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Fire Emblem writing teams and returning writers


pekingduck
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So, I'm not an OG Fire Emblem vet, and in fact, only started playing the series with the GBA generation. Still, it's been some years, and shamefully, I have to say I've never dug into or learned much about the writing process and the people behind that process for Emblem games, despite having some pretty strong positive (or negative) feelings for the various game plots over the years. Off the top of my head for a while, I could only tell people the basic knowledge that Fates Birthright, Conquest, and Revelations were written by three different people, which helped lead to its disorganization. 

I started paying attention to the specific writers more with Three Houses because I just enjoyed the supports so darn much. In particular, I felt that I enjoyed the female-to-female character supports markedly more than those I saw in previous games. I've since learned across multiple sources that Yuki Ikeno from Koei Tecmo was the lead scenario writer for 3H, while Ryohei Hayashi and Mari Okamoto handling additional scenario writing duties. I wouldn't expect them to be brought back for, say a Genealogy of the Holy War remake, but is there a precedent in previous Fire Emblem games for the same writers coming back to handle multiple games after positive audience reception?

I would love for all of the scenario writers from the 3H (or, at least one or two of them) to come back to an ensuing game, especially given that they could then be in a good position to apply the lessons they learned from working with their first Fire Emblem game to a new canvas. Of course it is not easy to do good game writing in any type of game (or any kind of medium, on a more general note), but I feel that the formula for Fire Emblem games provides some unique and tricky challenges distinct from other video game genre writing formulas. Writers have to account for the simultaneous challenges of (1) developing an overarching story narrative with (2) smaller conflict arcs in each map that jive with map designs while (3) writing character arcs in supports and Paralogues that don't contradict what characters have to do in overarching story narratives.

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Kaga designed all the scenarios for all the pre GBA games if that counts. Not sure if he had a hand in the word to word dialogue per se, but he probably changed a lot of dialogue if that didn't quite gel with the story he constructed.

I'd add to your list of difficulties being the fact that characters contribution to the plot must take into account that characters can be randomly killed off at any point in the story.

Edited by Jotari
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  • 3 years later...
On 9/10/2019 at 12:40 PM, pekingduck said:

So, I'm not an OG Fire Emblem vet, and in fact, only started playing the series with the GBA generation. Still, it's been some years, and shamefully, I have to say I've never dug into or learned much about the writing process and the people behind that process for Emblem games, despite having some pretty strong positive (or negative) feelings for the various game plots over the years. Off the top of my head for a while, I could only tell people the basic knowledge that Fates Birthright, Conquest, and Revelations were written by three different people, which helped lead to its disorganization. 

I started paying attention to the specific writers more with Three Houses because I just enjoyed the supports so darn much. In particular, I felt that I enjoyed the female-to-female character supports markedly more than those I saw in previous games. I've since learned across multiple sources that Yuki Ikeno from Koei Tecmo was the lead scenario writer for 3H, while Ryohei Hayashi and Mari Okamoto handling additional scenario writing duties. I wouldn't expect them to be brought back for, say a Genealogy of the Holy War remake, but is there a precedent in previous Fire Emblem games for the same writers coming back to handle multiple games after positive audience reception?

I would love for all of the scenario writers from the 3H (or, at least one or two of them) to come back to an ensuing game, especially given that they could then be in a good position to apply the lessons they learned from working with their first Fire Emblem game to a new canvas. Of course it is not easy to do good game writing in any type of game (or any kind of medium, on a more general note), but I feel that the formula for Fire Emblem games provides some unique and tricky challenges distinct from other video game genre writing formulas. Writers have to account for the simultaneous challenges of (1) developing an overarching story narrative with (2) smaller conflict arcs in each map that jive with map designs while (3) writing character arcs in supports and Paralogues that don't contradict what characters have to do in overarching story narratives.

Well there are so brilliant scripts that it's a sin not to know who's behind it, there are really decent people 😃

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