Obviously, thales got a 15 kill streak which is how he managed to launch the missiles, but hubert has an x ray cheat installed so he can see where thales launches them from.
Please be advised that three houses is a weird one for beginners and is not indicative of the series at large. I hope the next game, if more traditional, wont drive off the newcomers.
@@arkhamlerouge1034 Really should have been Rhea though IMO. She such an intriguing character and honestly and I learned more about her in other routes than in her own route because she isn't there for half the story. How come she isn't the focus of the story where you support the institution she created. She even has two unique classes like the other lords, which seems like such a missed opportunity. At least for me the story of the nabateans and Rhea's backstory is very interesting and exploring her psyche and character in greater detail would've been great IMO. Byleth should never truly be the focus of a whole route.
The javelins of light and the agarthans in general felt kind of like an afterthought, I wish they got into it more, especially in crimson flower since Edel was working with them
It's funny. After the javelins were launched in Chapter 16, there's actually an Auxiliary mission from Jeritza that involves him and Byleth going on a covert mission to destroy an Agarthan base in Alliance territory that is actually rather close to where the Shambhala is. Indicating that Hubert still DID manage to track the missiles. It could be possible that only Hubert managed to track them because he attained enough Agarthan-made weapons and understood enough about their Dark Magic that he could actually start to work on a means to trace them. But I do agree that overall, there needed to be more explanation.
Hubert is known to be very intelligent and not above underhanded tactics so it would not surprise me if he had spies near Fort Merceus to watch the battle and tell him what happened so he could deduce where Shambala is by using basic arithmetic.
Maybe what he traced wasn't the missiles themselves, but the signal that activates them. We see in Shambhala that activating them involves a spell, or a tech-based communication device, so using that signal to trace the Agarthans doesn't seem that plothole-y to me.
Given that I played SS/VW right before CF, I simply assumed that CF Hubert did the same exact thing that he did on SS/VW: namely, tracing the remnants of the javelins of light based to their base at Shamballa.
JoLs are a small part of the larger problem that is the Agarthans. It's confirmed that the Slithers are to blame for LITERALLY EVERY PROBLEM in Fodlan's history, have access to WMDs, and perfom human experiments, and yet are not only expected to believe that Edelgard's plan to ally with them is in any way reasonable, but also that they can be defeated in a single chapter or even off-screen?
There are probably only a few thousand of them at best, so once you get rid of their proxies, assaulting the main base to defeat them isn't so tough. Still, they are frustratingly good at surviving. Also, they were responsible for a lot, but in many cases, they also took advantage of things that they didn't directly cause. Finally, why would they tell El the full truth? They probably have her half-truths that jibed with her general bitterness towards the Goddess, and the Imperial sources likely served to confirm that viewpoint. This definitely makes El look very stupid.
They actually survive and continue to plot uprisings in the epilogue for Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, this is likely due to Claude/Seteth moving too quickly and trying to cut off the head rather than the body. Silthers only become non-threats in Azure Moon and Crimson Flower because in Azure Moon they're fully routed by Dimitri ON ACCIDENT and in the epilogue for Crimson Flower Hubert and Edelgard have a years long war in the shadows against them.
@@friendlyelites In Azure Moon, they also survive for more, and it's only years later that they are routed. As for VW, at least, all that's said in Claude and Byleth's ending is that Imperial remnants lead a revolt against the latter, with nothing said as to whether the Agarthans are or are not involved, though we can guess. Also, Hapi's solo ending remains the same in all non-CF routes.
First of all, I think they took them by surprise. Second of all, I thought I saw somewhere that most Slithers are smart but cannot fight. Also, there aren't many Slithers.
If you want to keep it real, *the only reason Hubert was not able to trace them in Crimson Flower is that they clearly ran out of budget for that route.* It's very obvious this was supposed to be the main route where you fight the Agarthans and learn more about them. They were clearly set up as a later villain throughout the story by Hubert foreshadowing dealing with them, Arundel having a large army of his own and Arundel collecting alliance artifacts. The fact that Arundel never gets revealed as Thales, which is very weird, also points to that. He was supposed to be revealed in that route. Same for Edelgard's shortened lifespan, which is big character detail about her that is also just missing. Personally, I was fully expecting (and looking forward to) them to be the main enemy of the route once Rhea was dealt with exactly because of all the setup. But then it just ended and they died off screen.
@@Magic_Ice Agree. Edelgard and Dimitri have every reason to hate TWISTED, but TWISTED isn't their main enemy. For Dimitri, his main target is Edelgard, and she's rightfully the final boss of his route. For Edelgard, her main rival is Rhea, who makes sense as the final boss of this route. AM had Dimitri kill Cornelia and Arundel along the way. But he never went to Shamballa. Edelgard took out Cornelia, but never killed Arundel, and she never went to Shamballa either. AM and CF both needed a level in between somewhere with Shamballa. But it should not have been the final level on either route. Because Edelgard is still Dimitri's main rival. And Rhea is the same for Edelgard and her story.
Weirdly enough the Shambhala map, according to TCRF, has an unused deployment slot for both Edelgard and Dimitri on it (in the same spot Claude takes on VW), so the evidence suggests that in CF's case at least (and also AM I guess), a Shambhala map *was* considered but the idea never took off beyond that.
Because Fire Emblem is historically and traditionally a medieval fantasy series, and its playing the Final Fantasy card and encroaching on that with sci fi. There is a reason why Final Fantasy was smart about their tech and eventually decided that "hey, sci fi fantasy works, lets just go all in with 7 and onward!", and thats why futuristic final fantasy games work thematically, while Fire Emblem floundered with it in Three Houses and that one chapter of Heroes.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 breath of the wild too, with sheikah stuff. definitely not on the same level as FF but a full-on sci fi zelda would be pretty cool
Honestly, I wouldn't mind Fire Emblem dabbling in more modern tech for a game or two. It could make for an interesting change of pace, given it's not a permanent thing.
I'd agree if they took a more "The world is advancing towards a steampunk-esque industrial revolution" or something. I'm personally not that much of a fan of the "Acient unknown technology is actually super advanced and sci-fi"
@@neog8029 especially if they feel completely out of place as they do in 3H, while Heroes now literally has characters in mech suits shooting bullets yet that feels lot more fitting by comparison thanks to how FEH handles those things.
What i want is more speciphically a mecha Fire Emblem. I feel that, has absurd as it seem, giant robots that fight each other whit beam sword,lances and axes would feel more like fire emblem than modern warfare.
I think including more science and magic in the next fire emblem game would be so cool for new weapon types and character designs. Having more gun like weapons like Briedablik and Grim Brokkr in FEH (wielded by the Summoner and Eitri) would be so cool
I really like Three Houses and part of the fun is that you are left to draw your own conclusions but the “pillars of light “ did seem kinda haphazardly added.
I think when Sothis retaliate they must lost a lot of their plans of the Javalins of light since the New ones lack the raw Power of those that landed in the Valley of Torment
The Valley of Torment was only destroyed 995 years ago at most, given that the diary entries of that one elite call it Ailell Forest, and Nemesis was dead by then.
I'd personally really love to see more videos on your critiques of the literary or worldbuilding aspects to these games. This was a really interesting listen.
To this day I was dumbfounded by the missile, there almost no foreshadowing and comes in the most of random times. I played these chapters late at night and I just wanted to text my older brother to go “WHAT EVEN IS THIS GAME!?”
If they'd just shown the missiles being launched when you assault Shamballa, it would have been fixed. If these are indeed ballistic missiles shot up from a point on the ground and traveling in a ballistic arc, Hubert could have made a guess on their origin based on scout reports around the fort of the missile's angle and direction on landing. Or if they make those circles from the start, he could've had scouts around Fodlan watching the skies around them to find the launch site.
I love this kind of trope honestly. For anyone interested in more stuff like this, Xenogears is excellent. There the equivalent to the Agarthans would be the Solarians.
The Javelins sound like a theortical IRL weapon that involved dropping a metal cylinder from orbit on a target letting the kentic force generated from the drop to destroy the target without explosive materials
This feels like something that could’ve easily solved if two or more details were made consistent: the rings will always appear whenever these missiles are used by forming in Shambala, and Hubert should’ve been given an exclusive portrait to show his exposure or research either by researching an Argarthan weapon or staff he’s been given or have a separate scene where he confirms some head theories. Another idea would be to have Agarthians show interest in Hubert and tried to recruit him for their army, change his model to look more Argarthin when you fight at Embarr during Verdant Wind and Azure Moon.
Nothing can replicate the shock of playing the GD route for this first time and they get bombed/nuked not once, but twice 😭 Whether they’re there for good story reason or not, the GD route is fucking wild
GD was my first run as well. I'd played other Fire Emblem games so I thought I knew what to expect, but the dark tech and harsh dubstep sill surpise smacked me in the face.
@@Luna-celeste Well, agree to disagree then. Because the scenes are exactly the same on SS lol. It's the same exact cutscene at the fort and then at Shamballa. The only difference is that VW randomly has an extra cut scene with Nemesis, which came from nowhere. Why does Nemesis only get resurrected on VW alone when the same situation happened on SS? It's a mystery! xD
The one thing that confuses me is how the javelins supposedly have enough power to turn aillel into a wasteland incapable of healing for 1000+ years but in the cutscenes they don't appear to do nearly that level of damage. Maybe there's a delayed effect or something? Idk.
I'd like to think that whatever magical force that deflected the javelin(s) either boosted their power in some way, or maybe imparted some sort of divine power inadvertently as a result of the force acting
I have my own guess as to why Hubert was able to figure out where Shambala was but is reliant upon a few concepts from the real-world or sci-fi. Okay, okay, here we go. The javelins of light come from a geosynchronous kinetic orbital bombardment satellite located in orbit above Shambala. A kinetic orbital bombardment satellite is a satellite that can drop an object onto the earth below, which thanks to gravity, will hit the ground with enough force to equal a nuke. Geosynchronous simply means an object that is locked in orbit above a single location, moving at just enough speed to match the planet's rotational speed. As a result, all Hubert has to do in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind is to witness Fort Merceus' destruction, see what angle and direction the javelin fell from, and can then find where it is and go down to find Shambala. In addition, given that the javelins lack a form of propulsion, aka no fire coming off the tail end, it would explain how they get to where they want to go with the force needed, also the lack of radiation. The big issue would be finding how high the satellite is, which would require Hubert to know more, and that is where this idea falls apart the hardest. Though it would not be impossible to figure out the height of the satellite without that info, but that would require knowing the javelin's speed and the acceleration rate of gravity, along with maybe the javelin's terminal velocity. I dunno where I went with this, but at least this is what I thought the javelins were at first, given the lack of actual propulsion and the coming from on high deal. This went on for too long. If you read to this part, thanks and I guess tell me what you think of this theory.
They also seem to use magic to target and activate them, and Hubert has access to Dark Magic, the magic that every female student experimented on by the Agarthans has access to. Maybe he also used the magical signatures or whatever to track them.
