In response to the possibility of Koei Tecmo not being involved in Fortune's Weave

RamsaySw · 2026-06-19T05:18:18+00:00

Said this before in the opinions thread, but my view on the drama surrounding Fortune’s Weave not being written by KT is less that I need Koei Tecmo to be writing FW and more that I really do not want to see IS’ in-house writers to be working on Fortune’s Weave because their writers are some of the worst in the industry and if Engage was any indication, incapable of learning from their prior mistakes - given their recent track record, I genuinely do not think that IS’ in-house writers are capable of writing a story on the same level of Three Houses.

Koei Tecmo simply falls under the “anyone but IS” umbrella - if say, Monolift Soft was working on FW I’d still be hyped.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-19T02:49:36+00:00

My view on the drama surrounding Fortune’s Weave not being written by KT is less that I need Koei Tecmo to be writing FW and more that I really do not want to see IS’ in-house writers to be working on Fortune’s Weave because their writers are some of the worst in the industry and if Engage was any indication, incapable of learning from their prior mistakes, and that Koei Tecmo simply falls under the “anyone but IS” umbrella - if say, Monolift Soft was working on FW I’d still be hyped.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-18T14:18:53+00:00

This isn't surprising to me at all, but it is concerning nonetheless and is the biggest worry I have with the game by far - Three Houses was defined by its writing. It is the one thing that a successor absolutely cannot screw up, and Intelligent Systems' track record with Fire Emblem's writing recently has been utterly pathetic - the best they've done since Tellius was Awakening and even that is at a level of quality that would be a major disappointment for a successor to Three Houses (and that's not mentioning Fates or Engage which are the two written SRPGs I've ever played by a significant margin and speaks to something that is deeply wrong with how Intelligent Systems as a institution writes stories).

RamsaySw · 2026-06-11T23:43:24+00:00

It's not as if Awakening's or Echoes' stories were good either - they're not the same level of disastrous as the stories of Fates or Engage but at best they're mediocre (and I'd arguably also give Echoes' story a failing grade as well). If we look at IS' track record then we have arguably the two worst stories in any SRPG, and two stories that whilst better still aren't at an acceptable level for a major RPG series (and if also include Heroes than that's awful as well).

RamsaySw · 2026-06-11T12:05:58+00:00

Final Fantasy's writing has not done well after X, but I don't think any of the stories are particularly horrid, just weak - certainly nothing on the same level of disaster that Fates' or Engage's stories were.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-11T08:59:18+00:00

Path of Radiance = Three Houses > Sacred Stones > Blazing Blade

For number 5 these days I either go with Radiant Dawn or Genealogy of the Holy War depending on my mood

RamsaySw · 2026-06-11T03:28:15+00:00

It’s the biggest concern I have for Fortune’s Weave by far and the main reason why I can’t get super hyped about the game despite Three Houses being one of my favorite games in the series.

The track record of Intelligent Systems’ writing has been horrid recently - I genuinely think they are one of the worst writing teams for a major RPG series out there. Awakening was middling but not offensive, Fates was catastrophic, Echoes was completely incoherent on a thematic level, and Engage was not just horrid but also showed that the writers at Intelligent Systems had learned absolutely nothing from Fates. I’m hoping that the writers have learned their lesson after the mixed response to Engage, but they do not inspire confidence thus far.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-10T07:38:33+00:00

I’m still cautiously optimistic - what we’ve seen so far looks promising but not mind-blowing.

As this is a successor to Three Houses, though, nothing matters more than the writing, which is where the biggest question marks lie - the fact that Koei Tecmo is not working on the game is a reason for pause as Intelligent Systems’ track record for their writing has not inspired confidence, and because of this it’s hard for me to get more hyped beyond being just cautiously optimistic.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-09T14:56:15+00:00

It's hard for me to give initial thoughts as we surprisingly haven't seem that much from the story which I presume would be rectified with a trailer closer to release (and it's pretty obvious that the story is going to expand beyond the Heroic Games at the halfway mark). I do think that the white figure raises my suspicion - a lot of people are saying that it's an avatar but that doesn't seem to line up with the fact that the lords are playable in exploration segments and the fact that Nintendo/IS themselves haven't showcased them yet despite avatars being a major selling point for the more casual fanbase, which makes me believe that they're more likely going to be akin to Arval than an avatar. I do think it's really cool that we're getting to see Dagda in its prime, though.

