©1996-2019 Ziff Davis, LLC. IGN® is among the federally registered trademarks of IGN Entertainment, Inc. and may only be used with explicit written permission.
Sam Lake: Writing Control Has Given Me Max Payne Flashbacks – IGN Unfiltered – IGN
Sam Lake wants you to know that he loves when stories get super meta – what you could describe as getting really self-aware and irreverent of their own world. The Max Payne franchise was infamous for this, throwing its titular hero into a hallucination sequence, with Payne commenting that it feels like he’s in a video game. With Remedy and Lake’s next game, Control, out on August 28, the writer says that he’s had many a flashback to writing Max Payne.
“It’s fascinating, especially when you are studying [postmodern literature],” Lake told IGN on this month’s episode of IGN Unfiltered. “It almost feels like it’s a literary genre made for analyzing it, almost like you’re playing a game. Like you are coming up with interpretations and investing into it and gaining more out of it by investing into it. So playing the game almost with the writer has also been in my mind when writing for games in some ways. That’s where it started. It’s all post-modern and playing around with point-of-view and what’s real and what’s not real …I’ve had many kinds of flashbacks to working on Max Payne.”
On the full episode of this month’s IGN Unfiltered, Sam Lake joined the show to discuss his career as a writer for some of the most narratively inventive games like Alan Wake, Max Payne, and the upcoming Control
. Lake and host Ryan McCaffrey also discuss the history of Remedy Entertainment, plus all the lessons they’ve learned along the way and how Remedy is infusing those into Control.
Every month, IGN Unfiltered features one of the video game industry’s biggest and brightest voices. Recent guests include Bethesda director Todd Howard, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, and Uncharted series writer and co-director Amy Hennig. You can find every episode here.
Joseph Knoop is a writer and producer for IGN, and what is this, an author bio? Get meta with him on Twitter.
Nintendo Reveals Cute Japan-Only Disney Switch – IGN
Japan is getting a Disney Tsum-Tsum Festival Nintendo Switch bundle this October that includes pink and purple Joy-Cons that are decorated with patterns and feature a home button adorned with Mickey Mouse ears.As reported by The Verge,Nintendo Japan unveiled this new bundle that will arrive alongside Disney’s Tsum-Tsum Festival on October 10 for 36,080 yen ($333 USD). This new game includes Switch-exclusive minigames and the ability to play a version of the popular mobile Tsum-Tsum game by holding the Switch vertically.
The Joy-Cons, as previously mentioned, feature different patterns including Mickey Mouse, and the Switch itself has Tsum-Tsum versions of such beloved characters as Stitch, Mickey, Minnie, and Winnie the Pooh on the back.
The Nintendo Switch included in this bundle will indeed be the updated Switch that features the improved battery life.
Unfortunately, there is no word if this bundle and/or these Joy-Cons will be released outside of Japan, but we do know that the game will be, although no release date has been given besides 2019.
While we wait to see if these do come out of Japan, be sure to check out the newest Joy-Con colors combinations – Neon Purple and Orange and Blue and Neon Yellow – that will be released on October 4, 2019, for $79.99 USD.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN who needs these. Like now. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst.
Xbox Home Screen Redesign Removes Cortana – IGN
Microsoft has redesigned the Xbox One
Home user interface with a variety of features designed to provide a faster experience. Among the changes, support for the Cortana voice assistant has been dropped.Announced on the Xbox Wire blog, Microsoft explained that the company intends to shift voice assistant elements away from on-console and into the cloud. This means that, while you can still use voice commands to control your console, you’ll talk to Cortana via a smart device such as an Alexa product with the Cortana skill or a mobile device with an app, rather that via your Xbox headset.
In addition to the changes in Cortana functionality, the ‘Twist’ elements from the top of the screen have been removed, and replaced with a row of shortcuts to games. There is also more room for recently played games tiles to appear. Microsoft explains that the redesigned home screen is all in aid of creating a “seamless experience for you to navigate your console”.
The new design will be available this week to Xbox Insider members who are part of the Alpha and Alpha Skip Ahead rings, and will roll out to all users in the fall of this year.
The Xbox One UI design has seen several phases of improvements since the console launched in 2013. Originally criticised for being slow and clunky, the whole system was overhauled in 2015 with a much speedier interface. It was upgraded again in 2017.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter.
