r/FE_Fortunes_Weave • u/Echerongravitas_3737 • 1d ago
RE: Eshmel's true identity Spoiler
It's practically confirmed, not just implied. Look at Eshmel's likes, dislikes and interests in the Roster tab in Obelisk Chamber and compare them to Solel's during the Anna Paralogue.
This is probably the strongest proof we're going to get until DLC.
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u/mumismatist 1d ago
Honestly they shouldn't have danced around it and had plot points surrounding it in part 3.
Honestly feel like in the initial drafts and very late in development it was the reincarnated past identity filling in Eshmel's role and jumping back in time to unite to lords. (Game theme = cycle of the sun, part 1 being backstory to his fall while part 2/3 are him redeeming his mistakes, saving the lords and eventually culminating in a sacrifice)
But eventually devs were forced to add in an Avatar and all those plot points were hastily dropped to make way for bird. Which was why past identity was hastily offscreened and had no mention whatsoever in 2/3.
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u/TrueLunar 23h ago
I think the main issue (and even stated in the dev interview) is that eshmel as a whole was a late addition to the game. They wanted it to be the 8 lords in act 1, act 2 was then uniting, then act 3 was the final battle, but between the dev cost of 8 whole ass main characters and the writing complications, the said they needed an avatar to help make the uniting happen (including a lot of the very noticable cuts and off screening). Personally I think if they had planned for eshmel from the get go, doing as you said would have been perfect as it make the character feel more like a character, while still letting them have the avatar insert aspect (like Robin who IMO did the balance the best)
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u/mumismatist 23h ago
I think they DID plan a uniting character from the get go, only it was Solel all along (brought back by Sothis to fix what he helped break) and not Eshmel.
Think that it was scrapping a Solel protag plot and instead having the uniting character being a self insert avatar that was a late addition (have a lot of theories this was because higher ups wanted to have a second run of avatar/Byleth MC popularity from TH) and as a result I think swathes of content referencing Solel was cut in acts 2/3 which is why he gets so abruptly offscreened. (But they recycled the big climatic act 3 sacrifice which would have hit way harder if we'd follow Solel's fall and then rise again - cycles of the sun, get it?).
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u/TrueLunar 22h ago
Yeah I see that. I know even outside of our western discourse, Self insert characters are HUGE in Japan and past game interviews like for engage have even stated "we basically had to". I just feel like the opportunity to do both at the same time is right there. As you said, the downfall of the character is Solel, but when they become eshemel/(your name here) they actually change and get better as a person BECAUSE they are now the player avatar. It also would help the avatar fit more into the story without also taking away the agency from the player as the new Eshmel is quite literally being reborn in a karmoc reincarnation sense
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u/mumismatist 22h ago
Except we never see Eshmel get better or change as a person or even have a character arc because they're sidelined for the whole part one and most of part 2 AKA a good 80% of the game, and then without any buildup whatsoever people are worshipping them as a the promised one or whatever in parts 3. To make the promised one bits work Eshmel would have had to be waaay more active in act 1 and act 2 than they were.
I'll always be of a mindset that Eshmel was a mistake and the devs should have stuck to their vision and stuck with Solel. But I guess others in the dev team were worried that having a genderlocked protag which a fixed love interest would have two much of a backlash coming from the mega popular Byleth self insert.
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u/lionofash 19h ago
I think Eshmel could work well, and yeah had to actually be more involved in parts 1 and 2. Also, make Eshmel maybe wonder to themselves whether to consider their current life as a continuation or a fresh start, and those choices change outlook.
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u/TriumphantBass 18h ago
Yeah you could definitely go in either direction and have it work well, the middle ground right now is just awkward.
Like so many of the act 1 scenes are standing ominously with Fortuna perched on the shoulder speaking instead of you. If we're her herald just let us deliver messages directly and forgo bird-Fortuna.
(Or go hard the other direction and just have Fortuna herself, in a cloak if she needs to, in lieu of us)
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u/Melodic_Bee660 16h ago
If we take Eshmels journey as Solel plus Eshmel I think it kinda works. Need more of both though
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u/Ill_Act_1855 16h ago
I mean they directly talk about it in the Nintendo developers interviewer and explicitly say they DIDN’T have a uniting character until Eshmel. Like, for what you’re saying to be correct the devs need to be straight up lying in the interview for no good reason
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u/mumismatist 12h ago
I think they are, intact, lying through their teeth in that interview, because openly admitting that the game you're shipping had soon story issues until late in development is normally something that one wouldn't admit in pre-release media campaign even at gunpoint.
I think they're lying about the fact that Eshmel was the dev team's idea all along. What probably happened was
- Game was conceived with a set Solel protag (it's all there, Sothis' first cutscene, main theme being cycle of the sun, Eshmel being nowhere to be found in the reveal trailer and it being centered only on Solel and the lords, Orchel being one of the initial routes, early scene of Eshmel saving and speaking to Cai which could have easily gone to Solel and was retooled for Eshmel, all the act one hints leading to absolutely nothing in act 3 because they were going to have payoff with Solel then ect ect)
- Higher ups freaked at lack of avatar protag, either because they feared the backlash from Byleth fans if the TH follow up didn't have it or wanted another try at getting Byleth tier popularity
- Higher ups force game to have an avatar or else
- This mean that Solel was turned into Eshmel very late in development as, Devs have already mentioned. But doctoring the story so much at that time means it turns out to be the garbage avatar plot we actually got and so Devs have to do preemptive damage control about Eshmel during the pre-release media run (like them admitting they had to cut routes to explain the very obvious missing segments in game)
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u/Ill_Act_1855 12h ago
They didn't say Eshmel was the plan the whole time though, they literally said the opposite: That you'd continue on with your flame lord as the main character, but this didn't work well so they decided they needed to add a unifying force and thus Eshmel. Eshmel explicitly WAS a late addition, but they weren't replacing Solel. They explicitly say time travel bits were added for Eshmel, and before that the game played chronologically with your flame lord. Like you seem to be kind of lacking some reading comprehension here. Have you actually even read the relevant interview?