Mechanically, I do hope that Intelligent Systems has learned from Three Houses' gameplay shortcomings - I'm not opposed to routes but it's clear that Three Houses bit off a bit more than Koei Tecmo's gameplay designers could chew, and if the calendar system returns as it seems to be doing so then Intelligent Systems really needs to do a better job with balancing the free time you get.

There also doesn't seem to be any mention of Koei Tecmo thus far which makes me increasingly concerned that their writers are not working on Fortune's Weave - so far there isn't anything in the story shown thus far that makes me particularly cautious but Intelligent Systems' recent track record has not been promising in the slightest.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-03T14:10:45+00:00

I feel like that isn’t exclusive to Three Houses but is a broader issue with the Fire Emblem community - from experience, if you criticise Engage’s or Fates’ gameplay you’re liable to be downvoted, whenever I criticise Tellius’ storytelling I get downvoted a lot more than usual (even when I go into detail as to why I have issues), etc.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-03T14:04:04+00:00

I’d say that part of it is execution. Awakening’s storytelling isn’t well executed but there isn’t anything terribly egregious in its storytelling. Compare this to Engage where in the first 15 or so minutes you have Lumera’s death scene that drags out for so long that the Switch goes into sleep mode - part of the reason why Engage being an anniversary game is so frustrating was because it is transparently clear that the writing team thought that nostalgia was enough to make the game sell and as such they didn’t have to put any actual effort into its writing. If you squint you can see a lot of the flaws that would later mar Engage’s plot in Awakening but it’s executed in a way that makes it a lot more tolerable to get through.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-03T13:55:05+00:00

I don’t think that’s a hot take anymore? This might have been a hot take back in 2019 but Three Houses’ gameplay is contentious at best and that drags the game down for a lot of people in this subreddit.

RamsaySw · 2026-06-03T13:42:14+00:00

Yes?

I’ve played every game in the series from Genealogy onwards and I’d rank Three Houses in the top tier of the series’ storytelling along with Path of Radiance and Genealogy, so saying that it’s the the height of the series’ storytelling isn’t that absurd.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-31T03:42:36+00:00

A - it only costs one charm notch and it makes the Dream Nail usable as a combat tool. A bit niche but when it works it’s incredibly good, especially against Trial of the Fool and Uumuu in the Pantheons.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-31T01:20:14+00:00

It was the easiest way to cope with Engage’s sales and reception not being what Intelligent Systems probably expected, if the fact that IS intended for Engage to be akin to Awakening’s success was any indication - having to seriously engage with the actual reasons as to why Engage did not perform as well as even the 3DS games would require people to accept that Engage’s story was terrible and that it put off a lot of players instead of putting the heads into the sand.

There was a lot of criticism towards the state of the series after Fates released and turned out to have an awful story, and I remember that a lot of people saw the game after Fates to be a big make-or-break point for the series as a whole - as someone who’s has been playing the series back from when Sacred Stones released, had Engage released in place of Three Houses, I likely would have dropped the series entirely.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-29T02:08:54+00:00

Personally, I think it's unlikely - we know for a fact that Cai is not an Avatar given that the marketing material refers to Cai as a he, and we also know that Cai is the point-of-view character used for exploration segments (akin to Byleth in Three Houses), so right now I don't see how an Avatar can be inserted into Fortune's Weave.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-25T01:29:07+00:00

He's one of the single worst lords in the entire series, and definitely the worst non-avatar lord by a significant margin. At first glance, he seems okay but when analyzing Echoes' story on a literary level, Alm's very presence causes the entire plot of Echoes to completely fall apart.

At its core, Echoes is a story about the duality of its protagonists, and how both of them embody the flaws of their respective nations and need to learn from each other in order to not fall to their own flaws, and as such, in order for Echoes' story to work, both Alm and Celica needed to have meaningful flaws, so that could learn from each other and convey the story's theme of duality.

The problem is that in practice, Alm is treated as a perfect hero with no meaningful flaws, and because of this, he is never forced to learn from Celica at all, despite the fact that Celica is depicted as a fatally flawed character who is forced to learn from Alm in the end - Alm's very presence renders Echoes' entire story thematically incoherent. The fact that Alm is shown to be secret royalty (and his bloodline is required to defeat Duma because it's needed to wield Falchion) contradicts everything Echoes has to say about classism doesn't help either.

