When it comes to releasing multiple games in a series during the same console generation, the developer has to walk a tightrope of sorts to ensure success for both. It’s not just about ensuring both games are quality. It’s about ensuring that both games aren’t the same. After all, if something is visually the same, and the gameplay is the same outside of a few small tweaks, what’s the point of playing it? For the time behind Fire Emblem Engage, they had very unique circumstances during the creation of their title, which led them to make their game different from the last two mainline entries.
Multiple Fire Emblem Engage team members sat down with Nintendo Dream to discuss why the 2023 game was different from the 2019 title. According to Masahiro Higuchi, one of the biggest reasons for the differences was about themes:
“The last game, Three Houses, was planned with the idea of making an adult war chronicle. On the other hand, Engage was made with the idea of broadening our audience, such that even people who have never tried FE would want to pick it up. It’s been over 10 years since Awakening, so we also thought of making another FE that would appeal to a wide audience.”
That might sound a little odd, but it’s fair to say that the 2023 title’s story was more “casual” and “simplistic” than the previous title, which had loads of nuance, twists, and complex themes. Furthermore, the main characters in the two games couldn’t be more different, as co-director Tsutomu Tei noted:
“For the story, unlike Three Houses, we thought it might be good to focus on the growth of the protagonist. While FE is definitely a war chronicle, there have been plenty of games that were tales of adventure or heroism. The first title, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light as well as the three Gameboy Advance games left impressions of that nature, so I feel that this series can accommodate either direction. As storytellers, we decided on the orthodox style of focusing on Alear’s story while the Emblems help them move forward.”
That’s also true. The game’s main story was about Alear; you could learn more about the other characters via support conversations if you wanted.
The question will be what Nintendo does next. Many will likely want a title with another batch of “big choices” and branching storylines. So perhaps that’s what we’ll get next when the time is right.
