Fire Emblem Fates – A Tale of Two Families: Episode 1 (Birthright)
Today, Nintendo uploaded the very first episode of Fire Emblem Fates – A Tales of Two Families, a series of videos featuring the developers of the game. Together, they talk about the development of Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright / Conquest, explaining some of their decisions regarding gameplay, character design, and more.
It features the following people:
- Genki Yokota (Director)
- Hitoshi Yamagami (Producer)
- Kouhei Maeda (Director)
- Yusuke Kozaki (Character Design & Illustration)
- Masahiro Higuchi (Producer)
In this first episode, they start by explaining how they came up with the idea of having players chose between two sides, which would lead to two different stories. They also explain why they decided to have a third route, for players who wanted to save both Kingdoms. After that, they move on to the differences between Hoshido and Nohr, and more precisely the architecture.
Next, Yusuke Kozaki (chara-designer) talk about how he wanted to differentiate between the various races (based on the hair colour for example), but also between Hoshido and Nohr characters. For Hoshido, he mostly went with the following colours: red, pink or orange. He also explains that people from Hoshido look like they are of asian descent.
The discussion then moves on to the Japanese imagery (design of the characters, classes, etc.), and whether there was any difficulty combining that imagery with the Fire Emblem universe. The developers describe the end result as a Japanese motif applied to a fantasy world, not really as something that looks like Japan.
They find that the Japanese design for the characters, as well as the Japan-inspired classes, are pretty refreshing, something that cannot be found in previous Fire Emblem games.
Finally, Masahiro Higuchi (Producer) talk about how the Hoshido’s route differs from Nohr’s. It features random quests to earn extra XP, gold, and more, which are meant to help players and avoid they stop playing after hitting a wall. Overall, Birthright is quite easier than Conquest, due to quite a few small details such as the range of healing spells/items being different between the two versions.
They explain that Conquest may have the most Fire Emblem-ness of the two, when you look at gameplay. But when it comes to the story, it’s in Birthright that you’ll find the usual “Good Kingdom vs Bad Kingdom” aspect you usually find in Fire Emblem games.
Here’s the first episode of Fire Emblem Fates – A Tale of Two Families, focusing on Hoshido:
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright / Conquest (3DS) comes out later this year in Europe.
Source: Nintendo