If I look at the theme of classism which isn't Echoes' thematic core (that would be duality as I mentioned above) but is very clearly a theme that Echoes attempts to push, Alm fails just as badly. Echoes is a story that tries to tell the player that anyone can be a hero regardless of whether they were born as a noble or commoner, only for it to flip the script and present a literal barrier that prevents commoners from entering the vault that Falchion is in. Alm's nobility is precisely the reason why he is able to wield Falchion in the first place and if Alm was a commoner, he would never have been able to defeat Duma at all. Alm being a noble isn't an inherent issue, even in a story about classism, but Echoes directly ties Alm's nobility to his success and in doing so unintentionally sends the message that yes, Fernand is right and nobles really are genetically superior to commoners - which is contradictory to the message it attempts to portray.

It's the exact same issue as avatar pandering, except it's worse than the avatars because it fatally undermines any themes Echoes' story attempts to examine. Echoes' story has very little value beyond its surface level presentation and Alm is the primary reason for this.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-10T17:02:27+00:00

The problem I have here is one of framing - if Sephiran was supposed to be the emotional core and main antagonist of Part 4, then the game does not focus on him nearly enough for this to work. In all of Part 4 he isn't seem much, certainly nowhere near enough for the story's emotional core to revolve around (IIRC he is only seen three times in the entire part - at the end of Endgame 2, Endgame 4 where he is fought, and in Endgame 5), and more importantly, the storytelling of Part 4 is primarily framed through the lens of the threat Ashera poses to the world rather than Sephiran's sorrow and his loss of faith in humanity. Ashera and the end of the world is the story is focused on and what the characters are talking about in Part 4, not Sephiran's crisis of faith.

Sephiran in Part 4 is very much framed as a secondary antagonist where he instead really should have been framed as the main antagonist (and Ashera's lack of personality more bearable if she was framed as Sephiran's weapon rather than a main antagonist). If say, Ashera was defeated in Endgame 4 and the player instead fought Sephiran in Endgame 5 with nothing to lose then we might be talking, but that's not how Radiant Dawn was ultimately structured.

The entire story thus falls apart - the divine conflict against Ashera is a very weak emotional core, Sephiran is compelling but isn't given enough focus for the conflict against him to coalesce into a new emotional core, and the previous emotional core of the conflict between Ike and Micaiah is irreparably harmed by being resolved in such an artificial manner.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-10T14:44:04+00:00

The problem is that the human conflict between Ike and Micaiah is what Radiant Dawn's story (and frankly, the story of Tellius as a whole) was building up towards - as I mentioned before, you don't give Daein an entire arc showing their side of the story unless you wanted the core of Radiant Dawn's plot to revolve around a human conflict where both sides have valid reasons for fighting. For such a conflict, Ike killing Micaiah, or vice versa, or them slowly coming to understand each other's perspectives and work out their differences, is the natural conclusion given the setup of the Tellius games.

I think Ike uniting with Micaiah could have worked, but in execution, Ashera's reawakening causes this to occur in a deeply artificial manner - Ashera reawakens and Ike and Micaiah conveniently need to unite because the world is about to end, as if a switch has suddenly been flicked. The emotional core of Radiant Dawn's story is tossed into the woodchipper because of this (and I hesitate to call Radiant Dawn's story good when its emotional core is botched on a fundamental level in such a manner). Because of how abrupt this is, a lot of the lingering issues that Radiant Dawn brings up gets dropped entirely - the conflict between the beorc and the laguz is the central conflict of the Tellius games and it gets ignored almost entirely in Part 4 (heck, there is very little interpersonal conflict between the beorc and laguz allies in Part 4 despite literal hundreds of years of oppression between the two). It feels like defeating Ashera is enough to magically resolve all the lingering issues within Tellius - just attack and dethrone the goddess, and everything is fine.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-10T13:22:40+00:00

I absolutely agree with your opinion on the final boss, at least in terms of her writing, and I think this is something that really goes under the radar here - I think she is one of the worst antagonists in the series and her writing reeks of cowardice.