The Agarthans just need a little more development - their utter disappearance in Azure Moon and their downfall being offscreen in Crimson Flower is totally unsatisfying. So much more could have been done. The sloppy writing around the javelins of light is just another symptom in the syndrome.
their disappearance in azure moon is by design, the story is 100% focused on Edelgard and Dimitri and the Agarthans present in that route only exist to move their story forward. It's also left to the player to realize in Crimson Flower that Arundel was actually Thales in disguise, and then in Verdant Wind to realize that killing Thales triggers the slow death of the organization as a whole. I actually really like how they're done in Azure moon because enough is left for player realization and interpretation so as to not take away from the main story, but theres enough clues in the entire game to realize how they're essentially still eradicated in that route without even being a main threat A lot of this comes down to Azure Moon in general being the better starter route for the game, since it keeps the traditional story and the only major curveball is Edelgard. The ending leaves you wanting to play the other routes to learn the whole story which is a trait that some of the routes (Crimson Flower especially) don't always share
It is unsatisfying because it is a payoff for ignore the truth. In Azure Moon the conflict is very manichean (kingdom vs evil empire) so we ignore them. In Crimson flower we ignore a part of the truth, the payoff is the frustration to fight them offscreen in a cold war. We learn about them only in Silver Snow for understand the Edelgard and Rhea actions, and in Verdant wind were we fight them and their champion Nemesis like a recompense for the Claude quest of truth
@@arkhamlerouge8450 Claude's quest for the truth is a plot aspect tho. We learn the truth about the history of Fodlan, yes. But not the truth about Rhea, Byleth's mother, and Jeralt, for example. In VW, you also don't learn the truth about Edelgard and her history with Dimitri, or about Edelgard suffering at the hands of TWISTED. And in VW, you don't really learn about the tragedy of Duscur either. VW claims to be the route of truth, but it's a pretty mixed bag about what you learned here. Every route is selective about what truth is shared vs kept hidden from the player. You really needed all 4 routes to understand everything. Plus Cindered Shadows too, lmao
@@friendlyelites 100% agree about your assessment of AM. In AM, Edelgard is properly set up as Dimitri's endgame fight. Cornelia and Arundel are meant to be mid game bosses only. Spoilers below for FE4 and FE8: As much as I loved FE4 and FE8, I feel like they did it backwards. In FE4, Seliph wants to end the war and save the continent too. But his personal conflict is with Arvis, the man responsible for killing Sigurd. Yet, this is not the final battle. Instead, Julius and Manfroy are the final battle instead, despite Seliph having less personal stake here than with Arvis. Sure, saving Julia is important too. But the final boss feels way more like a battle for Julia than for Seliph. Loptyr killing her mother and possessing her brother: this gives Julia way more personal emotional connection to Julius. Obviously, Seliph is the half brother to Julius, but he doesn't know Julius personally at all, unlike Julia. In FE8, Lyon is the penultimate boss too. But he's the emotional stake in the conflict with the twins. Yet, the final boss is the demon king, who has absolutely no emotional stake whatever with the twins. Nemesis on VW feels like this example: he has no emotional connection to Claude at all, but he could have been the final boss in SS instead since he's the true enemy for Rhea.
My biggest annoyance with them was how weak their generals were. Sure Thales had Quake Sigma, but aside from that he was just a meh mage. Solon, Cornelia and Kronya didn't even have that. It would have been great if they each had some sort of special ability like Quake Sigma to make the fights less one-sided and more memorable.
7:35 *Alternative theory:* It's also possible that the slitherers simply decided to not use the javelins, because Dimitri's route is the only one where at the time they attack the fort the empire is already soundly defeated on all fronts, which means even killing them at the fort would make no difference anymore. In the other routes the empire actually still has a strong position overall, because they are still deeply into kingdom territory where their main army continues to be (and send reinforcements from) and the church/alliance army piercing through to the capital is the only threat, that if taken out, would put the empire securely on top again.
The javelins are used in all three routes. In Edelgard's route they are used after Arianrhod is taken to silence the member of the slithers that Edelgard had captured while denying the city. In Claude's route they are used to knock out the fort in Empire territory in an effort to eliminate Alliance leadership while they were taking the fort, and then further used to knock out Rhea when she goes dragon mode at Shambala.
That's a good explanation, OP. It also emphasizes why Edelgard is at her most desperate in AM too. In AM, Edelgard has lost everyone. All of the Black Eagles are dead by this point, or they've been recruited into Dimitri's army. Hubert died at Enbarr. The Death Knight died at the fort. Her uncle Arundel was killed at Derdriu. And the remaining TWISTED members immediately retreated from Enbarr if you kill Myson on the final map (he has that super annoying long ranged dark spell). It also explains why, in this desperation, Edelgard is willing to transform into the hegemonic demon beast only in AM too.
13:05 *Hubert is the guy researching the Agarthans. He's also the only one having mastered agarthan magic without being a victim of experimentation by them.* (Jeritza can only barely cast it). Regardless it's not that hard to imagine that Hubert came across something that allowed him to make that job easier. *Also, he has a spy network* that could have also provided intelligence in that regard. Out of all the characters he's definitely the best positioned to be able to do it and he's actively trying to locate them for years. Doesn't seem that implausibe to me that some combination of spying and successfully studying them & their magic to the point of mastering it himself got him what he needed. For example: We know Thales is casting magic in Shamballa to fire the missles. What if Hubert wasn't even the person directly detecting that himself, but one of his agents that he could have spread out through the land, or at places he suspected slitherer activity, for the sole purpose of detecting slitherer magic and one stationed in that territory picked it up and reported it. Or perhaps his research into their technology uncovered tools that could pick it up, which he secretly built. Plenty of ways for him to do it without needing any superpowers.
I agree, the fact that the Empire is allied with TWISTED makes it pretty likely that Hubert could have potential access to some of their research. Even if it's technically extremely limited, just being allowed access would let him slip in and steal what he needs/wants much more easily.
It does not seem unreasonable to theorize that the Magical Targeting Rings that manifest/guide the Javelins, leave behind some magical signature that can be tracked back to a point of origin. My head-canon based on how the Javelins don't seem to be propelled by anything is that once a target is acquired, magic is used to open a portal from Shambhala where the weapons are stored to somewhere almost in outer space above the target where they are simply dropped from orbit using the magic rings as guidance to ensure the weapons hit their target. In my mind, it makes sense that if the Javelins are more of a dark magic weapon rather than a technological weapon, they cannot be spammed in rapid succession. Such a large expenditure of magic, would likely not have been able to be quickly replenished.
It seems like a lot of the Agarthans stuff is less raw high-tech and more just magic and tech mixed together. Like they are advanced no doubt, but it seems more like they've for a lack of a better term, merged the fields of study together. Like, Thales' suicide button is a magic glyph that targeted Shambhala. Case in point, Fodlan mages use thunder spells like its nothing but none think to harness the electricity for anything, except murder. Like, using fire spells to cauterize a wound, or using an ice spell to create ice packs.
The Javelins of Light also serve one other plot function which wasn't mentioned. Simply put, they are there to explain why the protagonists have to retreat back to Gareg Mach in between chapters instead of camping at Fort Merceas, which would have been a lot closer to the front-lines. I suppose they could have made a new map for the fort instead, but having to create a new map, and possibly dropping some of the down-time features (and potential growth opportunities for your units) for one or two chapters doesn't seem like the best use of time and money (though it might have been nice to give the characters a change of scenery).
Retreating back to Garreg Mach to also stay protected from the javelins of light is a great gameplay reason. This allows you to return to have the monastery exploration every single month. But it's a poor story reason IMO. Mainly because why didn't the Agarthans just drop the javelins when all 3 armies fought at Gronder in AM, VW and off screen in SS? Nothing protected the armies at Gronder, after all.
This is a great, thorough look into the Javelins of Light overall. I'd just like to chime in and say that perhaps there really isn't a cooling down period, just the Agarthans wanting to keep some parts of the world intact for their reconquering of the surface. If the Agarthans are close enough to ensuring total victory, or desperate and furious enough, they won't hesitate to use roughly 8+ at once, like with the Shambhala missions.
So glad to see a video on the high tech elements of 3H! Its such a cool thing and one of the reasond why I'd love a prequel/sequel focused on delving more into this side of the world's lore.
For being WMDs, the Javelins are surprisingly weak, not even obliterating all of Merceus and being escapable basically on foot. Calling them nukes is a bit of a misleading meme. Like most Agarthan weapons, they look impressively techy but are actually very weak for what they should be. If you look at the shots of Merceus, it's very unlikely that Aillel could've been glassed by anything less than dozens of them. It's much more likely that they hit a pre-existing fault line and woke up a volcano that was always there. In CF Hubert is definitely lying. He knows that they won't get bombed again because he knows that Thales is the one doing the bombing, so as long as they toe the line and fight the Church, Thales will keep the proverbial launch codes to himself. Another thing about CF is that the lack of visible ways of tracking the Javelins in SS/VW means we don't actually know if Hubert traced them in CF, even if he was taken by surprise and working with a colder trace. He had already expressed that after the war he'd take the Agarthan case entirely on himself while allowing Edelgard to focus on running the Empire, so it's plausible he decided to do the tracking privately and only shared the results after the ending, allowing for stuff like Jeritza's S support being set in Shambhala. But like this video mentioned, all of this relies on headcanon since we know so little.
May just be me, but i dont think its "Rockets" Could easily just be kinetic bombardment instead, like what happened in Call of Duty Ghosts, kinda looks a bit similar to me.
I feel like SS/VW established a precedent for Hubert having the ability to discover Shamballa. In SS/VW, Hubert can trace the javelins of light backwards from their traces/remnants in the air after the destruction of the fort. In CF, it should be even easier for him, given that the javelins of light happened when Hubert and Enbarr are completely "safe" while in SS/VW, Enbarr is the next target. Basically, Hubert has way more time in CF to spend on this, because Hubert is killed immediately in Enbarr with the Death Knight on SS/VW. Which obviously doesn't happen on CF.
It might be more headcanon, but it's possible that the Javelins of Light can have varying payloads. The Agarthans would probably be far more determined to ensure all of Garreg Mach and the surrounding area was destroyed compared to Fort Merceus. Also, the Agarthans might have intended for their Adrestian pawns to slowly march armies back up through the region to attack the rest of Fodlan, which would be harder to do if the area became a second Valley of Torment.
@@nightscout9979 This would be somewhat more credible if not for SS/VW having Thales bomb Shambhala. Given that it was a spiteful send-off to his enemies, Thales would have fired with the highest possible yield, and yet in the end it was barely enough to mortally injure the Immaculate One, and Byleth's army once again managed to escape what should've been WMDs on foot from the middle of a collapsing bunker.
God Verdant Wind was such a trip. Watch a fortress get hit by a Dubstep ICBM and fight some techno-mole people, then wake up Santa from a cryo-pod because he smelled Rhea. This is still Fire Emblem somehow, I love it.
Great video! 👍 I'd love to see both story and character-driven content myself. I tend to forgive or look past problems (somewhat) if a game happens to have a flawed story but great characters generally speaking.
The missles really came out of left field. I remember that I played AM first, and then got shocked when in CF Arhianrod got bombed. Which is all I thought it was at the time. "Oh shi*! TWSITD have hug magic spells that can take out a fort?", is all I thought of it, and then I played SS. Why they went with nukes of all things I don't even know. It was always that one detail I had to push aside because "Are you really telling me that the Agarthans could have just nuked Gronder and ended the war this whole time?". Also, why did the Death Knight suddenly about face after trying to kill us on that same chapter. It was all so nonsensical that I just went "wha?", and it took me out of the story. I like the rule of cool. I especially like it when games like FE put it what is supposed to be advanced technology, but at least make it all fit well cohesively. I feel like it only works in CF and even that is barely as Edelgard just shrugs it off like it wasn't a flipping nuke!
In reference to Death Knight, it's been mentioned by talking to Jeritza that he's essentially obsessed with Byleth and wishes to kill him or die by him, he desperately wants them to live through the war just so they have a final fight with no one interrupting them.
