Byleth, the player surrogate/protagonist ofFire Emblem: Three Houses, is about to expand their combative horizonsby joiningSuper Smash Bros. Ultimateas the fifth DLC character in its first Fighters Pass. At the same time, the Professor is going to be venturing deep below Garreg Mach Monastery to find a secret fourth house in their (now improperly named) home title, as Nintendo announced the fourth wave of DLC forThree Housessoon after theSmashreveal.
The DLC’s trailer, which released on Nintendo’s YouTube channel earlier today, introduces fans to a whole new world in Intelligent System’ssmash-hit tactical RPG on the Switchthrough a side story called “Cindered Shadows” that will be released on July 29, 2025.
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That is, they are introduced to a literal whole new explorable hub world called the Abyss, where a secret faction of Fódlan’s outcasts have created a fourth house called the Ashen Wolves unbeknown to anyone during the four potential story paths already available inFire Emblem: Three Houses.
Four new students whom Byleth can recruit are seen in the trailer: Balthus, a bruiser using heavy-hitting gauntlets; Hapi, a redheaded mage on horseback; Constance, another mage riding a black pegasus; and Yuri, a sword-user who might be the leader of the bunch given her snow white shoulder cape — a signifier of leadership on the previous three house leaders Dimitri, Claude, and Edelgard.
In the description of the video, Nintendo says there will also be “new classes, quests, paralogues, and activities” added in the fourth wave of DLC. The official website still hasn’t listed all the details for this wave however; only content from the first three like new difficulty modes, the addition of a sauna, andpetting Garreg Mach’s wild animals.
Despite Byleth’sSmash Ultimateannouncement being punctuated by Masahiro Sakurai revealing there will be more DLC fighters coming by the end of 2021,many people are not happy seeing anotherFire Emblemcharacter added into the party brawler. That vitriol (and the counter-reactions of Byleth fans) has spread even to theThree HousesDLC video on YouTube and Twitter:
To be fair, there’s nothing wrong with coinciding the announcement of characters to a game likeSuper Smash Bros.with something relevant to their originating series. For instance the announcement of Joker fromPersona 5at the 2018 Game Awards came just beforethe reveal ofPersona 5 Royal.
But it’s a touchy time for fans ofSmashonline, in spite ofthat second Fighters Pass gearing up to add six additional characters. Fans of the long-running RPG series should not let that color their opinions of the Cindered Shadows campaign. It might sound like a canonical fan fiction, but there’s potential for more great things to come in a game already beloved for its deep narrative.
Fire Emblem: Three Housesis available now on the Nintendo Switch. Its fourth wave of DLC will be released on June 01, 2025.
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