10 Best "The Game Is Bigger Than You Think" Moments

4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

The Fire Emblem series has been running since 1990 and 2019’s Three Houses is almost universally accepted to be one of the most impressive entries to date.

The tactical role-playing game has you take on the role of Byleth, a mercenary turned teacher, and among your first choices in the game is which of the school’s houses you would like to teach; the Golden Deer, the Blue Lions, or the Black Eagles, which is obviously the coolest. Each choice grants you a separate group of students who all have different personalities, backgrounds, goals, and abilities, though over the course of the game you’re able to recruit students from other houses into yours. As a result, it appears your choice at the beginning doesn’t matter all that much.

Some way into the game, though, you hit a five year time jump that throws most of what you thought you knew about the game out the window as schooling and lowkey battles take a backseat to all-out war and political rivalries leaving lives in the balance.

All of a sudden your mileage varies wildly depending on which school you chose at the start of the game, and one of them even diverges further into two significantly different paths depending on your choices. Your relationships determine who may perish or be saved, and who might ally with you, not to mention who your main antagonists will be as the game wears on.