Gallophilic Cultural Posturing: A Case Study

Faith boons or banes unlike most other boons or banes had in universe justifications. They reflected if a character was religious or believed in the goddess. If we apply that to FW I think it becomes the faith boons make much more sense.

Theodora in the direct was revealed to be very religious. Leda used to be part of the Kalla(?)

Temple as a “Rose”, even beating Olympia, which I presume has to require some religious devotion.

Cai makes the least sense at a first glance but I think his connection to the aurora temple will justify the boon. I think Cai has a deeper connection to aurora temple partly because of Ultand serving it. More importantly though at some point Cai asks the temple to help him save Ultand. Cai directly asks a temple for help and, along with Leda, bas cutscenes in the temple which we haven’t seen for Theodora and Dietrich. That all shows some deeper bond to aurora temple for Cai in his story.

As for Dietrich him being the only lord without a faith boon does makes sense to me. After all I remember him saying something about slaying the gods once.

I'm not saying it's odd from a characterization perspective, although it is a bit odd in Theodora's case since her goddess Yu Phas is not widely worshipped or respected in Dagda. If this were entirely consistent with Three Houses then she'd have a faith bane similar to Dedue and Petra who are both spiritual according to their respective traditions but don't follow the church of Seiros.

It's more that in terms of gameplay the leads could have stood to had a wider array of boons; I'm most surprised that not one of them has an axe boon.

I see a lot of people pointing out these obelisk clips for the lore tidbits they add, but I've noticed something else: they more or less confirm in an indirect manner that the yellow-tinted skill ranks are this game's boons.

You really have to keep a sharp eye, but there's info on two other classes in the Direct.

Shaman has very similar skill parameters to priest, just with swords.

And despite the name, armored ornius rider is not in fact a heavy armor class but is still riding + flying (however that works). That's on the level with dark flier/dark knight typically not being associated with dark magic.

Based on the character levels and the classes of everyone else who appears in this list, these would appear to be in the specialty tier. Not surprising. Shaman feels like the mage stand-in, while I suppose armored ornius rider exists if you want to train axe cavalry or are just really passionate about emus.

Now, to speculate some about more advanced classes.

If we compare these sprites to those in Dietrich's certification list, all but one is accounted for. That's shido on the far left, then the third onward is warrior, sniper, forest knight, dreadnought, and bishop. All easy to identify.

But the second from the left is missing. It's not ovate, which looks like this for Dietrich:

Additionally, the classes on the intro screen are laid out in a consistent order from left to right that corresponds with the top-bottom orientation of Dietrich's classes. As seen here, Dietrich has no classes between shido and warrior.

This lends further support to my individualized class lists theory.

As for what that mystery class could be, based on where it shows up in the ordering it may be the sword + magic hybrid characters like Bonaventure and Sirocco seem to be built for. But going by how the sprite looks it may lean toward magic than swords, unlike Three Houses's mortal savant.

For Dietrich's three ???, the one above dreadnought is almost definitely guardian now that we've seen its sprite in Eshmel's intro. The one between warrior and sniper looks like an axe class. Another hybrid, or berserker maybe? The one below forest knight could be a number of things, but the simplest guess is that it's an advanced brawling class since it comes after the archers. Whether that's a physical class like war master or another hybrid like war monk is unknown.

Finally, there's the other classes that got introductions.

I expect cataphract and dragoon to be extremely close to great knight and wyvern lord respectively in their parameters. Guardian is known to be spears, faith, and infantry...the last of which surprised me since infantry skill really seemed like it was just a thing for sword and bow units.

But elephant rider is a big question mark.

woah she can marry Cai I guess!

Ha.

There's some definite Radiant Dawn vibes going on with Eshmel. The bird transformation obviously feels like Yune, and when they first manifested as a ball of blue fire I immediately thought of the visuals for FE10's opening movie.

