Was Fire Emblem Engage facing cancellation? (Leak talk)

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I've revisited the leaks for this game, and one detail has caught my eye. It's been finished for over a year.  I definitely believe that the trailer we saw is the content complete version of the game. We're just four months out from release, like when we saw Echoes for the first time, that WAS a finished game, just going through QA, localization, and DLC development. The leak said 'Over a year', as of June 2022. Now, we don't have clarification around what "finished" really means, since that varies from company to company, or even developer to developer on a single project. Pikmin 4, a game slated to release sometime in 2023 was "nearing completion" in 2015. The assumption we've always had about this version of Pikmin 4 was that it was cancelled, not unlike the Wii version of Pikmin 3 announced in 2008 that was quietly cancelled until it resurfaced as a Wii U announcement in 2012. Fire Emblem is no stranger to cancelled games either. Including one for the N64, and one for the Wii following Radiant Dawn's release. And that's just what we know, right? If a publisher is losing faith in an early development title, they'll delay its announcement while they deliberate what to do about it. Cancelled games are a huge money sink and look bad from a business/investor standpoint, and it's even worse when the public is made aware of it. 

So if the game was "finished" back in early 2021, why the delay? Even if it wasn't ready to ship until the end of the year, that still would have fit snugly in between Three Houses DLC and the announcement of Three Hopes. And 2021 was the biggest drought year the Switch has ever had. There was nothing threatening to cannabalize the sales of an iffy FE game. Well I assume if this game was about to get canned, then the developers must have been tasked with making one major change to turn around the project. Could the answer be that the base exploration stuff was added late in development? Did they decide, years after Three Houses, that every one of these needs a monastery after all? The Emblem/Heroes From Another World stuff seems to have been the main idea of the game since the start, as a 30th Anniversary title. Could missing the 2020 deadline really have been a fatal error? I've never taken Nintendo as the sort of publisher that cares about this sort of thing. Not as much as their partners that handle franchises like Kirby or Pokemon. I feel like if the game simply wasn't up to their quality standards, they could have always released it as a budget priced downloadable title. But again, Nintendo doesn't do that. 60 dollars MRSP or it doesn't ship.

 

[Crubat]

probably cause of game lineup for this winter, they knew they couldnt complete it for the 30th anniversay so they probably just kept it in the vault till nintendo needed a game

[Azz]

Who knows really? It's probably a combination of a lot of things.

Three Houses was delayed twice, coming out in summer 2019 rather than late 2018 (so we can guess that's probably at least a 5-6 month delay) which no doubt didn't help. If Engage was supposed to come out in 2020 (which would make sense, it being a 30th anniversary game, companioning the release of the FE1 translation (which also adds to why Marth is so important in Engage)), I doubt the delay helped plus covid happening as well definitely knocked the momentum. Even if Three Houses was more of a KT project while Engage was more IS, they could've still had overlapping teams and Three Houses probably ended up taking precedence since it was coming out sooner. Then I'm sure KT eventually had to start working on Three Hopes which we can presume was possibly supposed to be a 2020 or 2021 title to latch on to the momentum from Three Houses but again covid so we can't really know.

As for the idea the game has been finished for a year, maybe its just the quality of the photos, but the game does look somewhat unpolished graphically compared to what we saw in the trailer. On top of that there is localisation that has to be done, voice acting might have not yet been completed etc. There are a number of reasons. We saw how many changes Three Houses went through from our first trailer to our second. I highly doubt it was supposed to be cancelled, especially considering the success of Fire Emblem at this point. The N64 and Wii cancellations happened when the series was much different (and much less profitable). And again, I don't think we'll ever truly know how much covid could've affected things. I really don't think a 2-3 year delay for some games is that inconceivable under the circumstances of covid when games prior to covid had worse delays.

Overall, I really don't think we'll ever know unless when interviews start pouring out after the games release the devs reveal why, but again I just really doubt it was possibly gonna get cancelled, even if it has been sitting around for a year being completed and waiting to drop.

[King Marth 64]

52 minutes ago, Crubat said:

probably cause of game lineup for this winter, they knew they couldnt complete it for the 30th anniversay so they probably just kept it in the vault till nintendo needed a game

I think it could have been possible it could have been delayed due to the Pandemic. Technically that a lot of Game Studios and other Companies did get shut down during at closely around March 2020 & have to rely on Online Meeting later on. They did waited to bring back the employees physical on Fall 2021. It might have been possible that they decided to focus more on polishing Engage than just release it for 30th Anniversary.

Edited September 15, 2022 by King Marth 64

[Jotari]

It's entirely possible it just hasn't been finished for over a year. Though that would be a bit embarrassing if KT could finish two Fire Emblem games in the span of time it took IS to complete one. IS working on this also does explain why they haven't whipped up a Genealogy remake real quick using the Three Houses engine, which was what I was fully expecting to be the next release.

Edited September 16, 2022 by Jotari

[Wooster]

The Occam’s razor suggests Nintendo didn’t want Engage competing with 3 Hopes for sales, whose sales unquestionably would’ve plummeted had Engage released either earlier or alongside.

If at the same time, then it would be in direct competition.

If Engage launched first, then Three Hopes and its cast would’ve been old news and not sold as well.

[Jotari]

3 minutes ago, Wooster said:

The Occam’s razor suggests Nintendo didn’t want Engage competing with 3 Hopes for sales, whose sales unquestionably would’ve plummeted had Engage released either earlier or alongside.

If at the same time, then it would be in direct competition.

If Engage launched first, then Three Hopes and its cast would’ve been old news and not sold as well.

