Ask the Developer Vol. 23: Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave — Part 1 - News - Nintendo Official Site

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Part 1: Depicting how people choose to lead their lives

First, can I ask everyone to briefly introduce yourselves?

Toshiyuki Kusakihara (referred to as Kusakihara from this point on): Hello. I'm Toshiyuki Kusakihara from Intelligent Systems (1). As with Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2), I’m the director on the Intelligent Systems side for Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave.

(1) Intelligent Systems Co., Ltd. A company that has developed Nintendo games, including the Fire Emblem and Paper Mario series. They have also created software development support tools for Nintendo systems. Headquartered in Kyoto. Also known as “IS” (pronounced like the word “is”).

(2) A Nintendo Switch title released in July 2019. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is divided into two parts. In the first part, the player takes on the role of a professor at the Officers Academy, located at the center of Fódlan, a continent made up of three ruling powers. After choosing a house to lead, each representing one of the ruling powers, the player helps the students grow and guides them. The second part is set five years later and depicts a war among the three nations, with a different perspective depending on the house you choose to lead.

Masahiro Higuchi (referred to as Higuchi from this point on): Hi, I’m Masahiro Higuchi from Intelligent Systems. I’ve served as a producer on several recent titles in the Fire Emblem series, and I’m also involved in this title as the producer on the Intelligent Systems side.

Genki Yokota (referred to as Yokota from this point on): Hi, I’m Genki Yokota from Nintendo. I served as a producer on this title. Previously, I was a director on Fire Emblem: Three Houses and a producer on Fire Emblem Engage (3).

(3) A Nintendo Switch game released in January 2023. The Divine Dragon Alear, the game’s protagonist, joins forces with allies from different kingdoms and draws on the power of the Emblems, heroes from other worlds who reside in the Emblem Rings, to prevent the revival of the Fell Dragon.

Kenta Nakanishi (referred to as Nakanishi from this point on): Hello. I’m Kenta Nakanishi from Nintendo. I was involved in this title as the associate producer. My role was somewhere between producer and director. I helped coordinate the overall flow of development and proposed ideas for the game’s design and gameplay.

Thank you very much. Yokota-san, could you start by giving us a brief overview of this title?

Yokota: Sure. The Fire Emblem series is part of the tactical RPG genre. It combines RPG-style character development, shaped by the player’s choices, with turn-based battles in which players move characters across a grid-based battlefield and command them in battle. A defining feature of the series is that every choice the player makes affects the characters’ growth and how the battle plays out. In Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, the story unfolds across four parallel paths, each told from the perspective of a different protagonist. Players can freely change between the four paths as they gather allies, build their own ultimate team, and take on their enemies.

Kusakihara: The story of this title takes place on the continent of Dagda, which lies south of Fódlan, the setting of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There, the Dagdan Empire stands as a massive nation ruled by gods. In the first half of the game, warriors from various lands gather in its capital, Dagsion, to compete for victory in the Heroic Games. As Yokota-san touched on earlier, the game has four paths. Through them, players follow the stories of four warriors from different lands, with each story told from its protagonist’s perspective.

Nakanishi: In the latter half of the game, the characters that players have recruited across the four paths ultimately come together as a single force, moving toward one common goal. In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, players choose one of three houses, each associated with one of three major powers, and develop the characters in that house. Ultimately, those three nations come to stand opposed to one another.

So that would place this title in the same world as Fire Emblem: Three Houses, right, despite their contrasting narrative structures?

Higuchi: That’s right. While this title is set in a world connected to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, both the time period and the region are different. We developed the game with the guiding principle that players should be able to fully enjoy it as a standalone title, even if they aren't familiar with Fire Emblem: Three Houses. So rather than thinking of it as a sequel, we’d like players to see it as a new title.

Kusakihara: We were very fortunate that so many players enjoyed Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but at the same time, we had an enormous sense of responsibility. We spent a lot of time wondering how we could create something that would surpass it. So initially, we came up with the bold idea of increasing the number of story perspectives from three to eight. The three powers in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are fundamentally at odds with one another. This time, we decided to take the opposite approach, with the stories unfolding along each path ultimately coming together into one. From there, we worked to refine the concept.

Yokota: Suddenly going from three perspectives to eight is a pretty big jump. Kusakihara-san had really developed a clear theme for each protagonist, and I felt it could lead to something really interesting. But with eight protagonists, there was almost too much we could do... It seemed like players would have a lot to keep track of, which could make the game feel complicated. So, we decided to put the focus on four of those protagonists instead.

You mentioned that although this title is connected to the world of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it is set in a different region. How did you go about building Dagda as a setting?

Yokota: As Higuchi-san said, from the beginning, our intention was not to make a simple sequel to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but to create a new title set in the same world. And since the story would be entirely separate, we felt that the first thing we should do was give the game a completely different feel.