And of what we can see so far I really like them! There are pretty, fit the setting and I appreciate that they are not afraid to show more skin on the male outfit (even if I'm sure you would have preferred less clothes!)

Are there any particular class outfits that you like already?

These are definitely more creative class outfits than in Three Houses, which matches the more varied and interesting visual design in general. The casters look good, and I'm hoping that male warriors and whatever the advanced brawling class is are heavily stripped down. I'd have preferred that armors were less clunky metal cans and went with a lighter, more Greco-Roman armor angle; maybe guardian will be more in that vein. I enjoy the existence of guardian as a whole: a brand new spear/faith class, and the showcase revealed that Starlight is returning as a light spell? Awesome, I can almost forgive them for nerfing Seraphim.

I’ve been doing both for a few years now, but Tumblr has always been my online base. I like to think my perspective in videos has reflects my time here which does help me stand out especially from the rest of gaming YouTube.

I very much doubt we've seen every class available in this game. It would be very surprising if the four leads and Eshmel didn't get unique classes, and there are surely others that haven't appeared yet either.

Here's the sample of classes from each of the three tiers (excluding noble/commoner). Master tier might still be hidden away, but I doubt it when the suggested promotion level for advanced classes is level 35. It seems that the unusually high levels seen all over the place in prerelease footage weren't just something from testing or an older build.

Beginner

The voiceover confirms that I was exactly right with my prediction for this tier. It's just those five classes: gladiator, hunter, soldier, ornius rider, and diviner.

Specialty

The classes shown are myrmidon, brigand, pugilist, archer and rogue (not quite sure which is which), armored knight, and light cavalry. Other than those we know of priest, wing soldier (the renamed and maybe unisex pegasus knight - currently unclear since the only ones shown have been female), and charioteer which was confirmed to be playable in the Direct. It's a logical assumption that shaman also fits in here as an equivalent to mage, as Fabio is listed as one in a freeze frame menu moment. The voiceover says there are "over ten" specialty classes, and that would make eleven. The only intermediate class from Three Houses that lacks an equivalent here is dark mage. It would pretty funny if the game with a playable Agarthan lacked the option to class him appropriately. (Or maybe Fabio is the only dark magic user in the whole cast and that's how he'll be distinguished from the black magic users.)

Advanced

It's harder to tell based on the sprites. Fortunately, there's an alternative with Dietrich showing off his full(?) list.

The arrow scrolls from all the way to the bottom at bishop up to the top at shido, so this would appear to be all of them at least for Dietrich. That's shido, warrior, sniper, forest knight, dreadnought, bardinger, ovate, and bishop along with three ??? classes.

This slide meanwhile introduces four classes not shown in Dietrich's list. Guardian (Ultand here) might be the one above dreadnought, but the others are clearly not present. That would be cataphract, elephant rider, and dragoon. I looked closely at the brief clip of Theodora reclassing into something like wyvern rider; based on her armor and the mount itself it appears to be a dragoon, so this might be the only reptilian flier in this game.

Characters who've been introed on Twitter and Nintendo Today: 18/20, depending on whether Nathan and Creek are playable. This roster is so big and they have a level of visual design that would point to them being playable, but it's not definite.

Eshmel

Guzran (merc with bit of orange hair)

Sofia (green haired mage)

Anatolia ("gun nun")

Benditz (recruitable enemy charioteer)

Peppe (looks like a male Petra)

Diego (guy with facial markings from Creek clip)

Ursula

Io (looks like a male Shamir)

Yang Jie (weird eyebrows guy)

Noctula (teal haired brawler)

Alexandra

Seteth (yep, it's him)

Nezha (not to be confused with Nuzzo...I think)

Nuzzo

Dante (a diviner)

Goliath (an armor)

Anna

Ninae

Nydine (ornius rider with green ponytail)

Kiroc (a rogue)

blonde with ponytail

pink haired sword user with buns

mage with long purple hair

Orchel

green haired guy dressed like a dancer