Today was the official Fire Emblem Direct from Nintendo, and quite a few interesting games were announced. First of all Fire Emblem Warriors was officially announced for both the Nintendo Switch and New 3DS, and the short gameplay clip confirmed that Chrom from Fire Emblem Awakening would be playable. After they also announced that a brand new Fire Emblem game would be coming to the Nintendo Switch in the near future, and that the new mobile game, "Fire Emblem Heroes," would be coming out on 2/7/2017. This game is a free to play title where you summon past FE heroes, and battle it out against other enemies on an 8x6 grid. Like many games out like it, you can pay to gain access to summons faster than by playing the game normally, but payment is optional. However, one of the most interesting announcements during this direct was something completely unexpected -- a full remake of the Japanese exclusive "Fire Emblem Gaiden."
Fire Emblem Gaiden ("side story") was the second Fire Emblem game to ever be released, and it was quite a bit different from the original which put most of the systems we know today in place. Rather than being a pure tactical turn based RPG, Gaiden featured an open map where you could choose locations to go to, there were towns you could explore, NPCs to talk to, and there were even full dungeons to explore with monsters to fight. Of course the turn based strategy battles were still in the game, but the other systems and features put a unique spin on things that we haven't seen since. Or, at least until now.
With Fire Emblem Echoes (as it will now be called), Gaiden has now been fully remade from the ground up using the same graphics/engine as Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates. Dungeon crawling takes place fully in 3D, battle scenes take place in 3D, and your classic TBS maps continue to use the same mix of 2D sprites and 3D maps as the previous two 3DS games used. To put it simply, it's Gaiden, but updated to the series' current standards. To top it all off, the game will be released on 5/17/2017!
It's hard to believe that Nintendo is finally bring this game over after all of these years, but it's finally happening, and many fans are sure to be excited.
For more information on Echoes as well as the other new FE games,
check out the full Nintendo Direct!