Kusakihara: Right. Fódlan, the setting of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, was a strict world that placed great importance on doctrines. In contrast, with Dagda, the setting of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, we aimed to create a place filled with freedom and vitality, where people live energetically under blue skies and the blazing sun. We wanted to capture the kind of life force and energy often associated with people from an earlier age. For the building designs, Fire Emblem: Three Houses was inspired by Eastern Europe from the medieval period onward, while this title drew inspiration from the ancient Mediterranean region. I think another major difference from Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that in Dagda, people worship multiple gods, and those gods also coexist with humans.

Nakanishi: At the same time, there are also elements from Fire Emblem: Three Houses that we carried over. Traditionally, Fire Emblem games have been structured so that the story starts with a small group, and the cast gradually grows over time. By contrast, in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, almost all of the characters are introduced in the early stages of the game, and players build their team by choosing allies from among them. We thought this structure, where almost all of the characters were introduced in the early stages of the game, was one of the things that worked well in Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

So, we tried to carry over that approach as much as we could for this title.

Kusakihara: What I wanted to depict in this title was how people choose to lead their lives, almost like a grand historical drama in which the intentions of many different people and nations intertwine and set history in motion. That's exactly why I wanted to increase the number of perspectives from which the story is told. This title features a wide variety of people with different backgrounds, including age, origin, and ethnicity. The arena, an important setting in this title, is where all these people come together.

Higuchi: The Fire Emblem series has often featured arenas as places where unique characters gather and strive toward a shared goal. In this title’s Heroic Games, many different people, including the four protagonists, each fight for their own reasons. I think the arena also works very well as a setting that helps drive the story.

I see. Could you tell us more about the stories that unfold around each of the four protagonists?

Kusakihara: Many people gather for the Heroic Games of the Dagdan Empire, but the four protagonists are: Cai, a boy from the peaceful village of Ribeira; Dietrich, a swordsman from the foreign land of Fódlan; Theodora, the young queen of the Kingdom of Saramis; and Leda, a bard whose homeland was taken from her.

Cai leaves his village with his childhood friends to unravel the mystery of his birth and grows significantly through the battles of the Heroic Games. Dietrich is an exceptional swordsman who happens to wash up in Dagda after surviving a shipwreck. He lives for battle, so when he hears about the Heroic Games, he leaps at the chance to take part. Dietrich’s story is about a man with a kind of self-destructive impulse, someone who only feels alive in the midst of battle, and how he comes to discover bonds with others in the land of Dagda. The Kingdom of Saramis, ruled by Theodora, was founded through a complex history involving the Dagdan Empire and the gods. She joins the Heroic Games with the aim of fulfilling a long-held wish of her people. Leda, meanwhile, is a passionate woman who has devoted herself entirely to revenge. After discovering that the person who killed her father and destroyed her city is still alive in Dagsion, she enters the Heroic Games to carry out her revenge.

As each of the protagonists takes on the Heroic Games, the motives and conspiracies of those around them become intricately intertwined, driving the story forward.

I see. So, each of the four protagonists has a very different story, but those stories all come together in one place. But this title doesn't begin with those four protagonists. Instead, it starts with the player character Eshmel. How did this character come about?

Kusakihara: Eshmel plays a slightly different role from the four protagonists. The game begins with the player controlling Eshmel, but to be honest, this character didn't even exist until partway through development. Eshmel was another protagonist we added right at the end. Our initial idea was that players would choose whichever of the four protagonists they liked and then keep fighting with that protagonist through to the end. But something about that never quite felt right to me. The issue was that it didn’t really feel like the four stories were coming together into one in a satisfying way. As I mentioned earlier, once the game reaches its second half, the story comes together into one, and the four protagonists gather in one place. But even after that, if we continued to follow the story through each of their individual perspectives, it just wouldn't have felt like it matched the concept of multiple stories converging into one. That led us to realize that we needed another character who could take a broader view of all four protagonists. So, our thinking was, “If we just had one more person, all the stories would come together nicely!” And that's how Eshmel was born. We were already halfway through development, but I went to the team and said, “Sorry, but we’re adding one more character.” (Laughs)

Four protagonists is already a tall order, and there you go adding another one.

Kusakihara: But thanks to that, we were able to organize the overall flow of the story. It now begins with a prologue in which Eshmel descends as a savior into a world that has fallen under the rule of the underworld. From there, Eshmel goes back to the past, helps the four protagonists who hold the key to the story, recruits them as allies, and takes on the final battle.

Nakanishi: Having each path’s protagonist lead the way toward the final battle would've been interesting, too. But we needed a character who could look at the whole picture, like the professor in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I think adding that character made the overall structure easier to understand, with the idea that Eshmel helps the four protagonists rebuild a world that has fallen apart.

Yokota: Before Eshmel came into the picture, the story wasn’t built around returning to the past, right?

Kusakihara: Right. Back then, it was just a story that moved toward the future. But once Eshmel was added, we had a clear purpose. Eshmel would go back in time, gather information and experiences from the past, and ultimately bring the four protagonists’ stories together into one. In that way, the idea of “weaving everything together” became part of both the gameplay and the story, and I think we were able to make the two fit together really well.