mechanics.

Maybe I’m deluding myself (we’ll find out soon enough), but I can’t help but be hopeful in the meantime. Besides, who knows? Maybe this’ll be the game that gets me to change my mind about ignoring Warriors games so consistently.

A MONTH O’ FIRE EMBLEM APPROACHES!

Now that I’ve had the chance to voice my general feelings on what we’ve seen about Three Hopes so far, and in the wake of its upcoming June 24th launch date, I’ve decided that I’d celebrate the occasion with a trio of Three Houses-themed blogs, sharing my opinions on each of the game’s story routes and elaborate on what I’ll call my “three Three Hopes hopes.” Hope you’ll look forward to it—in the meantime, you can look forward to a little non-Fire Emblem-related excitement very soon!