Fire Emblem fans got a surprise at the recent Nintendo Direct with the announcement of the franchise's next entry. Fire Emblem Engage tells the story of Alear, a dragon child who awakens from a thousand-year nap to find the world in turmoil. A cabal of evil mages are following in the footsteps of their villainous Fire Emblem predecessors by seeking the return of a dark dragon. To save the world, Alear and their companions must collect the Emblem Rings: powerful artifacts that can summon heroes of the past, called Emblems, to fight alongside them.
The idea of gathering heroes from across the Fire Emblem franchise in one place is hardly original; Fates allowed players to scan amiibo to recruit characters, and the Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game is all about summoning characters from other games. Fire Emblem Warriors also comes to mind as a game whose major selling point was featuring of characters from old games. However, based on a single trailer, Fire Emblem Engage already seems to be handling its fan service better than Warriors did.
The Vertical Fan Service in Fire Emblem Warriors
Fire Emblem Warriors is a musou game that married mechanics iconic to Fire Emblem with those from titles like Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. While its successor Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes doubled down on the Three Houses setting of Fodlan, Fire Emblem Warriors marketed itself as a parallel world where characters from different Fire Emblem games would battle together.
However, when the game released, players were remiss to find only a handful of Fire Emblem’s unique settings represented. Most of the playable characters were spread between three games: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Fire Emblem Awakening, and Fire Emblem Fates.
Including DLC characters, Shadow Dragon had six playable characters, Awakening had 10, and Fates had 13; including male and female options for Robin and Corrin from the latter two. Blazing Sword and Shadows of Valentia each had a single character represented: Lyndis and Celica, respectively. Including the Warriors original protagonist twins and the Fire Emblem staple Anna, characters from three games made up 85 percent of the roster, and Fire Emblem Fates alone took up over a third of it.
Fire Emblem Warriors was by no means a bad game. It sold well, and it was popular enough to spark another Fire Emblem Warriors spin-off. That said, Fire Emblem Warriors was not the romp through Fire Emblem history that most hoped it would be. With hundreds of characters across decades worth of games, there were plenty of missed opportunities for fan service, especially concerning older games in the franchise.
The Horizontal Fan Service of Fire Emblem Engage
Since Fire Emblem Engage was only just announced, information is sparse on the specifics of how it will handle fan service, but from the trailer one can already see the game is using its history better than Warriors did. The story itself isn’t winning any awards for creativity - dark mages resurrecting evil dragons has been repeated nearly a dozen times across Fire Emblem history, and is also almost identical to the lukewarm plot of Fire Emblem Warriors. Engage even has a sub-plot of fighting alongside heroes from other games.
However, Fire Emblem Engage seems to be doing things differently than Warriors. Rather than having tons of characters from a few games, Fire Emblem Engage chooses one representative from each major Fire Emblem title, sans remakes and one direct sequel. With 12 Emblem heroes confirmed to appear, Fire Emblem Engage has almost a third of the heroes Fire Emblem Warriors had, but it casts a wide net to include a character from every game, including titles that haven’t seen international releases.
Ultimately, this method is better. Fire Emblem Engage’s system allows all Fire Emblem games to get more equal representation by avoiding the imbalance in Warriors' roster. Though the Emblem heroes seem to be characters all their own, the smaller, hand-picked cast will also allow the Fire Emblem Engage original characters to shine more than those found in Warriors, who were more of a narrative framework to explain away the setting.
What Fire Emblem Warriors Could Have Been
Fire Emblem Warriors was supposed to be the ultimate Fire Emblem fan service game, but it ended up playing things safe by focusing mostly on the two most recent Fire Emblem titles at the time. The game was a success, but one has to wonder what heights it could have reached if Intelligent Systems hadn’t played it safe by relying on characters that newer fans would recognize.
If Fire Emblem Warriors had cast its net as wide as Fire Emblem Engage seems to, players could have had a truly amazing musou game on their hands. Even if it had kept the same general number of playable characters, it could have pulled between three and five characters from each Fire Emblem setting. The ability to play as characters like Ephraim, Eirika, Micaiah, or Hector would have transformed Fire Emblem Warriors from a fun romp with Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates to a love letter for the entire franchise.
Nevertheless, it is probably for the best that Fire Emblem Warriors played it safe. As the second Nintendo Warriors game, it needed to do well to ensure there would be more games in the future, and relying on recent, well-known characters was a sure way to do so - hence why Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes focused on a single setting. Through its conservative fan service, Fire Emblem Warriors set the stage for Nintendo and Intelligent Systems to go deeper with Fire Emblem Engage, and ensure more Fire Emblem Warriors games could be produced. Some day, perhaps players will get a truly epic Fire Emblem Warriors game with over 80 characters like some Dynasty Warriors titles.
Fire Emblem Engage releases for Switch on January 20, 2023.