I think ignoring the javelins of light is partially why AM is the best written route tbh. And on CF it's, if anything, worse. Because it lacks the cut scenes from SS/VW, so you don't really get a sense of the scale of the threats of the javelins at all.
There's so much going on in Three Houses that I think an objective analysis of what actually happened along with some opinionated critiques are really useful for the community to take a more focused look at specific aspects of the game, and make for a really interesting video. Definitely a fan of this type of video and would love to see more!
As someone who is writing a 3H fanfiction with a major focus on Shambhala, I have a lot to complain about for this topic. Mainly, as far as plot enemies go: they’re awful. Shambhala, over the course of 3H, possess two weapons of mass destruction (the other WMD being the bioweapon unleashed upon Remire). In a single given story, these two combined weapons are used a maximum of three times. Given they’re trying to fight an annilation war vs the Church of Seiros, shouldn’t at least one of their superweapons be used to “nudge” the war in a more favourable direction? Also of note is their ability to steal the faces of others, which imo could be used as a sower of paranoia (a la Kronya). With all these tools, it is in my opinion they should have been a much more serious threat, but their presence in the story is almost comically weak compared to the amount of damage they could have done.
With regards to the Javelins, chances are that those are lost tech that they can't make more of, and they probably are tied to Thales' life/quintessence. As for the face changing, yes, you are correct, but at the same time, I think it fits that as arrogant magic Nazis, they actually suck at disguising themselves as surface dwellers, with the exception of Solon, and they only really get away with what they do thanks to Fódlan not having a frame of reference for that level of shape shifting magic. Also, their shape shifting shenanigans did quite a lot of damage to Faerghus and Adrestia in the backstory and even in game, even if they probably should have used it more during the war, unless of course, they were trying to actively hide their involvement as much as possible so that in case Edelgard failed,they could still retreat and wait to try again.
It's probably because the Agarthans are unredeemable evil as opposed to Edelgard, Dimitri and Rhea, who are all morally grey characters. The story wanted a more complex battle of morally grey. But it couldn't go all out, thus instead it needed to include the Agarthans. Because with them involved, you keep Edelgard and Rhea as tragic anti villains, and Dimitri as the tragic anti hero. Since the Agarthans caused all their suffering at different times.
The only thing I could think of to explain how they located Shambhala is if the missiles always travelled in straight lines, because they fall down at an arc rather than directly downward With this in mind, if 2+ missiles were ever fired and examined as they fell, you could compare their relative angles and distances to triangulate the base or at least the spot they're fired from Except... this assumes they're fired from somewhere, that they fly in a straight arc like a regular missile, that hubert was able to closely examine the comparative angles of multiple missiles as they fell, and that hubert was able to do trigonometry like that in an era where calculators do not exist (unless the agarthan's got to that but even then that's another two assumptions) Perhaps Hubert should've located their base by personally tracking one of Arundel's "unusual soldiers" assuming they go back to Shambhala
I didn't make the connection of those who slither in the dark's base being called Shambhala and them being referred to as Agarthans presumably being in reference to the idea of a hollow earth until this video. Guess it's a good thing that I've been obsessed with conspiracy theories about Agartha for the past two years now. I have legitimately been watching videos about that stuff constantly, so when I heard you call Cornelia an Agarthan mole, I immediately paused the video and started aimlessly wandering around my house and just nerding out for half an hour.
I remember playing verdant wind as my first play through and getting so hyped about the misses and shambala, but then the advanced tech felt so quickly dismissed it was like “that’s it??” I think they could’ve soon cooler things with these ideas
Could you please do a video on the saints those who bear there crests a compare and contrast. It's fascinating see how similar the saints and the black eagles are to one another and how they differ.
16:01 "Is a concrete answer really necessary, though?" Well, that's the problem: there are no concrete answers in Three Houses, to anything. The writers leave absolutely everything so incredibly vague, especially as it relates to Those Who Slither In The Dark. Either this was intentional, for whatever weird reason, or they put it off to fix later and never did. To be honest, I don't really need concrete answers to where the Agarthan technology comes from. It's totally fine for them to have it in a medieval fantasy game. There are plenty of those kinds of genre-bending games out there that it didn't phase me. I just kind of want to know where the Agarthans themselves come from, and who they are, and why they're attacking, and what their whole deal is. There's nothing in the game about them at all.
The bits we get reveal a lot. They were probably the native humans of Fódlan who Sothis uplifted and gave knowledge to when she touched down several thousand years ago, and afterwards, they eventually got tired of her and the Nabateans' seemingly dominant role and went to war with the Nabateans, who at some point woke Sothis back up again, who then destroyed their civilization and most of Fódlan when defending against their attack. The survivors somehow made it underground with their most important tech and the rest is history. The other non-Agarthans are likely humans who sided with Sothis, migrants who came into the newly empty continent after Sothis revitalized it, or a mixture of both.
I mean when looking in the library in the dlc you see that the church has outright banned many major inventions from the printing press and telescopes to the beginings of gunpowder and refined oils. Quite literally the only reason Fodland is a medieval setting is becuase of the church. Thus the Argatheans being super technologically far ahead makes alot of sense.
@@BlackfangDragon Do you actually take them at their word? They're goddamn fascists, who by definition view their opponents and other groups in general as subhuman. It'd be like taking the Nazis at their word that the Jews, the Slavs, Romani, et al. were actually of an inferior race.
@@BlackfangDragon But unlike in that case, you have a clearly biased source who in any case view the surface dwellers as subhuman. The beasts they were referring to in the Romance of the World's Perdition were probably the Nabateans, and as for the rest of their rhetoric, it has a very racist, supremacist feel to it. Besides, does it really matter who are the "true" humans?
The way I've always seen it is this: In every route but CF Edelgard (and thus Hubert) has a less contentious relationship with TWSITD, since not having Byleth's support means they feel the need to give them more concessions to be able to win the war - this is also why the Empire is doing worse in the war at the start of CF than any other route despite having won the battle of Garreg Mach (ie the Empire having control of Myrrdin and Arianrhod on every route except CF). Being on better terms with TWISTD means Thales trusts them enough to reveal the existence of the Javelins to them, which in turn leads Hubert to develop some sort of magic to be able to track their source when they are fired (and maybe some warning system the Death Knight is privy to) in order to be able to turn on TWSITD once they win the war. In CF having Byleth and the Black Eagles supporting her means Edelgard acts more morally, is less willing to do what TWSITD want her to do, their relationship is worse, the war goes worse, and Thales never tells her about the Javelins, meaning Edelgard and Hubert have no idea about them and are taken by surprise when they're fired on Arianrhod. Is this explicitly said? No, it really isn't. Should it probably have said? Yes, I think. Does the explanation make sense? I think so, yes, and it makes me like the game more.
It might be possible that it took Hubert a while to find where the base is and he couldn't do it right away so it took his time. Or they had a plan to later go into the Javelens in CF and it got scrapped. It's also possible that whey they were writing the letter they either thought that Hubert would be the best person to give it between him or Edelgard or forgot that he had been able to detect this magic before.
Cool to see an analysis video like this. I thought that the high tech stuff was so cool, but felt like they never used/explained it as much as they could have. some things are better left unexplained I guess.
This is an interesting video. Are you planning to do more analysis and critique videos like this. I'm interested in your thoughts on Divine Pulse narratively in 3H
I liked the fact they have the javelins since they are suppose to be an ancient civilization and always thought they maybe didn’t use it as much because maybe they couldn’t craft them anymore (either because off resources or any other reason) but im with you. They should have explained it a bit more since is something that made the arganthans a threat to everyone
I think the most fascinating part about the Javelins of Light (besides me initially being completely oblivious they were missiles at first- Look, we don't get warheads in Nintendo games enough for me to know alright?) is that they continue, and are even potentially the biggest hint of, Fodlan potentially being set after some sort of world akin to ours in technology level, a theory the Shadow Library only helped to support.
My first reaction to seeing the missiles was "There's no way this is real. I must be dreaming" followed by "WHY DO THEY HAVE ICBMs!!! I HAVE SWORDS AND LANCES!!!"
I like the Javelins personally but I agree more care could have been used in there use. I don't even think it'd take much, have it so they have like a motherboard to steer them but with magic, and one survives impact, and that's where Hubert get's his information. It makes his word more trustworthy and gives us at least a hint on how they work.
With each route having a narrative loophole, I strongly believe that Three Houses should do a Revelations route where we gather all the nations of Fodlan on a single banner and redirect all efforts on its true enemy - the Agarthans. Just like how the forces of Nohr and Hoshido unite under Corrin in defiance against the mad god Anankos who instigate conflict on a whim.
I think Hubert was able to detect them because they weren't technological missiles but powerfully magical projectiles. Closer to actual javelins than to missiles. If you look in the cutscene with Rhea destroying the javelins, you get a look at the aft of one. There is no propulsion system there-no exhaust nozzle. So I think the magical rings aren't for tracking but rather the magical energy that guides and propels the javelin. There doesn't necessarily need to be a warhead either, as a solid object moving at reentry speed (evidenced by the aerodynamic heating shown) would vaporize the projectile and make it explosive. Now the javelin could be prefabricated and just propelled by magic, or entirely magical themselves akin to the projectile in the Meteor spell. I would lean to the latter as, just as you mentioned, when Thales uses them against Shambhala they seem to materialize immediately as apposed to something launching from the underground city. Now Hubert's summation that they Javelins of Light can't be used frequently can't be based on much more than an assumption. He knows that those who slither in the dark have limitations, otherwise they would have no need to hide and make use of deceptions to conquer Fodlan and destroy the Church. Magic also has many limitations in Fire Emblem with limited uses on all spells. He no doubt felt how powerful that spell was and assumed it could not be used often. But I can't imagine it was much more than just a hunch.
Hot take, if the Agarthans had any competent strategical leadership, then they'd have easily won, give Travant all those nukes and he'd have easily won from this position.
Actually using those nukes kinda goes againist his intentions(unless he want to feed the thracians on radioactive grain), and threatening to use them woudl just invite the Loptous cult to steal them and use them much more irresponsibly. I don't think they would have helped him much.
@@noukan42 If he were leading instead of Thales, he'd use them and kill everyone who could break the plan, any semi-competent logician would've easily won from the Agarthan position, which makes the plot horrendously stupid. If not losing involves your opponent being a moron then do you really deserve it?
I think that's the point. They're magical Nazis with all that entails. They started out with all the advantages, but through a series of incredibly incompetent decisions plus getting their supply lines cut off, they just fell apart. Fascists like that seem scary, but when in charge, they can be laughably incompetent buffoons. Their main strength is surviving against all odds to then pop up and cause trouble again.
@@MrGksarathy That's an almost perfect parallel. I never thought about it that way, tbh. But does that make AM the Eastern front, and VW/SS the Western front? And what is the Pacific front?
