fire emblem fans got a surprise during the recent Nintendo Direct with the announcement of the franchise’s next entry. Fire Emblem Engage tells the story of Alear, a dragon child who awakens from a thousand-year nap to find the world in turmoil. A cabal of evil mages follow in the footsteps of their villains fire emblem predecessors by seeking the return of a dark dragon. To save the world, Alear and their companions must collect the Emblem Rings: powerful artifacts that can summon past heroes, called Emblems, to fight alongside them.
The idea of collecting heroes from all over the world fire emblem franchise in one place is hardly original; lot had players scan amiibo to recruit characters, and the Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game is all about summoning characters from other games. Fire Emblem Warriors also comes to mind as a game whose main selling point was featuring characters from old games. However, based on a single trailer, Fire Emblem Engage seems to be handling his fan service better than warriors did.
The vertical fan service in Fire Emblem Warriors
Fire Emblem Warriors is a musou game that married iconic mechanics fire emblem with those of titles like Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. While his successor Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes doubled on the Three houses institution of Fodlan, Fire Emblem Warriors marketed itself as a parallel world where characters from different fire emblem games would compete together.
However, when the game came out, players were remiss to only play a handful fire emblem‘s unique institutions represented. Most playable characters were spread over three games: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Fire Emblem Awakeningand Fire Emblem Fates.
Includes DLC characters, shadow dragon had six playable characters, awakening had 10, and lot had 13; including male and female options for Robin and Corrin from the latter two. Burning sword and Shadows of Valentina each had a single character represented: Lyndis and Celica, respectively. Including the warriors original protagonist twins and the fire emblem staple Anna, characters from three games made up 85 percent of the roster, and Fire Emblem Fates only took more than a third of it.
Fire Emblem Warriors definitely wasn’t a bad game. It sold well and it was popular enough to ignite another Fire Emblem Warriors spin off. That being said, Fire Emblem Warriors was not the romp through fire emblem history that most hoped it would be. With hundreds of characters in decades worth of games, there were plenty of missed opportunities for fan service, especially in regards to older games in the franchise.
Fire Emblem Engage’s horizontal fan service
Ever since Fire Emblem Engage was only just announced, information is scarce on the details of how it will handle fanservice, but from the trailer you can already see that the game is using its history better than warriors did. The story itself wins no prizes for creativity – dark mages resurrecting evil dragons has been repeated nearly a dozen times fire emblem history, and is also nearly identical to the lukewarm plot of Fire Emblem Warriors. engage even has a subplot of fighting alongside heroes from other games.
However, Fire Emblem Engage seems to do things differently than warriors. Instead of having tons of characters from a few games, Fire Emblem Engage chooses one representative from each major fire emblem title, with no remakes and one direct sequel. With 12 Emblem Heroes confirmed to appear, Fire Emblem Engage has almost a third of the heroes Fire Emblem Warriors had, but it casts a wide net to include a character from every game, including titles that haven’t seen international releases.
Ultimately, this method is better. Fire Emblem Engages system allows everything fire emblem games to get more equal representation through the imbalance in warriors schedule. While the Emblem heroes all appear to be their own characters, the smaller, carefully selected cast will also Fire Emblem Engage original characters to shine more than those found in warriorswhich were more of a narrative framework to explain away the setting.
What Fire Emblem Warriors Could Have Been
Fire Emblem Warriors had to be the ultimate fire emblem fan service game, but ultimately played it safe by focusing mainly on the two most recent fire emblem titles at the time. The game was a success, but you have to wonder what heights it could have reached if Intelligent Systems hadn’t played it safe by relying on characters newer fans would recognize.
if Fire Emblem Warriors had cast his as wide as Fire Emblem Engage seems, players could have had a really great musou game in their hands. Even if it had kept the same overall number of playable characters, it could have pulled between three and five characters from each fire emblem institution. The ability to play as characters like Ephraim, Eirika, Micaiah or Hector would have changed Fire Emblem Warriors of a nice romp with Fire Emblem Awakening and lot to a love letter for the entire franchise.
Still, it’s probably for the best that Fire Emblem Warriors played it safe. If the second Nintendo warriors game, it had to get it right to make sure there would be more games in the future, and relying on recent, well-known characters was a surefire way to do it – hence why Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes focused on a single institution. Due to his conservative fan service, Fire Emblem Warriors sets the stage for Nintendo and Intelligent Systems to go deeper Fire Emblem Engageand take care of more Fire Emblem Warriors games can be made. One day players might get a real epic Fire Emblem Warriors game with more than 80 characters like some Dynasty Warriors titles.
Fire Emblem Engage releases for Switch on January 20, 2023.
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