HBO’s His Dark Materials Adaptation Will Be One Book Per Season, with a ‘Few Treats’ – IGN
The upcoming BBC and HBO co-production adaptation of Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials trilogy will be largely sticking to adapting one book per season, according to showrunner Jack Thorne. But that doesn’t mean you won’t see little hints at what’s to come in this TV series telling of the beloved fantasy series.”Largely it’s one book per season,” he said during the His Dark Materials’ TV Critics’ Association press tour panel. “There are a few treats I’ve stolen from other books. … The whole story of three books and how can we celebrate them in the best possible, and sometimes that involved moving certain elements forward.”
Part of this involves sneaking an early look at other worlds, which are explored in the final two His Dark Materials books. You can see the stars of the series — Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dafne Keen and Ruth Wilson — discuss how the greater multiverse of the show works in our Comic-Con interview below:
HBO and BBC will soon be starting production on Season 2 of His Dark Materials, even though Season 1 doesn’t premiere until fall 2019. The two-season greenlight came as a result of showrunner Jane Tranter viewing them as two parts of the same whole, though that doesn’t necessarily diminish the chance of Season 3, which would explore the final novel, being picked up.
“I think of it as 16 episodes rather than 2 seasons, the end of the first novel is continuous with the second,” she said. “As we move from one season to another, we have children in the show who grow up very quickly, who don’t look the same 12 months later, so we had to find a way of turning the piece around quite quickly to allow that story to be told. There’s a great thing of a girl going through puberty, so we wanted to be able to pace that story out age-appropriately so that’s why we went for 16 episodes.”
Since its creation, Pullman’s trilogy has been referred to as the anti-Chronicles of Narnia, and has also long been at the center of controversy over its portrayal of religion. Keen clarified that the “Magisterium is more Big Brother in 1984. It’s a dictatorship, it’s not criticizing Church, it’s criticizing oppression.”
“The religious controversy was not relevant to the books themselves. In His Dark Materials, Philip talks about oppression, he talks about the control of information, he talks about the falsification of information,” added Tranter. “Magisterium includes church and state, there is no direct contrast with any contemporary organization. [When the books were written] there wasn’t such a thing as fake news. I think Philip was digging on themes of truth needing to be allowed out.”
The showrunners view themselves as scholars of Pullman — “We wrote papers to ourselves on Philip Pullman, we tried to do a PhD on His Dark Materials,” said Thorne — which resulted in them trying to, in their words, “tell this story as elegantly as possible.” That meant Thorne and Tranter wrote 46 drafts of the premiere episode to get it right.
“Philip’s denseness is a blessing and a curse, you’re constantly fighting it but you’re constantly finding new ideas. We had him on our shoulder all the way through, but it’s a very challenging show to write but also a glorious show to write,” said Thorne.
One of the most interesting takeaways was examining why the story was told from the perspective of Keen’s character, Lyra, versus James McAvoy’s character, Lord Asriel. “Philip could have told this story from the perspective of Lord Asriel, if this was a Marvel movie,” said Thorne. “We’re going to dip into Lord Astriel’s story every now and again … while Asriel is intent on greatness, Lyra is interested in doing the good thing, the right thing.”
The eight-part miniseries, directed by Tom Hooper and written by Jack Thorne, has already found its place on IGN’s list of the 20 biggest new shows coming to TV in 2019. For more, here’s everything you need to know about His Dark Materials. What are you most looking forward to about this upcoming adaptation?
Terri Schwartz is Editor-in-Chief of Entertainment at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
Fire Emblem Director Explains How Marriage Has Changed in Three Houses – IGN
One of the goals for Intelligent Systems with Fire Emblem: Three Houses
was to give players a more personal experience with the world and setting. That’s why the support system was revamped to focus more on the player character, who is more of an avatar for the player than a unique hero with their own story.Speaking with Intelligent Systems ahead of the release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, director Toshiyuki Kusaskihara explained to IGN why only the player can unlock S-Rank support levels:
“The reason that we have S-Rank endings for only the protagonist has a lot to do with the fact that you’re using an avatar for the game,” Kusakihara says. “We really want the player to feel like they get some kind of satisfaction out of getting to know a certain character the best through gameplay.”
Kusakihara says that the S-Rank is “really more used as a way to give a satisfactory ending for the player, instead of allowing marriage with various characters.” That’s why only the player avatar can get married, unlike more recent Fire Emblem games where players sometimes played matchmaker between various characters.
