#fe 18

BUT

If these heroic games are the shows Rhea used to put on to force criminals to kill each other for her amusement, in origin or those games themselves, this will be a VERY interesting addition to the "three houses discourse" crowd, witnessing more of Rhea's cruelty firsthand and not just reading *about* it and not dwelling on it.

I know this footage of Theodra's gambit has people assuming battallions are back, it really does look like it. But here's the thing;

Where's the batallion in the UI? She has a 2-use gambit, and troops appear when she uses it, but unlike in three houses, there is nothing in her unit summary or the description of the gambit itself to identify which batallion she is equipped with.

Dietrich (oh my god in english words his name is diet rich, that's so funny if he's like a disgraced or former noble) is the only one of the "lords" we see with a hero's relic, called by name, though Thodora's armor looks pretty hero's relic-like, so this might age badly.

Leda is the only "lord" shown to have a "manage gage" option, albiet greyed out, and considering this gage seems to go up as you use blaze arts and has the same symbol as the game's curse stat, alongise the hapi paralells and summoning demonic beasts and using dark magic, this seems to be an entire mechanic all it's own the others don't have...

Cai also has some power, though we don't quite get to see it in the game's mechanics. This, to me, suggests each "lord", if that's even what is going on here, has thier own mechanic all thier own, taking a more Fates-like approach where different paths (if that's even happening again?) offer different mechanics and playstyles. Thee houses teased this potential but it fell flat, with the various routes feeling extremly similar, some borderline identical to each other. and, for my wildest notion...

If this is to be Fodlan's past, this honestly makes no sense. While we know she invented the system of nobility, are we to assume she invented the European-like overall culture? The architecture? She, in her grief, didn't just preserve a version of humanity she saw as acceptable, but just fully changed everything for a made up culture of her imagination? And what of the people, did she literally whitewash Fodlan? Everything about this new land looks different entirely. I'm also not sold this is Fodlan's future, either; I think this just has to be a different place entirely. Another continent, maybe Almyra but it would be nice if it were fully different.

A hangup people seem to have is the crests we see. "But that's the crest of *blank*, it has to be related to *character*!" They say. But... Have we forgotten crests aren't actually some magical gift from the goddess? Crests are a *blood type* from Nabataeans. Crest stones are organs harvested from children of Sothis, and the relics are made from their bones. The Nabataen civilization was *big* there were probably more to be used in the creation of tools and weapons beyond just one for each blood type. How these crests got here, who this new Nabataen is, these are interesting questions but assuming we know everything about them therefore these must be ancestors or descendants. Blood can travel! More can be unknown!

These emblems/banners seem to imply factions/different paths are back