Despite the overwhelmingly positive contenܫt I’ve written about Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it is not a perfect game. There are still plenty of problems I could point to, from nitpicky issues like too much map cycling to problems that really irked me, such as how they refused to allow for the possibility of male same-sex relationships in the game (which was a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:serious tragedy for Sylvain and Felix).
But while I had classified the time skip as another one of my nitpicky issues about the game, I did not realize how many people held the view that it was totally unnecessary. In fact, people have speculated that it wasn’t planned to begin with, and that its sole purpose was to have your students be older in the second half of the game so that it wouldn’t be as creepy when you romanced them. While I will admit that an additional five years does seem necessary for Byleth to romance one of their students without it being terribly wrong, that was certainly not the 💛only aspect of the story that was greatly affected.
One of the first problems people have with the existence of the time skip is that it “makes no sense” for Byleth to have been asleep so long. What blows my mind about this is that we’ve already seen Byleth time travel and physically merge with a goddess so far in the game. But the game becomes unrealistic when Byleth falls into a deep sleep for years? I think it’s safe to presume that she had “died,” but the power of the goddess in her prevented an actual death and left her in a mystical c🐓omatose state instead. That sounds about on par with the rest of the plot that we’ve gotten so far, no?
But more than that, once people move past this, a critique is given that, aside from Dimitri, nothing really changes within the five years that Byleth was asleep. Almost immediately, you are reunited with all the same characters who have slightly different appearances, but for all intents and purposes, have the same views and personalities. Additionally, the world circumstances are basically “still the same,” as the conflict between Edelgard ꦉandᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ the church has yet to be resolved since the battle five years ago.
To start, this made me wonder if the people who hold these views had actually played the same game as me. Numerous characters changed over the years, even if we take Dimitri out of the equation. To start, Dorothea started as a cheerful, happy person and transformed into another person entirely by the time you reach post-time skip. After these five years, the war has clearly taken a toll on her, as she makes it clear how terribly unhappy she is with all the fighting. The game portrays this perfectly in subtle ways (not just support conversations) by changing the combat dialogue for each character in the second half of the game. Even Sylvain has a shocking change to “burn until we meet again” in his combat dialogue post-time skip. But also, characters who don’t show a drastic personality change clearly demonstrate maturity in comparison to the first half of the game. Bernadetta, Marianne, Lysithea, and Annette have all matured in obvious ways from where they started, which is clear in their dialogue both in and our of support conv💫ersations.
But perhaps more important than any of that is the fact that Dimitri would not have undergone the changes that he did without the time skip, and Edelgard wouldn’t have the empire that she does. By the time B🦩yleth comes back around, the Empire has already started to bleed into Kingdom and Alliance territory. It was made clear that fighting had been ongoing for years, and Byleth is rejoining when things are coming to an end. If the time skip didn’t happen, it would be incredibly unrealistic for this war to conclude within the game. Realistically, wars take years. If they tried to sell me that all of Fódlan was at war but we resolved it within a month (or even several months), that would have completely tanked the believability of the story. Not to mention, it would be difficult to buy personality changes in the characters, which added depth to the support conversations and relationships in the game.
Honestly the worst part about the time skip was not that it was unnecessary, it’s that it didn’t really feel like a time skip to you/Byleth. You are instantly rewarded with the return of your whole team within ꦓa single chapter, and you don’t have to work to get any of them back. You also don’t have to work to make your way back to the monastery. In this way, it pretty much feels like you’re picking up right where you left off last chapter, which could be what contributes to some players feeling like the time skip doesn’t matter. But overall, it is a vital part of the story that adds depth to the plot and acts as a catalyst for character growth.