However, just because other characters can’t get marriage endings doesn’t mean they won’t have their own unique storylines. “If certain characters built up a relationship within the game… you might be able to discover a story reveal of what happens to two characters who have a stronger relationship,” Treehouse’s Chiko Bird says.
While they won’t get a special scene like the main character, there will still be a narrative for other characters that players can discover.
The reason why the support system focuses so much on the player in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is because getting an S-Rank ending with the player avatar is meant to be a sort of exclusive reward not available to other character relationships. We asked the developers why Intelligent Systems moved away from Lord Character protagonists with unique stories to more stand-in avatars.
“We will definitely consider having a Lord with a set personality in future games,” Kusakihara says. “It’s just that every time we develop a Fire Emblem game, we create at heme for it, and we want to create a protagonist that matches that theme. For Fire Emblem: Three Houses, we figured instead of a fixed lord, it would be better to have an avatar that is close to the three various class leaders who are lords.”
In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the player takes the role of a professor at a monastery that houses an elite officer’s academy as well as a powerful church. Unlike past games, there are more RPG elements where players can plan classes, guide students and the future lords of nations, and choose how to live each school day. This is probably why Intelligent Systems opted to have players control a blank avatar they can role-play in their own way, rather than have a character with a set personality.
Check out our Fire Emblem: Three Houses review for the Nintendo Switch, and for more info on all the characters you can meet and romance, check out our Fire Emblem: Three Houses Wiki Guide.
Reporting by Brendan Graeber and Matt Kim.
The Best Gaming Laptops in the UK 2019: Top Portable Notebooks for Gaming – IGN
If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.
Back in the day, if you wanted to play games on a PC you had to assemble the biggest, meanest machine possible and pray that your credit cards could take the strain. Thankfully technology progresses apace and here we sit in 2019, able to buy laptops capable of running the latest games without having to take out a second mortgage.
Naturally if you’re a hardcore gamer or someone who insists on the highest framerates and glossiest visuals, you’ll need to dip into your savings if you want to game without being locked to your office desk, but if you’re a more pragmatic gamer you’ll find it pretty easy to pick up a laptop capable of delivering a satisfying gaming experience for reasonable money.
There’s plenty to consider when you’re on the lookout for a new gaming laptop on a budget, too. Do you try and get a balanced machine with the newest components and perhaps spend close to your budget, or do you opt for last season’s components and get more for your money? Do you have any “must have” features that you simply can’t do without? What games are you planning to play?
Of course, only you can answer those questions, but we’ve taken a look at the best bang-for-buck gaming laptops on the market and picked out our favourite eight machines which will bring you the joy of PC gaming on a budget – and this is gaming laptops we’re talking about, so “budget” doesn’t mean the same as it does for a strictly work machine. We’re talking laptops that come in under £1200 here.
So if you’re looking to pick up a new laptop for gaming or maybe you want to move away from a desktop PC when you play, take a look through our picks and see if you find anything that appeals.
If you are wanting a gaming chair to go with your new gaming laptop, check out our roundup of the best gaming chairs.
TL;DR — These are the Best Gaming Laptops:
1. Dell G3 15
Our first pick is from Round Rock’s finest, Dell. The G3 15 is a solid laptop which packs quite a punch given its price-point. It comes packing an Intel i5-8300H CPU and NVIDIA’s GTX 1050 Ti GPU alongside 8GB RAM, making it a pretty balanced contender in terms of power.
The GPU is capable of handling even the most demanding games, though you’ll need to manage your FPS expectations according to the title you’re playing. Another key feature of the 1050 Ti is its ridiculously low power consumption, which is great for laptop gaming, and the G3 15 takes full advantage, delivering up to 6 hours of use off a single charge.
In terms of storage, the laptop’s kitted out with what has become the norm; a 1TB 5400 RPM harddrive for storage and a 128GB SSD for running games with minimal lag, and with a 15.6-inch IPS display with excellent viewing angles you can be sure of a solid gaming experience overall, and all for less than £700.
2. Lenovo Y530
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that looks the part then look no further than Lenovo’s Y530. This one’s a real looker, with a slick, bezel-less design that belies its sub-£1000 price tag.
