rumor mill posted:

There's a five year timeskip at one point in the game. It's a central and dramatic event.
- They seemingly aren't doing the "making children" stuff again
- There's a new variant of "skinship" (which I believe is the kind of petting minigame there was in Fates) but it's done "much classier" and is more akin to a tea conversation
- The game has very close connections to Genealogy of the Holy War, such as darker storylines and similar characterization. ach noble "house" has access to certain crests + weapons. Weapons are supposed to be linked to the crests of each character. The weapons are wieldable by units who don't have the respective crest, but there are very dire consequences...
- Claude gets a Wyvern in his main promotion
- There are LGBT supports/relationships, moreso with female Byleth than the male version (but there are still some for the male version)
- Lynhart should be bisexual at the very least. He has quite a unique character that delves beyond his sexuality.
- Dimitri's backstory: He is the sole survivor of his family's massacre and suffers greatly because of it. Much of his storyline revolves around this and his battle with his own mental health. His father is actually from the country east of Leicester, beyond the mountains (Almyra, I believe). You get at least two other characters from there. Lorentz dislikes Claude because he technically should be the next leader of Leicester and doesn't believe Claude deserves his position... or something like that. Claude's storyline revolves around his heritage, which kind of separates him from Edelgard's and Dimitri's stories.

- The story overall is a HUGE improvement over Fates/Awakening. The leaker gives it a 9 on a scale to 10, with Fates being a 2.
- You can't get all characters in a single run, but you can recruit at some point some characters from one of the houses you didn't choose.
- The swordswoman in the first trailer's name is Catherine.
- Rhea's advisor is named Setes. We'll also be getting characters named Cyril and Elio(?). And another Monastery worker.
- You do fight students from the routes you didn't pick at one point, and you kill them. [this implies there's, as expected, a war between the three houses at some point]
- "I feel like Three Houses is the opposite of Fates in terms of marketing. The school setting was just a facade for a much darker storyline. And there will be more than three countries involved... "
- There are four story paths in the game, and they don't converge. Edelgard's House has two paths.
- Edelgard is a lot more ruthless than previous female lords.

- There's indeed dating in this game, between the main character and the students/non-students characters.
- Status effects and debuffs are definitely back but I'm unsure about the restore staff. There should be an alternative for it if there isn't one though.
- The story is more akin to Radiant Dawn's, where each chapter is a small part of a greater "part." Part 1 has a heavy focus on the academy, for example, while Part 2 does not.
- The fanservice is more subdued this time around. Dorothea and Manuela are probably the closest you'll get from the characters revealed so far, but even they are quite different from the likes of Camilla or Tharja.
- Dedue was one of the bandits that attacked and killed Dimitri's family. Dimitri kept him as a bodyguard, which is why Dedue "owes him a great debt."
- "The maps are actually pretty subpar from what I've heard. The story and characterization make up for most of them, though."
- "I've never seen the maps. They're just my friends' opinions. They should be more varied than Awakening's at the very least. Definitely better than SoV's