Today’s Nintendo Direct started with a bombastic announcement: Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, a spinoff title starring the cast of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, is in development. This third-person action RPG pits Byleth, Edelgard, Dmitri, Claude, and the other Officers Academy students against what appears to be a new, unnamed enemy.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is the second Fire Emblem Warriors game after the original that released in 2017. There, series’ protagonists — Marth, Lucina, Chrom, Corrin, and others — work together in a timeline completely separate from their own. It’s essentially a Fire Emblem crossover that indulges in interactions that wouldn’t be possible in any cast member’s original world. Omega Force, the team behind Dynasty Warriors and other Warriors-suffixed games, will also helm development for this title. Other notable works in its portfolio include Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Persona 5 Strikers.
If Three Hopes is anything like its predecessor, it will most likely star Three Houses’ staff and students in some kind of alternate scenario separate from their original world. For those who don’t know, Fire Emblem: Three Houses pits the leaders of the three Houses — the Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer — against each other, first in academic competition, then all-out war. However, the Three Hopes trailer shows some points where they fight side by side rather than against each other. It’s unclear if that means certain characters will escape their unfortunate fates. Fans can only hope.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses earned its reputation as a smash hit in 2019 and, honestly, it still is. It’s sold over 3 million copies and won multiple awards, including two at The Game Awards 2019. On top of that, it boasts a score of 89 on Metacritic and earned a high ranking on our Fire Emblem ranked list. In short, fans should expect this title to attract plenty of interest, even if it doesn’t necessarily please as many players as the original.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes releases on June 24, 2022, for the Nintendo Switch.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.