It isn’t all fur coat and no knickers though, this machine comes bristling with technology. It runs on Intel’s 8th generation i5 chip, which is a consummate performer, and has a GTX 1050 on-board, taking care of gaming duties which, while not quite the performer of its Ti sibling, is still a heck of a good card for the money with similarly low power demands.
There’s a good selection of ports on offer in the Y530, including a Type-C USB, and it also boasts some pretty pleasing sound-quality for its diminutive size, though even the best laptop sound is easily beaten out by a good quality pair of headphones.
Like our first pick, it too comes with a 1TB 5400RPM HDD and a 128GB for demanding tasks and 8GB RAM, and it performs solidly, in terms of both gaming and general use.
3. MSI Raider GE63
MSI’s Raider is our most expensive pick, but we think its performance more than warrants the price tag that’s attached.
The laptop is driven by Intel’s excellent i7-8750H chip, 16GB RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 1060 (6GB). There’s also the requisite 1TB 5400 and 128GB SSD combination on offer here.
The GPU is a good upgrade over the usual 1050Ti that we usually see in the low and mid-rangers. It offers blistering 1440P performance and is capable of a solid 70FPS in most titles if you’re happy to eschew ultra settings and if you’re playing less demanding games like Fortnite you can expect to reach 100+FPS.
Performance isn’t hindered by thermal issues in the GE63. Cooling is good though you can expect a little fan noise when things get hectic. The laptop’s display is good too, though a touch more brightness would have been nice – it isn’t enough to spoil the show, however.
4. HP Omen
Another excellent machine is HP’s Omen. It’s also the ugliest laptop in our list but, as Mick and Keith are forever telling us, you can’t always get what you want. Beneath its Shrek-like chassis sits enough horsepower to deliver truly surprising levels of performance, given its sub-£1000 price tag.
The Omen is dripping with goodness. It runs on Intel’s i7-8750H CPU, boasts 8GB GDDR5 RAM and has a GTX 1060 GPU on-board. There’s also a bright and sharp G-Sync 144Hz display and DTS Headphone X Tech, giving you access to good quality audio when you plug your cans in.
The keyboard is a stand-out performer on the Omen. It’s comfortable, responsive and offers some good customisation options. Your fingers certainly won’t feel as fatigued as they might on other gaming laptops, and on the subject of gaming you can count on this machine to serve-up 60FPS on most titles with little problem – though it can get a little warm.
5. Dell G5 15
Dell’s G5 15 is a cool customer, in more ways than one. It’s another i7-powered pick which also comes with 8GB RAM and a GTX 1050Ti but, unlike some others on the list, this laptop can be counted on to keep its chill while you’re bashing away on your favourite games.
Storage comes in the familiar configuration, but Dell has seen fit to imbue the G5 with a 256GB SSD next to its 1TB storage drive, giving you scope for installing more than one major title at a time.
The G5 is a nicely designed and built machine with one of our favourite keyboards and its battery is outstanding; it’s capable of almost 6 hours off a charge, so if you are planning on moving around a lot, this could well be a laptop to consider.
6. Acer Nitro
One of the most affordable laptops on our list is the Acer Nitro, a nice looking machine which offers solid performance for its relatively low price, making it a brilliant choice for an entry-level gamer.
The machine is powered by Intel’s i5+ 8300H chip and 8GB RAM, and sports an NVIDIA GTX 1050 (4GB) which is a reliable performer and one which will cope with even the latest titles, albeit at lower FPS.
The Nitro is sturdily built and comes equipped with a comfortable keyboard with backlighting and a clear display, and while it does get a little spicy when under load it also offers user-controllable cooling, which is a nice feature to see in such a wallet-friendly gaming laptop.
7. HP Pavilion Power 15-cx0599sa
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that doesn’t have all of the usual garish design tropes associated with them, then you’ll be well served by the snappily-named HP Pavilion Power 15x0599sa, because it’s quite the sleeper.
At first glance it looks just like your common or garden office laptop, albeit one with nice, slim bezels, but beneath the bonnet you’ll find an Intel i5+8300H chip, 8GB RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 1050 (2GB), capable of pulling 60FPS on GTA V on high settings.
The machine also comes equipped with a clear and bright display with excellent viewing angles, a good port selection, including USB Type-C, and B&O Play audio, which delivers decent sound quality.