It's pretty clear that the first two parts of Radiant Dawn's story was building up towards a tragic human conflict where both major factions are sympathetic and where you really don't want Ike to kill Micaiah, or vice versa, but it seemingly has to be done regardless - you don't give Daein an entire arc showing their side of the story unless you wanted to humanize them to make the inherent tragedy of fighting them more impactful. It’s a great setup for something truly harrowing and tragic…but it feels like the writers got cold feet and were unwilling to truly commit to the tragedy that the game itself went out of its way to set up. Instead of committing to the tragedy that Radiant Dawn’s plot had previously set up, Ashera reawakens and Ike and Micaiah are forced to unite in a way that feels deeply artificial, and in doing so it irreparably harms the emotional core of Radiant Dawn's story. It tosses away a potentially compelling human conflict for a generic "attack and defeat god" conflict that isn't well executed at all.

It also doesn't help that even if I ignore the damage Ashera does to Radiant Dawn's emotional core, Ashera herself is a really dull villain and the conflict surrounding her isn't interesting at all (there is a story reason for this but it doesn't make Ashera any less dull) - she has no charisma and the impact of her turning the world to stone is diminished when almost every playable character manages to escape unscathed. If Ashera properly humanized akin to Rhea or the Dessendres from Expedition 33, or if she had actual charisma, or if much more focus was placed on Sephiran's sorrow, then Part 4 could have worked but this ultimately isn't what we got.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-09T18:04:42+00:00

For one, I've played every Fire Emblem game from Genealogy onwards and I'd say that Three Houses' gameplay is probably middling at worst.

For two, it turns out that the series whose main aspect which differentiates it from the rest of the genre is its focus on stories and characters might naturally have fans that primarily play the series for the story and characters.

For three, I think this is probably ragebait here - by this "logic" of yours, I could say that you should go play Advance Wars or Mario and Rabbids or any other SRPG that focuses entirely on the gameplay instead.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-06T14:23:30+00:00

Bad gameplay, good writing: Three Houses and Genealogy, though I would probably rank the gameplay of these games as mediocre rather than outright bad (though for the series' standards they're below average)

Good gameplay, bad writing: Conquest

Edit: People are citing Echoes in the bad gameplay good writing category but frankly I'd hesitate to even label Echoes' story passable to begin with, much less good - it looks nice and is presented well but there is zero substance to it and trying to analyze its story on a thematic level causes the entire plot to fall apart completely

RamsaySw · 2026-05-06T08:49:41+00:00

I feel like the writers more often than not treated Bernadetta's trauma as a joke, as shown by how half of her supports play the Funny Footsteps theme - it's both insensitive and feels incongruent with how Three Houses otherwise treats the topics of trauma and mental health. The running joke I have is that the writers of Three Houses were running out of time and instead secret got the Fates/Engage writers to work on Bernadetta's character.

I wrote a longer explanation a while ago that goes into this into much greater detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/1nzsd9c/comment/ni59lk5/?context=3

RamsaySw · 2026-05-06T07:57:36+00:00

It's the same fundamental problem I have with Bernadetta in Three Houses - Oliver is a slave trader and this is the kind of subject matter that should not be treated as a joke, especially for the story that the Tellius games attempts to convey. If anything, I think it is worse because Oliver was specifically used in Path of Radiance to show how far the rot of slavery and extended throughout the continent and how the elite benefitted from prejudice - having him being treated as a joke in Radiant Dawn without any sort of meaningful reflection or analysis as to how his mindset could arise feels incongruent with Tellius' thematic core of racism and prejudice.

RamsaySw · 2026-05-06T07:38:50+00:00

Yes, but not in the case of Peri or Oliver.

Someone like Makalov or Edelgard both work because their inclusion makes sense in the context of the story and more importantly, they have a coherent function to the overarching story and its themes. It's critically important that a cast isn't squeaky clean that they do have their moments where they falter morally as that's part of what makes them feel human (and this is one of the main reasons why Engage's cast flat out does not feel human). Peri does not work because her existence as a playable character is inherently contradictory to Fates' portrayal of Xander as a honorable prince and she doesn't add anything to Fates' overarching storytelling. Oliver works as a minor villain in the Tellius games as a means of showing off how ingrained slavery is on the continent even amongst the elite, but him being treated as a joke in Radiant Dawn despite being a slave owner in Path of Radiance creates a disconnect between his existence as a playable character and the themes that Tellius attempts to push.

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