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Fire Emblem's Creators Considered Taking The Franchise To Modern Day Or Mars
In the latest entry of the Iwata Asks series, the titular president of Nintendo speaks with Intelligent systems about the Fire Emblem series focusing specifically on Awakening and the game it almost became.
There's a wealth of interesting tidbits in the interview, but one of the more interesting is when considering how to change the Fire Emblem series to make it more universally appealing, the team considered either bringing the game into the modern age, or moving it to Mars. If the team had decided to pursue this direction, the game may have been called Fire Emblem 2011. Project manager Masahiro Higuchi said, "We made proposals that were a complete departure from the medieval worldview so far – like Fire Emblem completely in the modern world or the one which has the sense of an fairy tale. But they were too far out, so we couldn't get started." When these more extreme ideas were proposed, producer Hitoshi Yamagami said he asked, "Is this even Fire Emblem?" which shut down those directions quickly.
Some other details from the interview include the controversy surrounding the casual mode included in the last Fire Emblem game, which removed permadeath for your team. Despite the original controversy, the team says everything is all right now, and many from the team play using that setting.
You can check out the full interview by heading here. For our review of Fire Emblem Awakening, head here. For more on the next entry in the Fire Emblem series, Fate, head here and here.
[Source: Iwata Asks]
Our Take
I wouldn't mind seeing Fire Emblem go in a crazy direction just because it's nice to see established franchises try new things, but if you're taking a medieval tactics game to Mars, it seems like maybe you should just establish a whole new franchise. It worked for Advance Wars, right?
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