Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Documents about Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Article

Don't Kill Your Evil Darlings! Why Players Stop Respecting Villains...and What to Do About It

This essay is an opinion-driven design analysis rather than an empirical study, so it presents no survey data, sample sizes, or statistics.

• Game villains face a "design triangle" in which recurrence, intimidating aura, and player beatability can be achieved together only by compromising one of the three.
• Villain decay, the loss of menace over repeated appearances, is the central problem the essay examines, framed through the established villain decay trope.
• XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is praised for keeping its recurring Chosen antagonists threatening by letting players temporarily kill them while the narrative explains their respawns.

Game DesignNarrative AdventureGlobal

Breda University of Applied SciencesSep 2026

Article

A Class on Narrative Frames (and Advanced Murder): What 'Fire Emblem: Three Houses' Knows About Casting the Player's Role

This article examines how the player's narrative role relative to the characters on their team shapes the emotional bonds that develop between them.

• Narrative framing of the player's role strongly shapes emotional bonds with team characters: games that cast the player as a responsible figure, like the professor in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, align the player's incentives with nurturing those characters.
• The article's central thesis is that pairing great power over a crew with a strong sense of responsibility can pre-load the emotional experience a designer intends, with incentive alignment between player and characters as the key variable.
• Games are contrasted by player position: RimWorld casts the player as an external force with supernatural influence but no social identity, while XCOM 2 and Darkest Dungeon create commander responsibilities, with Darkest Dungeon deliberately undermining them through an employer-employee dynamic built on disposability.

Game DesignNarrative RPGTactical RPG+1

Breda University of Applied SciencesAug 2026

Article

How Many Characters Is Too Many? Let's Discuss Roster Size, Marvel's Midnight Suns (and How to Get It Right)

This essay examines how the number of companion characters in a game affects player attention and emotional attachment, using Marvel's Midnight Suns as its central case study.

• Dunbar's Number suggests people maintain a close 'support clique' of about five people and a wider 'sympathy group' of roughly 10 to 20, and the author argues game rosters should respect these social limits because an oversized cast dilutes emotional attachment to individual characters.
• Marvel's Midnight Suns has 13 fully voiced heroes in its base game and 17 with DLC, a total the author considers within the sympathy group range, yet the game lacks a mechanism for players to naturally form a core group of regulars.
• In Midnight Suns, a three-hero combat team limit and friendship progress gating legendary abilities and cosmetics force players to either narrow their focus to two or three favorites and forfeit content, or spread attention across the whole roster, which makes attachment to any single character difficult.

Game DesignGame DevelopmentNarrative RPG+3

Breda University of Applied SciencesMay 2026

Article

Lessons from RimWorld (and FIFA): How Introducing a Rival Team Gets You Two Emotional Hooks for the Price of One Design Decision

Jonas Pastoors argues that introducing a named rival team into a game creates two emotional hooks from a single design decision: players bond more quickly with their own team, and they develop a personal grudge against recurring enemy characters.

• Introducing a named rival team creates two emotional hooks from one design decision: faster bonding with the player's own team and a personal grudge against recurring enemy characters, drawing on intergroup empathy bias.
• In the author's small study, in-group empathy and out-group counter-empathy appeared almost immediately after participants were assigned to a competing team, and the bias strengthened as play continued.
• The intergroup bias was strongest when the contest was close and the rival posed a real threat, and weakened when the player easily dominated the opposition, suggesting challenging flow states heighten the effect.

Game DesignNarrative RPGSports Games+2

Breda University of Applied SciencesApr 2026