8. Acer Predator Helios 300
Acer’s Predator Helios looks every inch the gaming laptop. Its red vented chassis is decorated with an angry looking logo, but it isn’t all bark, there’s plenty of bite here too.
The machine is another i5-powered contender, and one which also comes with 8GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti (4GB), but where it differs from most is with its sparkling 144Hz display which is one of the best we’ve seen at a sub-£1000 price point.
It also boasts a very well-designed keyboard, 1TB HDD with 128GB SSD and a good selection of ports, and is a great choice for someone looking for a workhorse budget gaming laptop. It will run most titles, no matter how power-hungry they are, on medium to high settings and stays nice and cool into the bargain.
Sure, battery life could be a bit better and the design could be a bit more…up to date, but if those issues don’t bother you, it’s a good piece of kit.
Fire Emblem Dev on If They’ve Thought About an Advance Wars Sequel – IGN
Intelligent Systems, co-developers of this week’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses
, are of course also known for another renowned Nintendo strategy franchise — Advance Wars. But for fans of the more modern military aesthetic of that series, Intelligent Systems’ work on the lengthy Three Houses campaign, and plans for post-launch DLC, hasn’t left much room for the developers to consider an Advance Wars follow-up in the near future.Speaking to IGN ahead of Three Houses launch, Intelligent Systems Director Toshiyuki Kusakihara told IGN the developers “don’t even have the time to think about” what they’re doing after Three Houses.”
“While we can say that we’re working on the DLC and there’s going to be a lot of content [for Fire Emblem], we really don’t even have the time to even think about what we’re going to be doing afterward,” Kusakihara said via translation. “We will be pretty busy, but we’ll keep working with Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo on all of this content that’s coming.”
So, that’s not an outright confirmation that another Advance Wars will come to be from the franchise’s developers, but, should the series ever return, it doesn’t look like its set for an imminent comeback.
Since the Advance Wars moniker became the defining name of the “Wars” series, Intelligent Systems has developed Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.
But it’s been over a decade since that last entry — Days of Ruin was released for the Nintendo DS in 2008 — while the last main entry in the Fire Emblem franchise came in 2017 with the release of the Nintendo 3DS’ Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden that was made for the Famicom in Japan.
IGN gave the last Advance Wars, Days of Ruin an 8.6 in our review, while IGN’s review for Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia gave the game a 7.8.
For more on the latest entry in the series, be sure to check out our Fire Emblem: Three Houses review and Wiki Guide.
Reporting by Brendan Graeber.
Pokemon Go: Team Rocket Returns With New Special Research
Earlier this week, Pokemon Go players had their first encounter with Team Rocket. The villainous trainers would invade certain PokeStops and challenge players to battle using their Shadow Pokemon, but just as suddenly as they appeared, Team Rocket seemed to vanish from the game. The evil team is now back again in Pokemon Go in even greater numbers, and there’s a new Special Research questline to go along with them.
Just as before, you can encounter a Team Rocket grunt at certain PokeStops. You can tell which locations have been taken over by the team by their appearance. On the overworld map, the PokeStop cube will appear darker and will twitch erratically, and when you approach it, you’ll notice the stop is colored black rather than blue. Spin the Photo Disc at one of these PokeStops and the Rocket grunt will reveal themselves and challenge you to a Pokemon battle.
Rocket grunts come with Shadow Pokemon, which have red eyes and are surrounded by a dark aura. If you defeat the Rocket grunt in battle, they’ll leave their Shadow Pokemon behind, giving you an opportunity to capture it. Once you’ve rescued the monster, you’ll have the option to “purify” it by spending Candy and Stardust.
Not only will purification return the Shadow Pokemon’s appearance to normal, it’ll also increase its stats. Purified Pokemon will require less Stardust and Candy to power up, as well, giving you another incentive to purify them. You can read more about the process in our Pokemon Go Shadow Pokemon guide.
To coincide with Team Rocket’s invasion of Pokemon Go, a new Special Research questline dubbed A Troubling Situation is now live. When you boot up the game, Professor Willow will mention the recent Rocket sightings and assign your first few tasks.
