Fire Emblem Three Houses got its major expansion over a month ago with the release of Cindered Shadows. In it, gamers entered a new part of Garren Mach Monastery in the form of “The Abyss”, where a new house was shown in the form of the Ashen Wolves.
What surprised many though was that in the Ashen Wolves storyline (that happens before the time jump), things weren’t as basic as previous storylines in that you had all three house leaders and only some of their companions as part of your squad. In an interview with Nintendo Dream, Fire Emblem Three Houses Directors Toshiyuki Kusakihara and Genki Yokota revealed their thought process behind doing this:
“We wanted the foundation of the story to be the house leaders working together, so we knew they would all be present from the beginning. After that we chose one person from each house; we surmised that we wanted each student to be somebody with a good deal of combat potential. Assuming that, we narrowed it down more to the characters whose skills felt right to include. Later, we decided which characters would have some kind of relation to the characters that appear in the side story. Linhardt, in particular, can talk at length about crests, so we felt that he could play an important role in the events of the story. As for Ashe, he could relate pretty heavily to having to live somewhere like the Abyss, so we felt that because of that he could help expand the story.”
So as you can see, these decisions were made intentionally. And because it all happened before the time jump, all four members of the Ashen Wolves can join your party after you enter Act II. The DLC for Three Houses is available to purchase now in full.