There are some common occupations in video games. A soldier, for example, or a knight. We’ve got lots of explorers, lots of mercenaries, lots of athletes. We don’t have very many teachers, though - at least, not many playable ones. That’s one of the main reasons Fire Emblem: Three Houses holds such a special place in my heart. It casts you as Byleth, a new teacher at Garreg Mach Monastery, and lets you explore the school from that perspective. I used to be a teacher before I decided to care too much about fictional pixels for a living, and playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses is probably the closest I’ve come to missing it.
Let’s get one thing straight: Three Houses is not a teaching sim. While you play as a teacher, you’re around the same age as your students, the game encourages you to pursue a romantic relationship with them, and the only actual ‘teaching’ you do is deciding which of your students should specialise in archery and which in sword-fighting. I’ve been on some strange field trips in my time, but we never took the kids to a mountain pass to fight off an unholy army of demons.
Still, there’s something about Fire Emblem’s presentation of the school itself, and its focus on interpersonal relationships - questionable student-teacher pairings aside - which makes me miss the smell of stale coffee, the chewed up pens, and the stacks of unmarked books.
A big part of this comes down to the support scenes. As you get to know your students more, you unlock personalised conversations with them in cutscenes that reflect your growing bond. Gameplay-wise, these serve to point out that your support level has increased, and the pair of you will now make a more effective duo in battle. But from a narrative perspective, these scenes reflect the essence of what teaching is. Teachers rarely have favourite lessons, but we definitely have favourite students.
The best part of these support scenes is that they don’t just happen with Byleth. Whenever the bond between two students in your house increases, you’ll get to see that scene too, even if Byleth is not physically present during the conversation. Teachers are rarely the main characters in a day in the life of a school; it’s all about the kids. Even when we don’t see the conversations ourselves, we know which couple has broken up, which students are fighting, and which unlikely friendships are forming. In showing us these non-Byleth support scenes as an omniscient overseer, Fire Emblem: Three Houses allows us to access the heartbeat of the school itself.
Seeing Fire Emblem: Three Houses through a teacher’s eyes also made me much less ruthless. In games with squadmates, I typically pick a handful of favourites and focus primarily on them, and to hell with the rest. That means you, Jacob in Mass Effect, Blackwall in Dragon Age, or Jeff Hendrick in FIFA Career Mode. I don’t like you, I’m never picking you, so get lost. Upgrades? Ha! You’ll get the loadout you started the game with and you’ll like it.
Playing through the Black Eagles route, I was all set to do this again. I was already recruiting more students to my house, and Caspar was starting to become a liability. I was playing with permadeath on, and I wasn’t cruel enough to kill him off, but I was getting sick of constantly wasting turns to help him retreat or heal him up. I was just about done with him, and ready to leave him on the sidelines forever. Then I started talking to him.
Caspar has a massive inferiority complex, partially because of his position in his family and partially because of his short stature. It seemed, although it couldn’t possibly be true, like it was also partially because of me. He knew I had no faith in him, he knew I wished he wasn’t in my house, he knew I liked Bernie, Petra, and everybody else better than him. I started to put more faith in him, to actually teach him and give him upgrades, to push him towards the extracurricular stuff, and suddenly he got better. He didn’t need to be rescued as much, and he was actually effective in battle.
He was that kid who was naughty just for attention, the kid who was a right little shit for everyone else, but you put Stormzy lyrics in the starter task just for him and now he reckons you’re alright, you. I don’t miss teaching. But I miss kids like that.
Leonie is another kid like Caspar who just needs a mentor, but there are also some students who are just heartbreakingly vulnerable. These, too, felt like they belonged in a real school, with real teachers and, hopefully, real friends. Bernadetta was easily my best warrior, despite being as timid as a field mouse. That’s because I knew I needed to keep her safe, and so every chance I got, Bernie received an upgrade. If Hubert was injured in battle, well, he should have watched where he was going. If Bernie took a scratch though, it was a personal failure on my behalf.
Bernie doesn’t even leave her room, and most of her support scenes ended with her running away from someone. While she occasionally strays too far into being a caricature, I’ve taught many students like that before, and watched them grow in self-belief over the years.
While Bernie is by far the least confident of all the characters in the game, she’s far from the only student in need of a little encouragement. Marianne, Ashe, and in her own way, Lysithea, each need a guiding hand too. It’s this innate vulnerability to many of the characters that makes the romance options feel particularly egregious.
Romance aside - it’s gross and I don’t feel like I should have to explain why, timeskip or not - there are some wrinkles in the way Three Houses presents your role as a teacher. It often feels like Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude outrank you, and besides that, these characters and a few other students feel too mature. Some students think, act, and view the world as adults, while others are perpetual teenagers, even after the timeskip. Many characters change and develop, sure, but the dynamic they have with Byleth is fairly fixed, and that’s disappointing.
All things considered, I think I’ll stick to pixels. Still, if I ever feel the call of the trusty red biro, I know Garreg Mach has got me covered.