One of the differences between CF Hubert being unaware of the javelins and VW/SM Hubert being prepared ahead of time comes with another difference, Rhea’s capture, which doesnt happen in CF. Makes sense Hubert would try to get info out of her, like the javelins of light, but as for how he traced the javelins, maybe all javelins are located far above Shambhala and when they come striking down it seems as if they suddenly appear from the sky, when in reality the travel distance was covered by the clouds, then again this last bit is just rambling on my part so dont pay too much attention
Also on non crimson flowers routes thoese who slither in the dark and the empire are slightly better terms due to lack of byleth influence on edelgard meaning she relies on them more as shown by the Territory map at the beginning of the timeskip
An excellent video what's your opinion on Byleth losing his Crest but he still can See and communicate with Sothis if be S Rank her in crimson Flower(Creepy considering that sothis is acually Byleth Great Grandmother in a Sense) but Crest or No Crest his Soul is still merged with hers.. but still.... I do agree that Edelgard flaws were never address in Crimson flower it bugs me that many Edelgard Fanataics ignore the fact that the professor has a little to no reason Joining Her... simply put she doesn't do enough to convince the professor to join her.. no matter how much we slicing she is guilty by Association and Even as The flame Emperor she Hires the Bandits to kill Claude and Dimitri... honestly that is a very Reckless plan considering that she need to get herself killed which shows she's not as Logical she makes herself out to be. In a matter of fact Edelgard Knew Kronya was Disguised as Monica..and Worse Dlc Paralouve That Involves Monica Father Happen Before Chaptee where Jeralt Dies... if Anything Edelgard Best Chance To Earn The Professor Trust would Be if She Gave Subtle Hints on who is Disguised or Take Measures In having Monica being Watched She is Potrayed as ambitious.. But Not ambitious enough To Recruit Byleth To her Cause.. if anything it is bad writing because the professors reason for joining her seems to be sentimental at best and Blind Trust..I see No Logic In Byleth on Byleth Giving Someone who would associated With those That Murder His Father.. Keep in Mind This Is The Same Person that did not care if He was Walking To A Trap just to Avenge His Father. I'm just pointing out that it Must be necessary on How Edelgard Could Possibly Earn Byleth Trust to the Point he Would Turn against The Church..Yes Rhea is Shady.. But she has Given him No Real Reason To Turn against her
What they should have done to easily explain how he knows where it came from is say Hubert is high up in TWSITD, so he would know where the base is and have the Javelins be an easy workaround so Edelgard doesn’t know of the position he had gotten (maybe he could have gotten in from his father who could be a higher up of the slithers, and Hubert just inherits the role after his father dies during timeskip.) That would have given a reason for Edelgard to work with the slithers, despite them literally torturing her, and would also explain why the only people who can use dark magic naturally are Hubert, Lysithea, Edelgard and Jeritza, since they all have a connection to the slithers.
Here's an alternative dumb theory: the javelins are actually technology that was created aka weapons of mass destruction that were enhanced by Twisted's magic. Meaning that FE3H is actually a post-apocalyptic game ala Fallout. Thales has the nuclear launch button on him.
For me those javelins are summoned in the sky by magical powers. As Hubert has good experience in teleportation (as we can see when he comes in the Holy Tomb), it didn't surprise me he discovered the location of the starting point of the portal. Even if he doesn't know what the javelins are, the teleportation spell is something he knows. Besides, to explain the differences between the routes : - In CF, he and Edelgard are surprised. Because of Byleth, Arundel and Edelgard cooperation is strained ; Arundel even threatens her. Agarthan are not part of the BE Strike Force, but a different faction. - However in other routes, Edelgard has not the support she needs, Arundel knows he can manipulate her better. As a result, Those Who Slither in the Dark are part of the army (as we can see in chapter 22 of AM for instance, they fight along Edelgard). So Hubert and Death Knight know the javelins will fall. As Hubert prepares for betrayal, he decides to locate their base.
To me, the big failing of the Javalins of Light is their usage in Crimson Flower. Namely that they should've been unleashed upon the Empire and all of Fodlan during the end of that route. If the Slitherers have a practical reason for not wanting to unleash them right away once Rhea is gone, then fair enough. But once it gets to the point of their demise, they should be unleashed. Crimson Flower is the villain route, so it should have a more bitter ending. Yes the victory has you committing the most acts of attrocities, but Edelgard and the Empire suffer the least of any of the four factions in the route where they emerge triumpant. If it were up to me, the Javalins would come down no matter what, and Fodlan would be devastated, but you can minigate the bad outcome with the choices you get during Crimson Flower Sparring Flynn: If you spar Fylnn, she managed to recruit the Wind Caller and the Immovable to the cause of destroying the Slitherers after Rhea's death. While not up to Rhea's power, the two are able to minigate the number of Javalins that fall. For Edelgard, this turns the Nabatains into heroes that she can never touch, while she is known as a demon for killing Fodlan's best defender Sparring Seteth: If Seteth is killed, after Edelgard dies young due to her crests, Byleth is left to essentially do what Rhea did 1000 years ago, but at least this time the Slitherers are truly gone. If Seteth lives, he uses Rhea as a martyr and reinstates the church, managing to restore some form of central power to Fodlan much quicker. He's proven to be much better leader then Rhea or Byleth. Sparring Claude: if Claude is sparred, Almyria sends support to the devastated Fodlan after the final battle, whether Edelgard, Seteth or Byleth is in charge. If he's dead, then Almyria attacks the weakened Fodlan and the country suffers further. If all three are met, Edelgard gets to die knowing she did indeed make Fodlan better by purging the Slitherers and with a compantent sucessor, but has to deal with the frustration of the Church being back and more loved then ever. If none are met then everything descends into total choas.
I think you're overestimating how many they have, how much Thales can take, and also how much they want to destroy Fódlan over conquering the world. If they did what you said, their ambitions for world domination are basically dead. Still, they are definitely idiots, but not in this way.
I really, really wish there were different endings in CF depending on who you killed or spared. Mainly because it's fucking absurd that Edelgard thinks that she can kill Claude, Hilda, Dimitri, Rhea, Seteth and Flayn and somehow still expect to rule Fodlan afterwards. Like, won't Almyra attack you immediately after the war to avenge Claude? Won't Faerghus and Leicester never accept you because you killed their leaders? And the church who are truly devout would have followed Seteth and Flayn, given that they are far less extreme than Rhea was. Yet, Edelgard can kill them all and suffer no consequences, which defies all logic and common sense tbh.
A javelin of light is launched from Shambhala at coordinates (x1, y1) and follows a parabolic trajectory travelling 3 degrees north of west. Its boost phase lasts for 192 seconds, during which time it accelerates at a constant rate of 23 m/second^2. It strikes Arianrhod at coordinates (.54, -.38) at an angle of 76 degrees. Where is Shambhala located? (Assume negligible wind resistance. Remember to show your work for full credit.)
I think the javelins might come down from ancient Agarthan satellites. Hubert was somehow able to detect the (presumably magical) signal sent from Shambala to launch them.
The Javelins of Light and the Slithers are such cool ideas, I loved them from their inception as it was a real breath of fresh air for the series. It's disappointing that both went so underutilized, and maybe even left on the cutting room floor earlier in development. I'd love to hear about the original ideas and intentions for them from an IS or Koei Tecmo employee
I thought they were ICBMs, which do break the atmosphere, but which are launched from Earth. There are even silos around the aboveground of Shambala, I think.
While I agree that's its probably just a plot device, I think there's some parallels to be drawn between Hubs, Lysithea and the Slitherers. Both Hubs and Lysithea (oh and Happi lol) are the only units capable of using dark magic. Lysithea and Happi are both someone who have been experimented on by the Slitherers, and Hubert would have looked into them extensively in preparation for the shadow war he was prepared to wage after Edel's ascension to the throne. So maybe it could be rationalized that the missiles are also dark, Agarthan only, magic, and Hubert, being a proficient caster, was able to track them.
I think that Hubert's thoughts in CF could be explained by deduction. If the Agarthans could use missiles whenever they wanted, wherever they needed, then how could they've lost in ancient times? When Thales unleashed them on the player in the Church Route it seemed more like the last, desperate actions of dying man. One might even conclude he was expending resources that were no longer needed seeing as how you kind of...smote him. I do agree though that the missiles are handled oddly across the different routes.
I agree. Thales/Arundel unleashing the javelins felt like the desperate final acts of a petty and spiteful dying villain. It makes perfect sense as a last ditch desperation attempt to kill his enemies even if he dies in the process too. What makes less sense is that idea that he can use them in CF and in both SS/VW kinda randomly. How he can have that kinda power and not simply nuke Gronder at will when all 3 armies are battling it out? Wouldn't nuking Gronder have been smarter if Thales had that kinda power available to him at all times?
A cool change would have been to make Ailell more "poisonous" rather than full of lava, AKA green-themed rather than red-themed. Functionally nothing would have changed, but it would have been a cool way to imply radiation poisoning due to nuclear fallout.
Yeah, I wish they had made Ailell more radioactive. I mean, we got bits of that with Ailell Pomegranates and the like, but the area felt too safe and not irradiated enough for a thousand year old nuke strike.
Obviously, thales got a 15 kill streak which is how he managed to launch the missiles, but hubert has an x ray cheat installed so he can see where thales launches them from.
not the minecraft xray hacks
Hubert was using Wallhacks to discover his direction and ESP to pin point the place after Thales logged off
🤣
You cracked it wide open
@@M0D776 lmaooook
This was my first Fire Emblem game so having to deal with the “TACTICAL NUKE INCOMING” was definitely an eye opening experience
Please be advised that three houses is a weird one for beginners and is not indicative of the series at large. I hope the next game, if more traditional, wont drive off the newcomers.
Oh I know, I’ve since played FE1 and I already knew about the series, I just wasn’t expecting them to do something like that
@@amateraceon5202 Ahhhh, okay, got it. Jeeze FE1 is almost as much whiplash as three houses lmao.
I won’t lie FE1 might be the single worst gaming experience I’ve ever had
Still wanna play Sacred Stones though
I think Sacred Stones is the best to start with.
3 years later and I'm still mad over the fact that Rhea/Seiros isn't the main Lord in Silver Snow. She'd have been such a cool character.
It is a Byleth route, but he is so underused. Also we learn enough about her in this route
I love Seteth but he is NOT main lord material.
@@sophitiaofhyrule Seteth is more like Gilbert or Hubert in this route.
@@arkhamlerouge1034 Really should have been Rhea though IMO. She such an intriguing character and honestly and I learned more about her in other routes than in her own route because she isn't there for half the story. How come she isn't the focus of the story where you support the institution she created. She even has two unique classes like the other lords, which seems like such a missed opportunity. At least for me the story of the nabateans and Rhea's backstory is very interesting and exploring her psyche and character in greater detail would've been great IMO. Byleth should never truly be the focus of a whole route.
@@sophitiaofhyrule no one is trying to say he is. Original comment just wants more Seiros. I’d have to agree.
The javelins of light and the agarthans in general felt kind of like an afterthought, I wish they got into it more, especially in crimson flower since Edel was working with them
I love how confused they made me on my first VW playthrough. Missiles and dubstep was NOT something I was prepared for
It's funny. After the javelins were launched in Chapter 16, there's actually an Auxiliary mission from Jeritza that involves him and Byleth going on a covert mission to destroy an Agarthan base in Alliance territory that is actually rather close to where the Shambhala is. Indicating that Hubert still DID manage to track the missiles.
It could be possible that only Hubert managed to track them because he attained enough Agarthan-made weapons and understood enough about their Dark Magic that he could actually start to work on a means to trace them.
But I do agree that overall, there needed to be more explanation.
Yeah, if what you say is true, that information should have at least been explained in the story
Yeah I was pretty much gonna make the same comment but you beat me it. I don't see why he thinks CF Hubert didn't track it.
Hubert is known to be very intelligent and not above underhanded tactics so it would not surprise me if he had spies near Fort Merceus to watch the battle and tell him what happened so he could deduce where Shambala is by using basic arithmetic.
Maybe what he traced wasn't the missiles themselves, but the signal that activates them.
We see in Shambhala that activating them involves a spell, or a tech-based communication device, so using that signal to trace the Agarthans doesn't seem that plothole-y to me.