There’s a lot more happening in Pokemon Go. As part of a One Piece crossover event, Pikachu wearing straw hats are appearing in the wild until July 29. The game’s current Legendary, Armored Mewtwo, will also be leaving on July 31, and shortly after that, Niantic will host the next Pokemon Go Community Day. That takes place on Saturday, August 3, and the featured Pokemon this time will be Ralts.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review – IGN
Before its resurgence in popularity on the 3DS handhelds, there was a time where the Fire Emblem series once lived on home consoles. Twelve years after Radiant Dawn on Wii, Fire Emblem: Three Houses
has finally returned to the living room on the Switch, and it’s better than ever. With a vast and open base hub to explore, new ways to turn the tide of battle with your chosen band of colorful characters, and a story that’s as brutal as the choices you’ll have to make on the battlefield, Three Houses is everything I’ve ever wanted in a turn-based strategy game. Its grand adventure is filled with drama and intrigue across whichever of the titular three houses you choose to join, and each brings its own unique perspective. Following just one of these paths from humble beginnings to a full-blown war for dominance took me over 70 hours, and left me hungry for more.
Battles take full advantage of the relatively powerful Switch (as opposed to the 3DS) to create some impressive looking maps. With new battalions that you can equip to enhance and support your units, armies actually start to look like armies as the map zooms right into the fight to show the opposing forces slam into each other. The music dynamically shifts when moving into combat from its upbeat rhythm to heighten the percussion — raising the tension in the process — before soaring back over the battlefield. I was amazed to find you can even zoom in when inspecting the map to glide along the terrain and see the armies assembled, taking in some extraordinary sights that you’d normally only get glimpses of in combat. You’re even able to select and command units by having them run around the field while zoomed in instead of just picking a map point to move to — though it’s a lot harder to get a sense of the battle from this angle.
Fans of the series may notice that the traditional “weapon triangle” of swords beat axes beat lances beat swords has been all but abandoned in Three Houses. Instead, there’s a bigger emphasis on choosing the right weapon for the right person — depending on their skill level and the stats of the weapon itself (swords still have the best overall accuracy, while axes unleash the most raw power, and lances are balanced in the middle). Training up units unlocks many custom moves to make them more effective against armored or cavalry units, and those with high enough proficiency can even unlock “breaker” skills to give them advantages against a certain weapon type which brings back that weapon superiority feel. Because of this, I hardly noticed the weapon triangle’s exclusion.
I was especially surprised to see several combat arts lifted from the Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game, of all places, and the inclusion of strategic unit repositioning abilities was a most welcome one, allowing me to swap, shove, or quickly relocate my more vulnerable units out of danger. Having equippable battalions of troops that could bolster an individual character’s stats meant new strategies too, including the ability to stun attackers in place – and beware, the enemy can use that trick on you if you get complacent in simply forming a wall of tough units. That made me rethink my defensive strategies.
Permanent character death is still present if you so choose, and the thought of losing your best units feels as terrifying as ever…
“
Permanent character death is still present if you so choose, and the thought of losing your best units feels as terrifying as ever, until you realize how many options are available to you. Being able to rewind time a bit (which made its debut in the last 3DS game) alleviates many of those fears, and seeing which units your enemies plan to attack can save you a lot of grief as long as you’re paying attention. I appreciate that if you challenge yourself to keep going after a beloved character falls, there are many opportunities to try and recruit faculty or students from other houses to join your ranks — or even ask another student to tag along for a single mission.
Study Halls
Unlike those that came before it, Three Houses provides a welcome respite from battle after battle by introducing the Garreg Mach Monastery, a huge explorable fortress that’s home to both a church housing the dominant religion of the land, and an officer’s academy for the three nations that make up the continent of Fodlan. Students are divided into houses representing these nations, and you’ll choose one of the houses to teach and lead into battle. Imagine Harry Potter’s Hogwarts except teenagers come to learn how to do battle instead of magic and Dumbledore is also the archbishop of a powerful militarized church who routinely orders teachers to lead students to war against bandits and blasphemers.
The houses of the Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer are unique in more ways than one. Each boasts a lively cast of endearing characters that instantly drew me in, and their individual skills, flaws, and personalities offer an incredible amount of possibilities. Even though your initial house choice is only skin deep, each one gives you so much to work with and discover along the way. What really excited me was just how fleshed out each character was beyond the face value of their personality archetype — and how interconnected and important their own stories were to the world at large.
Ingrid from the Blue Lions house idealizes knighthood due to her late fiance (who was the brother of another student), but his recent tragic death caused her to be deeply mistrustful of the people she believes to be responsible (which includes yet another classmate). The young leaders themselves — Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude — are equally full of promise in both their abilities and backgrounds, and leave enough of an air of mystery to leave you wholly unprepared for where their stories lead when war engulfs the land after a five-year time jump.
