Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem – Hero of Light and Shadow Iwata Asks details
– You can turn off “perma death” (there was no option in previous games, can’t ever bring back characters that die in battle)
– Director Kouhei Maeda feels the perma death feature gives the series its uniqueness, more emotionally attached to the characters, heightens tension
– Maeda said he’d reset the game when he didn’t want to lose a character
– Game development started while the team was also working on Shadow Dragon
– Wanted to do a remake quickly so that players can see what happens next
– There was an initial concern that players who didn’t play Shadow Dragon wouldn’t want to play this game
– Instead decided to make a “completely new” Fire Emblem, though Maeda said it is based off Mystery of the Emblem
– Has completely new elements
– Intelligent Systems had constant meetings with Nintendo throughout development
– One issue: How to open up the game for beginners
– Perma death feature brought up much debate – Nintendo felt that fallen allies return, but for the next map, while project manager Masahiro Higuchi agreed with Maeda’s beliefs and wanted to keep the full feature intact
– Heated dialogues over the perma death feature, series producer Tohru Narihiro remembered them happening daily and sometimes lasting late into the night
– Debate also happened with the Shadow Dragon remake, and other Fire Emblem games, revival system was in place but removed before release
– Design document for Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu in 1996 had “You can die up to five times” in it, and Higuchi protested this to the director
– Originally Higuchi felt the perma death feature couldn’t be negotiated
– Eventually decided that beginners might be put off after hearing that your allies could be permanently killed and they might not know about resetting the game to get the character back
– At first, the team tried making one of the difficulty modes in a way so that allies would come back for the next fight
– Thought advanced players would want to play on the harder difficulty but keep allies, so the feature was untied from the difficulty settings
– “Classic Mode” for perma death, “Casual Mode” for no perma death
– Took about four months to decide on the issue
– Time flows even when the game is off
– Characters go on their own to search for items, build experience
– See which items your characters found by visiting the pre battle prep screen
Thanks to Thomas N for the tip!