Given that I played SS/VW right before CF, I simply assumed that CF Hubert did the same exact thing that he did on SS/VW: namely, tracing the remnants of the javelins of light based to their base at Shamballa.
JoLs are a small part of the larger problem that is the Agarthans. It's confirmed that the Slithers are to blame for LITERALLY EVERY PROBLEM in Fodlan's history, have access to WMDs, and perfom human experiments, and yet are not only expected to believe that Edelgard's plan to ally with them is in any way reasonable, but also that they can be defeated in a single chapter or even off-screen?
There are probably only a few thousand of them at best, so once you get rid of their proxies, assaulting the main base to defeat them isn't so tough. Still, they are frustratingly good at surviving.
Also, they were responsible for a lot, but in many cases, they also took advantage of things that they didn't directly cause.
Finally, why would they tell El the full truth? They probably have her half-truths that jibed with her general bitterness towards the Goddess, and the Imperial sources likely served to confirm that viewpoint. This definitely makes El look very stupid.
They actually survive and continue to plot uprisings in the epilogue for Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, this is likely due to Claude/Seteth moving too quickly and trying to cut off the head rather than the body. Silthers only become non-threats in Azure Moon and Crimson Flower because in Azure Moon they're fully routed by Dimitri ON ACCIDENT and in the epilogue for Crimson Flower Hubert and Edelgard have a years long war in the shadows against them.
@@friendlyelites In Azure Moon, they also survive for more, and it's only years later that they are routed. As for VW, at least, all that's said in Claude and Byleth's ending is that Imperial remnants lead a revolt against the latter, with nothing said as to whether the Agarthans are or are not involved, though we can guess. Also, Hapi's solo ending remains the same in all non-CF routes.
@@MrGksarathy Also iirc them being dealt with in Azure Moon route only came after the DLC bringing in the new characters.
First of all, I think they took them by surprise. Second of all, I thought I saw somewhere that most Slithers are smart but cannot fight. Also, there aren't many Slithers.
If you want to keep it real, *the only reason Hubert was not able to trace them in Crimson Flower is that they clearly ran out of budget for that route.*
It's very obvious this was supposed to be the main route where you fight the Agarthans and learn more about them. They were clearly set up as a later villain throughout the story by Hubert foreshadowing dealing with them, Arundel having a large army of his own and Arundel collecting alliance artifacts. The fact that Arundel never gets revealed as Thales, which is very weird, also points to that. He was supposed to be revealed in that route. Same for Edelgard's shortened lifespan, which is big character detail about her that is also just missing.
Personally, I was fully expecting (and looking forward to) them to be the main enemy of the route once Rhea was dealt with exactly because of all the setup. But then it just ended and they died off screen.
While I agree with you, I feel like Rhea should be the final boss and the Shambala should be the level after arinrohde.
Wait, Arundel is Thales!!!???
@@sophitiaofhyrule Yeah it took me until near the end of my final three houses playthrough and I slapped my face because of how obvious it was.
@@Magic_Ice
Agree. Edelgard and Dimitri have every reason to hate TWISTED, but TWISTED isn't their main enemy. For Dimitri, his main target is Edelgard, and she's rightfully the final boss of his route. For Edelgard, her main rival is Rhea, who makes sense as the final boss of this route.
AM had Dimitri kill Cornelia and Arundel along the way. But he never went to Shamballa. Edelgard took out Cornelia, but never killed Arundel, and she never went to Shamballa either.
AM and CF both needed a level in between somewhere with Shamballa. But it should not have been the final level on either route. Because Edelgard is still Dimitri's main rival. And Rhea is the same for Edelgard and her story.
Weirdly enough the Shambhala map, according to TCRF, has an unused deployment slot for both Edelgard and Dimitri on it (in the same spot Claude takes on VW), so the evidence suggests that in CF's case at least (and also AM I guess), a Shambhala map *was* considered but the idea never took off beyond that.
Love that you're getting sponsors bro, you love to see it!
I always thought it was weird seeing missiles in fire emblem even more so mechanical looking ones
Because Fire Emblem is historically and traditionally a medieval fantasy series, and its playing the Final Fantasy card and encroaching on that with sci fi. There is a reason why Final Fantasy was smart about their tech and eventually decided that "hey, sci fi fantasy works, lets just go all in with 7 and onward!", and thats why futuristic final fantasy games work thematically, while Fire Emblem floundered with it in Three Houses and that one chapter of Heroes.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 breath of the wild too, with sheikah stuff. definitely not on the same level as FF but a full-on sci fi zelda would be pretty cool
@@AlphaC0re That would be cool, yes, I can see it now...the Master Lightsa- I mean Beam Sword...yeah...
It might seem weird, but I think IS was trying to go for Clarke's Third Law with the Agarthans.
@@weismax33 Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Love that one, even if I probably misquoted it.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind Fire Emblem dabbling in more modern tech for a game or two. It could make for an interesting change of pace, given it's not a permanent thing.
I'd agree if they took a more "The world is advancing towards a steampunk-esque industrial revolution" or something. I'm personally not that much of a fan of the "Acient unknown technology is actually super advanced and sci-fi"
@@neog8029 especially if they feel completely out of place as they do in 3H, while Heroes now literally has characters in mech suits shooting bullets yet that feels lot more fitting by comparison thanks to how FEH handles those things.
What i want is more speciphically a mecha Fire Emblem. I feel that, has absurd as it seem, giant robots that fight each other whit beam sword,lances and axes would feel more like fire emblem than modern warfare.
Yeah, if I wanted Sci-fi Fantasy I would just play Final Fantasy
I think including more science and magic in the next fire emblem game would be so cool for new weapon types and character designs. Having more gun like weapons like Briedablik and Grim Brokkr in FEH (wielded by the Summoner and Eitri) would be so cool
Had a ton of fun working on this topic tbh (also wow I wasn't expecting you to record so fast!).
I really like Three Houses and part of the fun is that you are left to draw your own conclusions but the “pillars of light “ did seem kinda haphazardly added.
It was crazy but I kinda loved him crazy it was.
I think when Sothis retaliate they must lost a lot of their plans of the
Javalins of light since the New ones lack the raw Power of those that landed in the Valley of Torment
The Valley of Torment was only destroyed 995 years ago at most, given that the diary entries of that one elite call it Ailell Forest, and Nemesis was dead by then.
I'd personally really love to see more videos on your critiques of the literary or worldbuilding aspects to these games. This was a really interesting listen.
To this day I was dumbfounded by the missile, there almost no foreshadowing and comes in the most of random times. I played these chapters late at night and I just wanted to text my older brother to go “WHAT EVEN IS THIS GAME!?”
Love to see you're starting to get sponsors, killing it bro
If they'd just shown the missiles being launched when you assault Shamballa, it would have been fixed. If these are indeed ballistic missiles shot up from a point on the ground and traveling in a ballistic arc, Hubert could have made a guess on their origin based on scout reports around the fort of the missile's angle and direction on landing. Or if they make those circles from the start, he could've had scouts around Fodlan watching the skies around them to find the launch site.
I love this kind of trope honestly. For anyone interested in more stuff like this, Xenogears is excellent. There the equivalent to the Agarthans would be the Solarians.
The Javelins sound like a theortical IRL weapon that involved dropping a metal cylinder from orbit on a target letting the kentic force generated from the drop to destroy the target without explosive materials
Except with magic involved. Yeah, they do feel like kinetic missiles or railguns.
This feels like something that could’ve easily solved if two or more details were made consistent: the rings will always appear whenever these missiles are used by forming in Shambala, and Hubert should’ve been given an exclusive portrait to show his exposure or research either by researching an Argarthan weapon or staff he’s been given or have a separate scene where he confirms some head theories. Another idea would be to have Agarthians show interest in Hubert and tried to recruit him for their army, change his model to look more Argarthin when you fight at Embarr during Verdant Wind and Azure Moon.
Nothing can replicate the shock of playing the GD route for this first time and they get bombed/nuked not once, but twice 😭
Whether they’re there for good story reason or not, the GD route is fucking wild
Golden Deer was my first route and when I saw that, i was so hyped. GD for life
GD was my first run as well. I'd played other Fire Emblem games so I thought I knew what to expect, but the dark tech and harsh dubstep sill surpise smacked me in the face.
The same happened in SS tho, so that's not exclusive to VW.
@@l.n.3372 true but my first experience was with GD! I think it has more impact in that route.
@@Luna-celeste
Well, agree to disagree then. Because the scenes are exactly the same on SS lol. It's the same exact cutscene at the fort and then at Shamballa. The only difference is that VW randomly has an extra cut scene with Nemesis, which came from nowhere. Why does Nemesis only get resurrected on VW alone when the same situation happened on SS? It's a mystery! xD
The one thing that confuses me is how the javelins supposedly have enough power to turn aillel into a wasteland incapable of healing for 1000+ years but in the cutscenes they don't appear to do nearly that level of damage. Maybe there's a delayed effect or something? Idk.
Or they just fired a lot of them
I'd like to think that whatever magical force that deflected the javelin(s) either boosted their power in some way, or maybe imparted some sort of divine power inadvertently as a result of the force acting
I have my own guess as to why Hubert was able to figure out where Shambala was but is reliant upon a few concepts from the real-world or sci-fi. Okay, okay, here we go. The javelins of light come from a geosynchronous kinetic orbital bombardment satellite located in orbit above Shambala. A kinetic orbital bombardment satellite is a satellite that can drop an object onto the earth below, which thanks to gravity, will hit the ground with enough force to equal a nuke. Geosynchronous simply means an object that is locked in orbit above a single location, moving at just enough speed to match the planet's rotational speed. As a result, all Hubert has to do in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind is to witness Fort Merceus' destruction, see what angle and direction the javelin fell from, and can then find where it is and go down to find Shambala. In addition, given that the javelins lack a form of propulsion, aka no fire coming off the tail end, it would explain how they get to where they want to go with the force needed, also the lack of radiation. The big issue would be finding how high the satellite is, which would require Hubert to know more, and that is where this idea falls apart the hardest. Though it would not be impossible to figure out the height of the satellite without that info, but that would require knowing the javelin's speed and the acceleration rate of gravity, along with maybe the javelin's terminal velocity. I dunno where I went with this, but at least this is what I thought the javelins were at first, given the lack of actual propulsion and the coming from on high deal. This went on for too long. If you read to this part, thanks and I guess tell me what you think of this theory.
They also seem to use magic to target and activate them, and Hubert has access to Dark Magic, the magic that every female student experimented on by the Agarthans has access to. Maybe he also used the magical signatures or whatever to track them.
The Agarthans just need a little more development - their utter disappearance in Azure Moon and their downfall being offscreen in Crimson Flower is totally unsatisfying. So much more could have been done. The sloppy writing around the javelins of light is just another symptom in the syndrome.
their disappearance in azure moon is by design, the story is 100% focused on Edelgard and Dimitri and the Agarthans present in that route only exist to move their story forward. It's also left to the player to realize in Crimson Flower that Arundel was actually Thales in disguise, and then in Verdant Wind to realize that killing Thales triggers the slow death of the organization as a whole.
