Development, Around 100 Characters at Launch & Other Interesting Tidbits (A Fire Emblem Heroes Interview)

Nope, Fire Emblem Heroes is still not out, so what better way to pass the time then for me to share what was revealed during an interview between Famitsu and the two Directors of Fire Emblem Heroes, and for you to read it?

The two Directors are Kohei Maeda of Intelligent Systems and Shingo Matsushita of Nintendo and if I’m honest, the interview did in fact turn up some interesting facts. For example while Heroes is the first Fire Emblem made for mobile phones, Intelligent Systems has actually had the desire to do so for quite some time now. Also while we do know that Intelligent Systems led the development for Heroes, during the course of the interview, it was revealed that the team who worked on the game, is in fact the main Fire Emblem team and while they were working on Heroes, they were also working on developing Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Developing the 2018 Fire Emblem game we can expect to release on Nintendo Switch and supervising Fire Emblem Warriors.

As for Fire Emblem Heroes, Intelligent Systems always wanted it to be a free-to-play title and that the gacha mechanic has been present since the beginning. The reason for this is because the random drops for characters would be the perfect way of getting players to know the different characters that the vast Fire Emblem series has introduced over the years. And since we’re on the subject of characters there will approximately by 100 Heroes available at launch, (click here for a Perfectly Nintendo list of all currently confirmed characters). It is also aid that there are minor differences between the characters, but efforts were made to ensure the parameters wouldn’t differ too much and while a 5 Star Hero has more stars then a 4 Star Hero, it doesn’t mean the 4 Star Hero is weaker, as you can level them up to the next rank, increasing their base stats before training them up.

Also just like the Fire Emblem Direct said, every line for every character is brand new and was recorded purposefully for Fire Emblem Heroes and all the illustrations for Heroes is also new. Meaning nothing at all from previous games or Fire Emblem 0 the trading card game, was used. It was confirmed that there is a special damage illustration for every character in the game, not just the main characters, but the characters will need to receive a ton of damage for you to see the injured form.

Now onto the game itself. Because the desire for the game was to be one players (both newcomers and Fire Emblem fans) could enjoy, they wanted to ensure it was a game that was easy to pick up. So a lot of focus was put on that, which lead to it being a game that can be played one handed like Super Mario Run and has maps that should only take 5-10 minutes to beat. At launch there are to be around 50 maps available in the main story (1 prologue and 9 Chapters,) but more will be added down the line as a means of keeping players engaged. Also the 8×6 grid we heard about during the Direct, not only is it the standard size, but it is apparently the only size. This is due to the devs ensuring the map would fit on the screen at all times and all maps are based on maps from previous Fire Emblem entries.

There will also be an event that will be tied to your friends, which will have their leader character appear in your Castle and you will be able to acquire Hero’s Wings from them and this might not be the only friend based feature as the developers are considering adding more in the future and lastly they mentioned auto-mode. A mode that will have your units moving on their own merit so you don’t have to, but while it will be okay to use during the earlier levels, when it comes to the harder and later ones, you might want to remain fully in control of all their actions. Just because there isn’t a permadeath in Heroes, it doesn’t justify letting your team get slaughtered for no reason.

And that concludes everything we were able to get from Perfectly Nintendo’s article based on Ash’s translation of the Famitsu. For anyone wanting to see if there was anything more to the interview, you can use this link below, but I do recommend learning Japanese:

https://app.famitsu.com/20170201_957397/

Source: Famitsu via Perfectly Nintendo