But a continental war of this scale doesn’t just happen overnight. Instead, you’ll spend the first half of Three Houses’ epic 70-hour campaign acclimating to life at the monastery through teaching students, wandering the grounds, and undertaking missions for the church. Where instructing students is concerned, Three Houses could have easily fallen into the pitfall of monotony. Instead, the entire process of building up your students’ abilities and combat arts is quick and efficient, and can even be automated if you so choose. Training becomes a very satisfying way to alter the makeup of your army and adapt to new confrontations. For instance, when my land-heavy army had to fight along the water, being able to plan ahead and reclass several units into wyvern and pegasus riders made me feel like a tactical mastermind. If you don’t feel like spending time setting specific goals for your team or nurturing budding talents, letting Three Houses automate the process still ensures your units will follow their own class goals and be ready to fight.
the entire process of building up your students’ abilities and combat arts is quick and efficient, and can even be automated if you so choose.
“
Three Houses moves the story along on a month-to-month basis, and with a week’s worth of decision making done at a time (which concludes in a few short moments), the bulk of your time is spent on free days at the end of the week, and the story mission battle that caps off each month. You’re smartly given multiple options on how to spend each day off — which lets each of us focus on what we want out of Three Houses. The “Explore” option lets you walk around the impressively sized monastery in a fully 3D environment — a series first. It’s practically bursting at the seams with students and faculty wandering the grounds, so it’s no surprise that I encountered a few areas of minor slowdown when trying to sprint through crowded areas. Fast-traveling gets around that annoyance, of course.
There’s so much to see and do that it becomes almost overwhelming, and thankfully the additional areas and activities are gradually rolled out over the course of the year you spend teaching. Despite my lust for battle, I was excited to come back each new month to find new opportunities, like going to the monastery pond for a fishing minigame and then cooking up the fish into stat-boosts for my team, or entering students in tournaments and watching them endure a tough gauntlet of fights to win prizes. Certain activities limit how much you can do in a session, adding an additional element of strategy as you plan out how to spend your finite time. Even hosting tea parties to raise your bonds with a character requires some strategy — as you’ll need to keep your partner interested by picking from a list of conversation topics that reward you for paying attention to what that character’s likes and dislikes are.
The amount of choice and freedom of how to spend free days is impressive, and there are pros and cons for every option. If you stick with only one option on your days off, you may find your character and team slipping in certain areas. By exploring the monastery, I was able to chat with students to unlock support conversations and raise motivations, as well as getting faculty training for my own character. But training up skill levels is nothing without a character’s own experience, and by taking on auxiliary missions I was able to line my pockets and increase unit levels and stats so they could hit harder using the skills they learned from my teaching. Even resting on a day off ensures that students have an increased amount of motivation to raise their skills during the next week’s lessons, which can heavily impact how much they can learn from a week’s session. I found myself changing up my plans from month to month to better prioritize whatever I felt was lacking, and never once felt like I made a wrong turn to where I was unable to continue. If I had chosen to neglect my time at the monastery, I’d likely miss out on some interesting conversations, whereas if I passed over all the side quest battles, I might have missed out some rare loot. Not only does this Fire Emblem have choices that appeal to everyone, it does so in a way that never gets in the way of a continually rewarding sense of progress.
Heroes of Academia
Bonding with your characters and learning more about them via support conversations has become increasingly popular in Fire Emblem games over the years, and to say Three Houses pulls out all the stops to serve that ever-growing demand doesn’t do it justice. The writers and voice actors have done an impeccable job of making each character’s quirks, hopes, and fears seem believable — and having a chance to pick some dialogue options (some answers can even further increase your bond) is a nice touch that made me feel more involved instead of just a bystander.
It also shows admirable restraint: Three Houses has dialed back on concepts like every character being able to become romantically involved with any other character, and the resulting conversations are better and more focused for it. I especially loved seeing the more hostile character interactions, as having units that worked well together in battle but not in the monastery made these relationships feel more nuanced and human. Certain conversations are only available once the war is underway in part two, giving actual weight to the idea that years have passed since the last heartfelt talk.