I actually really like how they're done in Azure moon because enough is left for player realization and interpretation so as to not take away from the main story, but theres enough clues in the entire game to realize how they're essentially still eradicated in that route without even being a main threat
A lot of this comes down to Azure Moon in general being the better starter route for the game, since it keeps the traditional story and the only major curveball is Edelgard. The ending leaves you wanting to play the other routes to learn the whole story which is a trait that some of the routes (Crimson Flower especially) don't always share
It is unsatisfying because it is a payoff for ignore the truth. In Azure Moon the conflict is very manichean (kingdom vs evil empire) so we ignore them. In Crimson flower we ignore a part of the truth, the payoff is the frustration to fight them offscreen in a cold war. We learn about them only in Silver Snow for understand the Edelgard and Rhea actions, and in Verdant wind were we fight them and their champion Nemesis like a recompense for the Claude quest of truth
@@arkhamlerouge8450
Claude's quest for the truth is a plot aspect tho. We learn the truth about the history of Fodlan, yes. But not the truth about Rhea, Byleth's mother, and Jeralt, for example. In VW, you also don't learn the truth about Edelgard and her history with Dimitri, or about Edelgard suffering at the hands of TWISTED. And in VW, you don't really learn about the tragedy of Duscur either. VW claims to be the route of truth, but it's a pretty mixed bag about what you learned here. Every route is selective about what truth is shared vs kept hidden from the player. You really needed all 4 routes to understand everything. Plus Cindered Shadows too, lmao
@@friendlyelites
100% agree about your assessment of AM. In AM, Edelgard is properly set up as Dimitri's endgame fight. Cornelia and Arundel are meant to be mid game bosses only. Spoilers below for FE4 and FE8:
As much as I loved FE4 and FE8, I feel like they did it backwards. In FE4, Seliph wants to end the war and save the continent too. But his personal conflict is with Arvis, the man responsible for killing Sigurd. Yet, this is not the final battle. Instead, Julius and Manfroy are the final battle instead, despite Seliph having less personal stake here than with Arvis. Sure, saving Julia is important too. But the final boss feels way more like a battle for Julia than for Seliph. Loptyr killing her mother and possessing her brother: this gives Julia way more personal emotional connection to Julius. Obviously, Seliph is the half brother to Julius, but he doesn't know Julius personally at all, unlike Julia.
In FE8, Lyon is the penultimate boss too. But he's the emotional stake in the conflict with the twins. Yet, the final boss is the demon king, who has absolutely no emotional stake whatever with the twins. Nemesis on VW feels like this example: he has no emotional connection to Claude at all, but he could have been the final boss in SS instead since he's the true enemy for Rhea.
My biggest annoyance with them was how weak their generals were. Sure Thales had Quake Sigma, but aside from that he was just a meh mage. Solon, Cornelia and Kronya didn't even have that. It would have been great if they each had some sort of special ability like Quake Sigma to make the fights less one-sided and more memorable.
7:35 *Alternative theory:* It's also possible that the slitherers simply decided to not use the javelins, because Dimitri's route is the only one where at the time they attack the fort the empire is already soundly defeated on all fronts, which means even killing them at the fort would make no difference anymore. In the other routes the empire actually still has a strong position overall, because they are still deeply into kingdom territory where their main army continues to be (and send reinforcements from) and the church/alliance army piercing through to the capital is the only threat, that if taken out, would put the empire securely on top again.
The javelins are used in all three routes. In Edelgard's route they are used after Arianrhod is taken to silence the member of the slithers that Edelgard had captured while denying the city. In Claude's route they are used to knock out the fort in Empire territory in an effort to eliminate Alliance leadership while they were taking the fort, and then further used to knock out Rhea when she goes dragon mode at Shambala.
@@TankHunter678
OP is talking about AM, not about CF or SS/VW.
That's a good explanation, OP. It also emphasizes why Edelgard is at her most desperate in AM too. In AM, Edelgard has lost everyone. All of the Black Eagles are dead by this point, or they've been recruited into Dimitri's army. Hubert died at Enbarr. The Death Knight died at the fort. Her uncle Arundel was killed at Derdriu. And the remaining TWISTED members immediately retreated from Enbarr if you kill Myson on the final map (he has that super annoying long ranged dark spell). It also explains why, in this desperation, Edelgard is willing to transform into the hegemonic demon beast only in AM too.
13:05 *Hubert is the guy researching the Agarthans. He's also the only one having mastered agarthan magic without being a victim of experimentation by them.* (Jeritza can only barely cast it). Regardless it's not that hard to imagine that Hubert came across something that allowed him to make that job easier. *Also, he has a spy network* that could have also provided intelligence in that regard. Out of all the characters he's definitely the best positioned to be able to do it and he's actively trying to locate them for years.
Doesn't seem that implausibe to me that some combination of spying and successfully studying them & their magic to the point of mastering it himself got him what he needed.
For example: We know Thales is casting magic in Shamballa to fire the missles. What if Hubert wasn't even the person directly detecting that himself, but one of his agents that he could have spread out through the land, or at places he suspected slitherer activity, for the sole purpose of detecting slitherer magic and one stationed in that territory picked it up and reported it.
Or perhaps his research into their technology uncovered tools that could pick it up, which he secretly built.
Plenty of ways for him to do it without needing any superpowers.
I agree, the fact that the Empire is allied with TWISTED makes it pretty likely that Hubert could have potential access to some of their research. Even if it's technically extremely limited, just being allowed access would let him slip in and steal what he needs/wants much more easily.
As someone who is fascinated by the Agarthans, thank you so much for making this video!
This was really cool can’t wait for the Claude bio:)
Fun lore video! Would enjoy a video about the scientific discoveries mentioned in Abyss that Rhea and the church made sure to hide away or destroy.
It does not seem unreasonable to theorize that the Magical Targeting Rings that manifest/guide the Javelins, leave behind some magical signature that can be tracked back to a point of origin. My head-canon based on how the Javelins don't seem to be propelled by anything is that once a target is acquired, magic is used to open a portal from Shambhala where the weapons are stored to somewhere almost in outer space above the target where they are simply dropped from orbit using the magic rings as guidance to ensure the weapons hit their target.
In my mind, it makes sense that if the Javelins are more of a dark magic weapon rather than a technological weapon, they cannot be spammed in rapid succession. Such a large expenditure of magic, would likely not have been able to be quickly replenished.
It seems like a lot of the Agarthans stuff is less raw high-tech and more just magic and tech mixed together. Like they are advanced no doubt, but it seems more like they've for a lack of a better term, merged the fields of study together. Like, Thales' suicide button is a magic glyph that targeted Shambhala. Case in point, Fodlan mages use thunder spells like its nothing but none think to harness the electricity for anything, except murder. Like, using fire spells to cauterize a wound, or using an ice spell to create ice packs.
So in essence, the Javelins are a magical version of Rods from God? Interesting.
The Javelins of Light also serve one other plot function which wasn't mentioned. Simply put, they are there to explain why the protagonists have to retreat back to Gareg Mach in between chapters instead of camping at Fort Merceas, which would have been a lot closer to the front-lines. I suppose they could have made a new map for the fort instead, but having to create a new map, and possibly dropping some of the down-time features (and potential growth opportunities for your units) for one or two chapters doesn't seem like the best use of time and money (though it might have been nice to give the characters a change of scenery).
Retreating back to Garreg Mach to also stay protected from the javelins of light is a great gameplay reason. This allows you to return to have the monastery exploration every single month. But it's a poor story reason IMO. Mainly because why didn't the Agarthans just drop the javelins when all 3 armies fought at Gronder in AM, VW and off screen in SS? Nothing protected the armies at Gronder, after all.
This is a great, thorough look into the Javelins of Light overall. I'd just like to chime in and say that perhaps there really isn't a cooling down period, just the Agarthans wanting to keep some parts of the world intact for their reconquering of the surface. If the Agarthans are close enough to ensuring total victory, or desperate and furious enough, they won't hesitate to use roughly 8+ at once, like with the Shambhala missions.
So glad to see a video on the high tech elements of 3H! Its such a cool thing and one of the reasond why I'd love a prequel/sequel focused on delving more into this side of the world's lore.
For being WMDs, the Javelins are surprisingly weak, not even obliterating all of Merceus and being escapable basically on foot. Calling them nukes is a bit of a misleading meme. Like most Agarthan weapons, they look impressively techy but are actually very weak for what they should be. If you look at the shots of Merceus, it's very unlikely that Aillel could've been glassed by anything less than dozens of them. It's much more likely that they hit a pre-existing fault line and woke up a volcano that was always there.
In CF Hubert is definitely lying. He knows that they won't get bombed again because he knows that Thales is the one doing the bombing, so as long as they toe the line and fight the Church, Thales will keep the proverbial launch codes to himself.
Another thing about CF is that the lack of visible ways of tracking the Javelins in SS/VW means we don't actually know if Hubert traced them in CF, even if he was taken by surprise and working with a colder trace. He had already expressed that after the war he'd take the Agarthan case entirely on himself while allowing Edelgard to focus on running the Empire, so it's plausible he decided to do the tracking privately and only shared the results after the ending, allowing for stuff like Jeritza's S support being set in Shambhala. But like this video mentioned, all of this relies on headcanon since we know so little.
You're right, the real tactical nuke is Lysithea
May just be me, but i dont think its "Rockets"
Could easily just be kinetic bombardment instead, like what happened in Call of Duty Ghosts, kinda looks a bit similar to me.
I feel like SS/VW established a precedent for Hubert having the ability to discover Shamballa. In SS/VW, Hubert can trace the javelins of light backwards from their traces/remnants in the air after the destruction of the fort. In CF, it should be even easier for him, given that the javelins of light happened when Hubert and Enbarr are completely "safe" while in SS/VW, Enbarr is the next target. Basically, Hubert has way more time in CF to spend on this, because Hubert is killed immediately in Enbarr with the Death Knight on SS/VW. Which obviously doesn't happen on CF.
It might be more headcanon, but it's possible that the Javelins of Light can have varying payloads. The Agarthans would probably be far more determined to ensure all of Garreg Mach and the surrounding area was destroyed compared to Fort Merceus. Also, the Agarthans might have intended for their Adrestian pawns to slowly march armies back up through the region to attack the rest of Fodlan, which would be harder to do if the area became a second Valley of Torment.
@@nightscout9979 This would be somewhat more credible if not for SS/VW having Thales bomb Shambhala. Given that it was a spiteful send-off to his enemies, Thales would have fired with the highest possible yield, and yet in the end it was barely enough to mortally injure the Immaculate One, and Byleth's army once again managed to escape what should've been WMDs on foot from the middle of a collapsing bunker.
Very well done, was very enjoyable to watch! More videos like these please but dont stress yourself with the deadlines!
God Verdant Wind was such a trip. Watch a fortress get hit by a Dubstep ICBM and fight some techno-mole people, then wake up Santa from a cryo-pod because he smelled Rhea. This is still Fire Emblem somehow, I love it.
man your audio is crisp, i need to take notes 😩
I enjoyed this analysis quite a bit. Would love to see more like it!
I literally just got to the part in Verdant Wind where the javelins of light hit Fort Merceus, so this timing is perfect.
I remember my reaction when I saw those things.
I was like:
OMG, A NUKE.
Great video! 👍
I'd love to see both story and character-driven content myself. I tend to forgive or look past problems (somewhat) if a game happens to have a flawed story but great characters generally speaking.
Finally! Someone talks about this in depth.
The missles really came out of left field. I remember that I played AM first, and then got shocked when in CF Arhianrod got bombed. Which is all I thought it was at the time. "Oh shi*! TWSITD have hug magic spells that can take out a fort?", is all I thought of it, and then I played SS. Why they went with nukes of all things I don't even know. It was always that one detail I had to push aside because "Are you really telling me that the Agarthans could have just nuked Gronder and ended the war this whole time?". Also, why did the Death Knight suddenly about face after trying to kill us on that same chapter. It was all so nonsensical that I just went "wha?", and it took me out of the story. I like the rule of cool. I especially like it when games like FE put it what is supposed to be advanced technology, but at least make it all fit well cohesively. I feel like it only works in CF and even that is barely as Edelgard just shrugs it off like it wasn't a flipping nuke!
