Fire Emblem: If

[Skyblade]

The developers have said in several interviews that they felt stifled by the confines that the series had laid on them. They had wanted to branch out and try new things for a while, but couldn't. Heck, that's the entire reason Revelation of the Illusion #FE exists. When they received their ultimatum with Awakening, they decided to actually make some huge changes (like Pair Up, revamped supports, revamped skills, etcetera). Sure, they didn't all work, but it was such a breath of fresh air for the series that it really breathed new life into it.

With Awakening's success, they're going even further with If. They're introducing town building and resource management on a scale never seen before. They're introducing new ways to interact with characters, and with other players. They're adding more depth to the story and more personality to both sides of the conflict. They're trying ways to change weapon usage to be more intuitive and have better flow overall. All of these changes probably won't work out either. But they'll give the series more room to grow and evolve going forward.

This isn't the developers selling out to reach a more mainstream audience, this is the developers spreading their wings and trying ideas they've had, but could never put in before. And, at its heart, the game is still Fire Emblem. It still has that spark that makes the games special.

I hadn't heard they changed the name of SMT vs FE. But that's fine. Same game. Still interested. Still going to buy it. But I also hadn't heard of this "ultimatum" the developer was given. What's the story behind that? Sounds interesting

I'd love to tell the story, because it is a story that is EVERYTHING that I love about Nintendo.

When Intelligent Systems got ready to make the next Fire Emblem game, they were given an ultimatum by Nintendo. The series had been flagging in sales, and it had not been doing as well as it needed to. Nintendo gave it a sales goal to reach. If the new game didn't sell at least 250,000 copies, the series was going to be ended.

Truth be told, sales are dropping. The sales manager of Nintendo, Mr. Hatano, told us that this could be the last Fire Emblem. Due to this progressive descend on sales, they told us that if the sales of this episode stayed below 250,000 copies, we’d stop working on the saga. I remember when I came back from the meeting and told the team ‘My God, what are we gonna do?! The end has come!’. Our reaction was clear: if this was going to be the last Fire Emblem, we had to put everything we always wanted to include.

They made it everything that they wanted Fire Emblem to be. They worked their best to bring in as many solid mechanics, changes, and updates as they could to the systems. And Nintendo did NOT give up on Fire Emblem either. They pushed the game. They cross promoted it with Shin Megami Tensei IV, they backed it with Nintendo Direct presentations, web adverts, highlighting it in the E-Shop, everything they could.

And the result is a game that completely reinvigorated a dying franchise. It sold more than enough, just in Japan, to meet the mark. Around the world it has hit something like 2 million copies, last I checked. It added so many new mechanics that the series has room to breath, and grow, and it keeps the games coming, for all the fans, and all the new players who haven't gotten to experience this lovely series.


Also, my Lucina amiibo arrived today, so I have all four of the Fire Emblem amiibo so far. Yay!