My only real complaint comes not from the conversations themselves, but the settings they happen in. Instead of putting both characters in a legitimate 3D room for their scenes, they are placed in front of a still image backdrop that’s been warped to create the illusion of a 3D environment, and the results range from distracting to disastrous due to the low resolution of the background. Still, I’m thankful there’s at least a healthy dose of character animations happening to distract from what’s going on behind them.
While the monastery is loaded with an impressive amount of side activities, Fire Emblem is still, at its heart, a turn-based strategy game — if they’re not your cup of tea (sometimes quite literally) you’re able to skip right to the main story mission of the month and automate everything else. I don’t entirely recommend doing so (the amount of story content and activity rewards in exploring the monastery at least once a month should absolutely not be missed), and yet it’s a testament to how much work has gone into making every choice viable in Three Houses. You might be making things harder on yourself by hitting that automation button, but you’ll still find your team adequately skilled and ready to fight at the end of each month.
The amount of story content and activity rewards in exploring the monastery at least once a month should absolutely not be missed.
“
As for the missions themselves, I was really hoping to see more varied main objectives besides the usual “defeat the enemy commander” or “rout the opposing army.” Thankfully, many missions include some interesting side objectives — like racing to the aid of trapped allies or cutting off the escape route of thieves — that rewards you for taking on more risks in a heated battle. While Three Houses provides an assortment of enemies to go up against, the three-way battles between the titular groups are easily some of the standout missions of the bunch, and depict the chaos of battle alarmingly well. One such mission (which you can see an excerpt of in the video below) against the other teams found me trying to avoid antagonizing Claude’s matured group of Golden Deer students to the west while moving the bulk of my units up to hit Edelgard’s Black Eagles forces in the east. Without warning, Claude revealed a horde of mounted reinforcements to my side and behind me before all of them charged straight towards my own character — leaving me just a single turn to find a way to reform my ranks before getting flanked. These particular battles required constant rethinking of strategies to emerge unscathed, not to mention having to kill many characters I once regarded as friends at the monastery.
The story of Three Houses is expertly woven into the world it builds up: one that’s full of political intrigue, deception, and even religious dogma. While part one largely focuses on the mysteries surrounding your own character and their connection to the world and the Church of Seiros, it also sets the groundwork for the transformations of the young leaders set to rule their respective realms. In my first playthrough, I ended up choosing the Blue Lions and aiding the young prince, Dimitri, and I’m extremely glad I did. The way Three Houses reveals darker aspects of Dimitri’s past culminates in a satisfying way, and watching his character arc unfold through the second act was incredibly engaging, down to the way his shouts when performing critical moves reflected his changing personality. I loved how much attention was focused on the relationships between the opposing leaders, Dimitri and Edelgard, in the route I chose, though I did feel like Claude got the short end of the stick in terms of screen time — at least in the Blue Lions path.
Even though your days as a teacher are over in the second part of the story, fate has you returning to the monastery regardless of your chosen path to use as a base of operations during the war, and the lack of new activities for your second year at the monastery felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to keep exploration fresh by the end. That said, seeing my students return all grown up was an especially great moment, as was learning how each of them had to adapt during an age of conflict. Three Houses rarely shys away from the grim realities of war — as many of the opponents you’ll have to face were once students themselves, and the ramifications of fighting former friends is not lost upon your team. An especially somber moment came after a tough battle where one of my units — who I had convinced to join my house five years prior — quietly reflected on how we had just killed her former friend.
It’s safe to say that any expectations I had about how the story progressed through the war were deftly subverted multiple times. While Three Houses has a definite conclusion to the events of the war that dominates part two, it never truly reveals its full hand in a single playthrough. Seeing so many plotlines left unresolved surprised me, even though I found fulfillment in the 20+ story missions I’d completed. But it wasn’t until I started again in New Game+ and joined the Black Eagles that I truly realized how much more complementary story content the other two houses had to offer. I’m still only a little over halfway into my run with the Black Eagles, and I’m already amazed at how much a change in leadership has altered the course of the story. Unlike the routes of Fire Emblem Fates that were two sides of the same coin (and the “can’t we all just get along” extra route), each road taken by the different leaders in Three Houses feels incredibly driven and motivated. These paths may retread some familiar ground in their missions, but the new context and understanding of character motivations, as well as new surprises in some of the maps that are reused make each of the four(!) total routes worth investing in.