In reference to Death Knight, it's been mentioned by talking to Jeritza that he's essentially obsessed with Byleth and wishes to kill him or die by him, he desperately wants them to live through the war just so they have a final fight with no one interrupting them.
I think ignoring the javelins of light is partially why AM is the best written route tbh. And on CF it's, if anything, worse. Because it lacks the cut scenes from SS/VW, so you don't really get a sense of the scale of the threats of the javelins at all.
There's so much going on in Three Houses that I think an objective analysis of what actually happened along with some opinionated critiques are really useful for the community to take a more focused look at specific aspects of the game, and make for a really interesting video. Definitely a fan of this type of video and would love to see more!
As someone who is writing a 3H fanfiction with a major focus on Shambhala, I have a lot to complain about for this topic.
Mainly, as far as plot enemies go: they’re awful.
Shambhala, over the course of 3H, possess two weapons of mass destruction (the other WMD being the bioweapon unleashed upon Remire). In a single given story, these two combined weapons are used a maximum of three times. Given they’re trying to fight an annilation war vs the Church of Seiros, shouldn’t at least one of their superweapons be used to “nudge” the war in a more favourable direction?
Also of note is their ability to steal the faces of others, which imo could be used as a sower of paranoia (a la Kronya).
With all these tools, it is in my opinion they should have been a much more serious threat, but their presence in the story is almost comically weak compared to the amount of damage they could have done.
With regards to the Javelins, chances are that those are lost tech that they can't make more of, and they probably are tied to Thales' life/quintessence. As for the face changing, yes, you are correct, but at the same time, I think it fits that as arrogant magic Nazis, they actually suck at disguising themselves as surface dwellers, with the exception of Solon, and they only really get away with what they do thanks to Fódlan not having a frame of reference for that level of shape shifting magic. Also, their shape shifting shenanigans did quite a lot of damage to Faerghus and Adrestia in the backstory and even in game, even if they probably should have used it more during the war, unless of course, they were trying to actively hide their involvement as much as possible so that in case Edelgard failed,they could still retreat and wait to try again.
It's probably because the Agarthans are unredeemable evil as opposed to Edelgard, Dimitri and Rhea, who are all morally grey characters. The story wanted a more complex battle of morally grey. But it couldn't go all out, thus instead it needed to include the Agarthans. Because with them involved, you keep Edelgard and Rhea as tragic anti villains, and Dimitri as the tragic anti hero. Since the Agarthans caused all their suffering at different times.
The only thing I could think of to explain how they located Shambhala is if the missiles always travelled in straight lines, because they fall down at an arc rather than directly downward
With this in mind, if 2+ missiles were ever fired and examined as they fell, you could compare their relative angles and distances to triangulate the base or at least the spot they're fired from
Except... this assumes they're fired from somewhere, that they fly in a straight arc like a regular missile, that hubert was able to closely examine the comparative angles of multiple missiles as they fell, and that hubert was able to do trigonometry like that in an era where calculators do not exist (unless the agarthan's got to that but even then that's another two assumptions)
Perhaps Hubert should've located their base by personally tracking one of Arundel's "unusual soldiers" assuming they go back to Shambhala
I didn't make the connection of those who slither in the dark's base being called Shambhala and them being referred to as Agarthans presumably being in reference to the idea of a hollow earth until this video. Guess it's a good thing that I've been obsessed with conspiracy theories about Agartha for the past two years now. I have legitimately been watching videos about that stuff constantly, so when I heard you call Cornelia an Agarthan mole, I immediately paused the video and started aimlessly wandering around my house and just nerding out for half an hour.
I remember playing verdant wind as my first play through and getting so hyped about the misses and shambala, but then the advanced tech felt so quickly dismissed it was like “that’s it??” I think they could’ve soon cooler things with these ideas
Could you please do a video on the saints those who bear there crests a compare and contrast. It's fascinating see how similar the saints and the black eagles are to one another and how they differ.
16:01 "Is a concrete answer really necessary, though?" Well, that's the problem: there are no concrete answers in Three Houses, to anything. The writers leave absolutely everything so incredibly vague, especially as it relates to Those Who Slither In The Dark. Either this was intentional, for whatever weird reason, or they put it off to fix later and never did. To be honest, I don't really need concrete answers to where the Agarthan technology comes from. It's totally fine for them to have it in a medieval fantasy game. There are plenty of those kinds of genre-bending games out there that it didn't phase me. I just kind of want to know where the Agarthans themselves come from, and who they are, and why they're attacking, and what their whole deal is. There's nothing in the game about them at all.
The bits we get reveal a lot. They were probably the native humans of Fódlan who Sothis uplifted and gave knowledge to when she touched down several thousand years ago, and afterwards, they eventually got tired of her and the Nabateans' seemingly dominant role and went to war with the Nabateans, who at some point woke Sothis back up again, who then destroyed their civilization and most of Fódlan when defending against their attack. The survivors somehow made it underground with their most important tech and the rest is history.
The other non-Agarthans are likely humans who sided with Sothis, migrants who came into the newly empty continent after Sothis revitalized it, or a mixture of both.
I mean when looking in the library in the dlc you see that the church has outright banned many major inventions from the printing press and telescopes to the beginings of gunpowder and refined oils. Quite literally the only reason Fodland is a medieval setting is becuase of the church. Thus the Argatheans being super technologically far ahead makes alot of sense.
@@joelsasmad I don't think all of them were banned at the same point in time, nor did Rhea keep the bans on all of them, but the point still stands.
@@BlackfangDragon Do you actually take them at their word? They're goddamn fascists, who by definition view their opponents and other groups in general as subhuman. It'd be like taking the Nazis at their word that the Jews, the Slavs, Romani, et al. were actually of an inferior race.
@@BlackfangDragon But unlike in that case, you have a clearly biased source who in any case view the surface dwellers as subhuman. The beasts they were referring to in the Romance of the World's Perdition were probably the Nabateans, and as for the rest of their rhetoric, it has a very racist, supremacist feel to it. Besides, does it really matter who are the "true" humans?
4:44 That last part is unconfirmed. Her fate is ambiguous.
The way I've always seen it is this: In every route but CF Edelgard (and thus Hubert) has a less contentious relationship with TWSITD, since not having Byleth's support means they feel the need to give them more concessions to be able to win the war - this is also why the Empire is doing worse in the war at the start of CF than any other route despite having won the battle of Garreg Mach (ie the Empire having control of Myrrdin and Arianrhod on every route except CF).
Being on better terms with TWISTD means Thales trusts them enough to reveal the existence of the Javelins to them, which in turn leads Hubert to develop some sort of magic to be able to track their source when they are fired (and maybe some warning system the Death Knight is privy to) in order to be able to turn on TWSITD once they win the war. In CF having Byleth and the Black Eagles supporting her means Edelgard acts more morally, is less willing to do what TWSITD want her to do, their relationship is worse, the war goes worse, and Thales never tells her about the Javelins, meaning Edelgard and Hubert have no idea about them and are taken by surprise when they're fired on Arianrhod.
Is this explicitly said? No, it really isn't. Should it probably have said? Yes, I think. Does the explanation make sense? I think so, yes, and it makes me like the game more.
I love your videos! Tanks for the good works ! Take care of you
It might be possible that it took Hubert a while to find where the base is and he couldn't do it right away so it took his time. Or they had a plan to later go into the Javelens in CF and it got scrapped. It's also possible that whey they were writing the letter they either thought that Hubert would be the best person to give it between him or Edelgard or forgot that he had been able to detect this magic before.
Comment for the algorithm! keep up the good content man :) peace and love
Cool to see an analysis video like this. I thought that the high tech stuff was so cool, but felt like they never used/explained it as much as they could have. some things are better left unexplained I guess.
Congratulations on getting sponsored. You deserve it the content is really good. Nice promo btw. When is the randomizer coming back
This is an interesting video. Are you planning to do more analysis and critique videos like this. I'm interested in your thoughts on Divine Pulse narratively in 3H
Videos like this make me hope they revisit Fodlan in a new game some day. They did a (mostly) great job world building.
With how those things were handled in game it felt like they were thrown in there out of nowhere for dramatic effect
I liked the fact they have the javelins since they are suppose to be an ancient civilization and always thought they maybe didn’t use it as much because maybe they couldn’t craft them anymore (either because off resources or any other reason) but im with you. They should have explained it a bit more since is something that made the arganthans a threat to everyone
Saw your tharja video a while back. Meant to subscribe. Didnt. Just found you again just now. Blessed and subbed
I think the most fascinating part about the Javelins of Light (besides me initially being completely oblivious they were missiles at first- Look, we don't get warheads in Nintendo games enough for me to know alright?) is that they continue, and are even potentially the biggest hint of, Fodlan potentially being set after some sort of world akin to ours in technology level, a theory the Shadow Library only helped to support.
My first reaction to seeing the missiles was "There's no way this is real. I must be dreaming" followed by "WHY DO THEY HAVE ICBMs!!! I HAVE SWORDS AND LANCES!!!"
I like the Javelins personally but I agree more care could have been used in there use. I don't even think it'd take much, have it so they have like a motherboard to steer them but with magic, and one survives impact, and that's where Hubert get's his information. It makes his word more trustworthy and gives us at least a hint on how they work.
Javelins of light for CYL 6
The year just started and ghast is already popping off lel
Good to see Ghast doing well.
Big magic missle = Big magic power. Fire Big magic missle, use lots of power. Track large energy spike, track source of Big magic missle.
Maybe Hubert could sense the magic being activated in Shambala or something like that.
I guess I assumed they are launched from the ground somewhere, didn't think about this that deeply.
The only route i finished was crimson flower, so i didn't really know anything about the javelins of light before this
With each route having a narrative loophole, I strongly believe that Three Houses should do a Revelations route where we gather all the nations of Fodlan on a single banner and redirect all efforts on its true enemy - the Agarthans. Just like how the forces of Nohr and Hoshido unite under Corrin in defiance against the mad god Anankos who instigate conflict on a whim.
No, that defeats the entire point of 3h, that there is no optimal path and all the paths could be canon.
I think Hubert was able to detect them because they weren't technological missiles but powerfully magical projectiles. Closer to actual javelins than to missiles. If you look in the cutscene with Rhea destroying the javelins, you get a look at the aft of one. There is no propulsion system there-no exhaust nozzle. So I think the magical rings aren't for tracking but rather the magical energy that guides and propels the javelin. There doesn't necessarily need to be a warhead either, as a solid object moving at reentry speed (evidenced by the aerodynamic heating shown) would vaporize the projectile and make it explosive. Now the javelin could be prefabricated and just propelled by magic, or entirely magical themselves akin to the projectile in the Meteor spell. I would lean to the latter as, just as you mentioned, when Thales uses them against Shambhala they seem to materialize immediately as apposed to something launching from the underground city.
Now Hubert's summation that they Javelins of Light can't be used frequently can't be based on much more than an assumption. He knows that those who slither in the dark have limitations, otherwise they would have no need to hide and make use of deceptions to conquer Fodlan and destroy the Church. Magic also has many limitations in Fire Emblem with limited uses on all spells. He no doubt felt how powerful that spell was and assumed it could not be used often. But I can't imagine it was much more than just a hunch.
Great video, by the way. I love things like this.