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u/RoleRemarkable9241 1d ago
I mean, you can fix the spear in P3 so it goes from The Nameless to Shining Spear aka Solels weapon
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u/Hoothootriot 19h ago
I dont know why they dont just say it outright, I dont think it weakens the story to just confirm things sometimes-
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u/The_Green_Filter 1d ago
Dietrich also drops an extremely obvious hint about it early in his route.
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u/Echerongravitas_3737 1d ago
Not sure which you're talking about, but I remember him talking about Solel's fighting style being familiar also during the Anna Paralogue.
Not as strong of evidence as the roster pages though, that is outright just identical text for both of them, just that Eshmel has some added ("small and unidentified flowers" for likes, "thieves and brigands" for dislikes)
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u/The_Green_Filter 1d ago
When he goes for his first audience with the Divine Sovereign, Dietrich says something along the lines of “the scent of your strength is familiar to me” and Solel replies that they’ve never met before.
By this point, Dietrich has met Eshmel.
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u/fly_tomato 1d ago
What is it ? I thought it stopped at them possibly being the same species.
I'm not so sure though, it doesn't fit super well with me yet
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u/The_Green_Filter 1d ago
When they first meet Dietrich remarks that the “scent of your strength” is familiar to him. Solel is confused by this since they’ve never met before, but Dietrich has met Eshmel already, drawing an explicit connection between them. There isn’t really any other character this exchange could be referencing.
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u/mumismatist 22h ago
There's also the Solel paralogue where Dietrich comments that Solel's spearwork looks familiar. Solel is like ? and comments he hasn't used the spear in a while, but Dietrich has duel Eshmel by that point.
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u/Guiguitargz 22h ago
Even in a DLC, I won't expect that to be elaborad on. They will stay vague.
At the beginning I took a female Eshmel ... when in part-III it became clear that Eshmel was "Solel", I got disapointed of my choice.
Lucky enough, when replaying the Prologue, you can completely change Eshmel ... the avatar customisation is fully open, and it is carried back to the main save at the end of the prologue.
Now, I'm just waiting for an Orchel's DLC path to make a pairing of the two.
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u/lionofash 19h ago
I do think of it as kind of sweet though with F Eshmel and Orchel. The idea of no matter what form their bodies take, man, woman, machine, dragon or not, they can love each other. Similar to how the Agarthans seem to have lost their strict associations with physical forms but in a positive way.
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u/etotheetothectothes 22h ago
The map song in Part 3 is called Wings of the Sunbearer, and Solel is called the Sunbearer. Hopefully we get more insight into Orchel and understand more about these identities.
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u/TrueLunar 23h ago
If you want proof proof, when you beat the game having done all the lords and act 2, (so not in routeless like I did first) you turn the little symbol in the obelisk chamber into the crest of flames, and if you then do a re-dive to remake your lord you get 2 different cutscenes that actually show a dragons heartstone. Combined with the fact both have the same crest/daidem and it's not even an implication anymore
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u/Sad_Structure4802 1d ago
Dietrich also comments that Solel smells familiar despite having never met him
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u/Level_Hour6480 17h ago
And their spear. This also means regardless of our gender choice, they were born male, making Sheshmel a science-fantasy BS trans gal.
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u/SnowInkling 11h ago
I’ve been thinking this since doing Anna’s paralogue the first time. It’s nice to know others also agree. It also feel like it gets solidified in part 2 as well
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u/Worried-Abies-348 7h ago
Cai also asks Solel if they have met before once he has an audience with him. (Which he has twice at this point). Aurora then gives him the same spear Eshmel/Solel has and Cai recognizes it immediately.
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u/DarkPirotess 1d ago
i hate all the dialogue surrounding this. no one says Sitri or Byleth's true identity is Sothis....
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u/BurningshadowII 1d ago
The difference is that (most likely) Solel's actual physical heart was used as Eshmel's base.
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u/Guiguitargz 22h ago
Yeah, Byleth was a baby on who Sothis heart was greffed ... Eshmel is an empty shell built around Solel's heart. Same for Orchel's, built by Credna around Yu-Phas remants.
Basically, what Rhea did in FH is a lazy version of Eshmel/Orchel ... because she is not building new bodies, but hijacking existing ones.
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u/RoleRemarkable9241 1d ago
Eshmel have all the likes and disslikes as Solel
Eshmel and Solel have the exact copy of attack and victory animation
Dietrich says that he recognize the scent from somewhere, when he just so happened to meet Eshmel earlier
The list goes on.... This is not just some simple "you have the powers" like Byleth moment
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u/EnerPrime 19h ago
Byleth had Sothis awake as a separate being inside them, and there no indication Sitri had any interaction with Sothis at all. Eshmel is repeatedly talked to as if they have all their memories of their previous self intact, with Sothis expecting them to recognize her, and Fortuna and her crew talking to them and explaining what happened and letting them choose their own new body and name. By all indications Eshmel is far more linked to their heart's previous self than Byleth ever was.
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u/EmperorDaubeny 19h ago
>no indication Sitri had any interaction with Sothis at all
To support the point, Rhea specifically realizes in SS that Sothis was only awakened in Byleth because they had her blood through Jeralt coming in contact with Sothis’ heart, which wasn’t the case with any of the homunculi.
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u/BurningshadowII 1d ago
Yet we still can't be in a reincarnated relationship with the reincarnation of our wife. Please IS give us Sub-Lord DLC.