That's definitely a viable guess, but I wouldn't call it Occam's Razor, as it relies on quite a few assumptions. Occam's Razor would probably be to just not take leak information at face value.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

49 minutes ago, Wooster said:

The Occam’s razor suggests Nintendo didn’t want Engage competing with 3 Hopes for sales, whose sales unquestionably would’ve plummeted had Engage released either earlier or alongside.

If at the same time, then it would be in direct competition.

If Engage launched first, then Three Hopes and its cast would’ve been old news and not sold as well.

I've already covered this timeline. The leak suggests the game was "finished" in early 2021. So even if they needed so much polish time that they released in November of that year, that's still three months out from Three Hopes' announcement. No conflict between these two games. By the way, we are almost three months out from Three Hopes' release at the reveal of Engage, so three months seems to be their magic number.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

It's entirely possible it just hasn't been finished for over a year. 

Even now we continue to doubt the leaks? I would expect a wrong detail or two as well - with a game that was allegedly shelved and resurfaced years later, but there's no reason to suspect this particular detail is faulty information. We'll never know based on any trailer, or even the released game, but an industry insider hearing about a project at a specific date is a fact that never changes no longer how long the game is in development.

[joevar]

4 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I've revisited the leaks for this game, and one detail has caught my eye. It's been finished for over a year.  I definitely believe that the trailer we saw is the content complete version of the game. We're just four months out from release, like when we saw Echoes for the first time, that WAS a finished game, just going through QA, localization, and DLC development. The leak said 'Over a year', as of June 2022. Now, we don't have clarification around what "finished" really means, since that varies from company to company, or even developer to developer on a single project. Pikmin 4, a game slated to release sometime in 2023 was "nearing completion" in 2015. The assumption we've always had about this version of Pikmin 4 was that it was cancelled, not unlike the Wii version of Pikmin 3 announced in 2008 that was quietly cancelled until it resurfaced as a Wii U announcement in 2012. Fire Emblem is no stranger to cancelled games either. Including one for the N64, and one for the Wii following Radiant Dawn's release. And that's just what we know, right? If a publisher is losing faith in an early development title, they'll delay its announcement while they deliberate what to do about it. Cancelled games are a huge money sink and look bad from a business/investor standpoint, and it's even worse when the public is made aware of it. 

So if the game was "finished" back in early 2021, why the delay? Even if it wasn't ready to ship until the end of the year, that still would have fit snugly in between Three Houses DLC and the announcement of Three Hopes. And 2021 was the biggest drought year the Switch has ever had. There was nothing threatening to cannabalize the sales of an iffy FE game. Well I assume if this game was about to get canned, then the developers must have been tasked with making one major change to turn around the project. Could the answer be that the base exploration stuff was added late in development? Did they decide, years after Three Houses, that every one of these needs a monastery after all? The Emblem/Heroes From Another World stuff seems to have been the main idea of the game since the start, as a 30th Anniversary title. Could missing the 2020 deadline really have been a fatal error? I've never taken Nintendo as the sort of publisher that cares about this sort of thing. Not as much as their partners that handle franchises like Kirby or Pokemon. I feel like if the game simply wasn't up to their quality standards, they could have always released it as a budget priced downloadable title. But again, Nintendo doesn't do that. 60 dollars MRSP or it doesn't ship.

 

remember, a game can still be technically "golden" as in finished development, but still not released for 2-3 more months. a lot of games are like that actually especially big budget game. and this is a japanese game that has leak from chinese build. some translation could be lost along the way. the "finished" part could very well be about the state of game being able to play from start to finish but still has stuff that can be added / polished.

as for delay, its nintendo first party IP. look at Xenoblade 3, its the biggest budget first party titles aside next Zelda if i had to guess, but Xenoblade only has 3 months window from initial announcement. the game even release one month before initial release date without major problem (only minor bug left). in other words, xenoblade also announced when the game actually ready to ship from the get go.  so its marketing stuff, clashing with 3hopes release, and something else maybe

maybe the answer is just simple hiccup from the higher ups in nintendo that fail to organize release date competently. to the point now so many big titles are crammed within half year release.. its nuts

Edited September 16, 2022 by joevar

[Florete]

I don't remember who or where it was said, but I recall reading a post from some insider who said that, as a result of Covid messing with things, Nintendo has altered their strategy and has begun "stockpiling" (I think that was the word they used) completed games to be ready well in advance of when they plan to release to make sure they don't leave gaps in their release schedules. That and and not wanting to cannibalize Three Hopes' sales are likely why Engage has taken so long to be revealed and released. I don't think it was ever seriously facing cancellation.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I've already covered this timeline. The leak suggests the game was "finished" in early 2021. So even if they needed so much polish time that they released in November of that year, that's still three months out from Three Hopes' announcement. No conflict between these two games. By the way, we are almost three months out from Three Hopes' release at the reveal of Engage, so three months seems to be their magic number.

Even now we continue to doubt the leaks? I would expect a wrong detail or two as well - with a game that was allegedly shelved and resurfaced years later, but there's no reason to suspect this particular detail is faulty information. We'll never know based on any trailer, or even the released game, but an industry insider hearing about a project at a specific date is a fact that never changes no longer how long the game is in development.

Well, yes. Just because a leak is real doesn't mean every detail of it is real. We have seen cases in the past where legitimate leaks have been wrong about certain information. Am I saying the game definitely wasn't finished over a year ago, no, not really. I'm saying it's possible.

[Azz]

I fee like if Engage was released before Three Hopes, it would’ve certainly affected its sales.

While Three Hopes did come out 3 years after Three Houses, Three Houses was still a very current thing and the FE game still in most people’s minds. If they went Three Houses>Engage>Three Hopes, it wouldn’t be completely wrong to say nintendo may have thought it would have had a negative domino effect on Three Hopes for being ‘outdated’ to a general consumership with Engage being the new thing and Fodlan being old news