Hot take, if the Agarthans had any competent strategical leadership, then they'd have easily won, give Travant all those nukes and he'd have easily won from this position.
Actually using those nukes kinda goes againist his intentions(unless he want to feed the thracians on radioactive grain), and threatening to use them woudl just invite the Loptous cult to steal them and use them much more irresponsibly. I don't think they would have helped him much.
@@noukan42 If he were leading instead of Thales, he'd use them and kill everyone who could break the plan, any semi-competent logician would've easily won from the Agarthan position, which makes the plot horrendously stupid. If not losing involves your opponent being a moron then do you really deserve it?
I think that's the point. They're magical Nazis with all that entails. They started out with all the advantages, but through a series of incredibly incompetent decisions plus getting their supply lines cut off, they just fell apart.
Fascists like that seem scary, but when in charge, they can be laughably incompetent buffoons.
Their main strength is surviving against all odds to then pop up and cause trouble again.
@@MrGksarathy
That's an almost perfect parallel. I never thought about it that way, tbh. But does that make AM the Eastern front, and VW/SS the Western front? And what is the Pacific front?
It feels like the Agarthans are a weird combination of the Loptyr cult and generic evil bad guys. But with more technology lol
One of the differences between CF Hubert being unaware of the javelins and VW/SM Hubert being prepared ahead of time comes with another difference, Rhea’s capture, which doesnt happen in CF. Makes sense Hubert would try to get info out of her, like the javelins of light, but as for how he traced the javelins, maybe all javelins are located far above Shambhala and when they come striking down it seems as if they suddenly appear from the sky, when in reality the travel distance was covered by the clouds, then again this last bit is just rambling on my part so dont pay too much attention
Also on non crimson flowers routes thoese who slither in the dark and the empire are slightly better terms due to lack of byleth influence on edelgard meaning she relies on them more as shown by the Territory map at the beginning of the timeskip
An excellent video what's your opinion on Byleth losing his Crest but he still can See and communicate with Sothis if be S Rank her in crimson Flower(Creepy considering that sothis is acually Byleth Great Grandmother in a Sense) but Crest or No Crest his Soul is still merged with hers.. but still....
I do agree that Edelgard flaws were never address in Crimson flower it bugs me that many Edelgard Fanataics ignore the fact that the professor has a little to no reason Joining Her... simply put she doesn't do enough to convince the professor to join her.. no matter how much we slicing she is guilty by Association and Even as The flame Emperor she Hires the Bandits to kill Claude and Dimitri... honestly that is a very Reckless plan considering that she need to get herself killed which shows she's not as Logical she makes herself out to be.
In a matter of fact Edelgard Knew Kronya was Disguised as Monica..and Worse Dlc Paralouve That Involves Monica Father Happen Before Chaptee where Jeralt Dies... if Anything Edelgard Best Chance To Earn The Professor Trust would Be if She Gave Subtle Hints on who is Disguised or Take Measures In having Monica being Watched
She is Potrayed as ambitious.. But Not ambitious enough To Recruit Byleth To her Cause.. if anything it is bad writing because the professors reason for joining her seems to be sentimental at best and Blind Trust..I see No Logic In Byleth on Byleth Giving Someone who would associated With those That Murder His Father.. Keep in Mind This Is The Same Person that did not care if He was Walking To A Trap just to Avenge His Father.
I'm just pointing out that it Must be necessary on How Edelgard Could Possibly Earn Byleth Trust to the Point he Would Turn against The Church..Yes Rhea is Shady.. But she has Given him No Real Reason To Turn against her
What they should have done to easily explain how he knows where it came from is say Hubert is high up in TWSITD, so he would know where the base is and have the Javelins be an easy workaround so Edelgard doesn’t know of the position he had gotten (maybe he could have gotten in from his father who could be a higher up of the slithers, and Hubert just inherits the role after his father dies during timeskip.) That would have given a reason for Edelgard to work with the slithers, despite them literally torturing her, and would also explain why the only people who can use dark magic naturally are Hubert, Lysithea, Edelgard and Jeritza, since they all have a connection to the slithers.
i love your channel so much!!! please make more videos like this
we still could get a fire emblem that plays at the time of sothis and the argathans fighting where we learn more about that, who knows
Here's an alternative dumb theory: the javelins are actually technology that was created aka weapons of mass destruction that were enhanced by Twisted's magic. Meaning that FE3H is actually a post-apocalyptic game ala Fallout. Thales has the nuclear launch button on him.
For me those javelins are summoned in the sky by magical powers. As Hubert has good experience in teleportation (as we can see when he comes in the Holy Tomb), it didn't surprise me he discovered the location of the starting point of the portal. Even if he doesn't know what the javelins are, the teleportation spell is something he knows.
Besides, to explain the differences between the routes :
- In CF, he and Edelgard are surprised. Because of Byleth, Arundel and Edelgard cooperation is strained ; Arundel even threatens her. Agarthan are not part of the BE Strike Force, but a different faction.
- However in other routes, Edelgard has not the support she needs, Arundel knows he can manipulate her better. As a result, Those Who Slither in the Dark are part of the army (as we can see in chapter 22 of AM for instance, they fight along Edelgard). So Hubert and Death Knight know the javelins will fall. As Hubert prepares for betrayal, he decides to locate their base.
To me, the big failing of the Javalins of Light is their usage in Crimson Flower. Namely that they should've been unleashed upon the Empire and all of Fodlan during the end of that route.
If the Slitherers have a practical reason for not wanting to unleash them right away once Rhea is gone, then fair enough. But once it gets to the point of their demise, they should be unleashed.
Crimson Flower is the villain route, so it should have a more bitter ending. Yes the victory has you committing the most acts of attrocities, but Edelgard and the Empire suffer the least of any of the four factions in the route where they emerge triumpant.
If it were up to me, the Javalins would come down no matter what, and Fodlan would be devastated, but you can minigate the bad outcome with the choices you get during Crimson Flower
Sparring Flynn: If you spar Fylnn, she managed to recruit the Wind Caller and the Immovable to the cause of destroying the Slitherers after Rhea's death. While not up to Rhea's power, the two are able to minigate the number of Javalins that fall. For Edelgard, this turns the Nabatains into heroes that she can never touch, while she is known as a demon for killing Fodlan's best defender
Sparring Seteth: If Seteth is killed, after Edelgard dies young due to her crests, Byleth is left to essentially do what Rhea did 1000 years ago, but at least this time the Slitherers are truly gone. If Seteth lives, he uses Rhea as a martyr and reinstates the church, managing to restore some form of central power to Fodlan much quicker. He's proven to be much better leader then Rhea or Byleth.
Sparring Claude: if Claude is sparred, Almyria sends support to the devastated Fodlan after the final battle, whether Edelgard, Seteth or Byleth is in charge. If he's dead, then Almyria attacks the weakened Fodlan and the country suffers further.
If all three are met, Edelgard gets to die knowing she did indeed make Fodlan better by purging the Slitherers and with a compantent sucessor, but has to deal with the frustration of the Church being back and more loved then ever.
If none are met then everything descends into total choas.
I think you're overestimating how many they have, how much Thales can take, and also how much they want to destroy Fódlan over conquering the world. If they did what you said, their ambitions for world domination are basically dead. Still, they are definitely idiots, but not in this way.
This is honestly pretty cool
I really, really wish there were different endings in CF depending on who you killed or spared. Mainly because it's fucking absurd that Edelgard thinks that she can kill Claude, Hilda, Dimitri, Rhea, Seteth and Flayn and somehow still expect to rule Fodlan afterwards. Like, won't Almyra attack you immediately after the war to avenge Claude? Won't Faerghus and Leicester never accept you because you killed their leaders? And the church who are truly devout would have followed Seteth and Flayn, given that they are far less extreme than Rhea was. Yet, Edelgard can kill them all and suffer no consequences, which defies all logic and common sense tbh.
I'm gonna be honest; I could listen to Ghast talk about Fire Emblem Three Houses for weeks.
Here I was thinking it was gonna be a video about weapon balancing where Ghast talks about Javelins for 20 minutes
A javelin of light is launched from Shambhala at coordinates (x1, y1) and follows a parabolic trajectory travelling 3 degrees north of west. Its boost phase lasts for 192 seconds, during which time it accelerates at a constant rate of 23 m/second^2. It strikes Arianrhod at coordinates (.54, -.38) at an angle of 76 degrees. Where is Shambhala located? (Assume negligible wind resistance. Remember to show your work for full credit.)
Hubert expects to get a perfect score on his AP calculus and AP physics tests BTW.
I think the javelins might come down from ancient Agarthan satellites. Hubert was somehow able to detect the (presumably magical) signal sent from Shambala to launch them.
The Javelins of Light and the Slithers are such cool ideas, I loved them from their inception as it was a real breath of fresh air for the series. It's disappointing that both went so underutilized, and maybe even left on the cutting room floor earlier in development. I'd love to hear about the original ideas and intentions for them from an IS or Koei Tecmo employee
I thought that the missiles were just in space, and what Hubert tracked was essentially the activation signal.
I also assumed that Hubert was looking for some sort of magic activation since Thales touches the symbol on the floor and then the missiles fall.
I thought they were ICBMs, which do break the atmosphere, but which are launched from Earth. There are even silos around the aboveground of Shambala, I think.
*Casually name-drops the Utawarerumono games for no reason at all I promise and sidles away*
While I agree that's its probably just a plot device, I think there's some parallels to be drawn between Hubs, Lysithea and the Slitherers. Both Hubs and Lysithea (oh and Happi lol) are the only units capable of using dark magic.
Lysithea and Happi are both someone who have been experimented on by the Slitherers, and Hubert would have looked into them extensively in preparation for the shadow war he was prepared to wage after Edel's ascension to the throne.
So maybe it could be rationalized that the missiles are also dark, Agarthan only, magic, and Hubert, being a proficient caster, was able to track them.
I think that Hubert's thoughts in CF could be explained by deduction. If the Agarthans could use missiles whenever they wanted, wherever they needed, then how could they've lost in ancient times?
When Thales unleashed them on the player in the Church Route it seemed more like the last, desperate actions of dying man. One might even conclude he was expending resources that were no longer needed seeing as how you kind of...smote him.
I do agree though that the missiles are handled oddly across the different routes.
I agree. Thales/Arundel unleashing the javelins felt like the desperate final acts of a petty and spiteful dying villain. It makes perfect sense as a last ditch desperation attempt to kill his enemies even if he dies in the process too.
What makes less sense is that idea that he can use them in CF and in both SS/VW kinda randomly. How he can have that kinda power and not simply nuke Gronder at will when all 3 armies are battling it out? Wouldn't nuking Gronder have been smarter if Thales had that kinda power available to him at all times?
Crimson Flower really should have continued past Rhea and dealt with the Agarthans in the remaining chapters.
Agarthans should have a high ranked FE5 Warp Staff user. That's how they summoned the missiles.
Curious who made you that avatar, cause it's super cool!
the missile knows where it is...
A cool change would have been to make Ailell more "poisonous" rather than full of lava, AKA green-themed rather than red-themed. Functionally nothing would have changed, but it would have been a cool way to imply radiation poisoning due to nuclear fallout.
Yeah, I wish they had made Ailell more radioactive. I mean, we got bits of that with Ailell Pomegranates and the like, but the area felt too safe and not irradiated enough for a thousand year old nuke strike.
If we get a 3H prequel I hope we get more of the magic nukes, maybe even integrate them in a way similar to the Belhalla Massacre in FE 4
I had a dream about these last night