Interview with Nintendo and IS from Multiplayer.it

[Pikappa93]

Italian website Multiplayer.it had an interview with Nintendo and Intelligent Systems about Fire Emblem Echoes, specifically with Masahiro Higuchi (producer, Intelligent Systems), Toshiyuki Kusakihara (director, Intelligent Systems), Hitoshi Yamagami (producer, Nintendo) and Kenta Nakanishi (director, Nintendo).
You can find the original interview here.
Its content it's mostly the same as the Dengeki interview that @Kirokan translated last month (chek it out!), with just some small new detail here and there, but I thought it would be nice to translate it anyway. Enjoy!

As you might know, English is not my first language, so if something is not clear feel free to ask me anything.

Spoiler

Q: Fire Emblem Gaiden has been considered the "black sheep" of the series for years: why did you choose to remake this instead of a more beloved title like Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones?
Hitoshi Yamagami: Initially we didn't choose to specifically remake Fire Emblem Gaiden. After development for Fire Emblem Fates was done, Intelligent Systems team explained how they couldn't manage to put some features they had in mind and wanting to try it with another Nintendo 3DS title. Unluckily, we were about to start development for the new Fire Emblem for Nintendo Switch in that period so, after determining how much time would have passed before the beginning of actual work for the new game, we opted for a remake. Personally I thought it was best to remake another game instead of Fire Emblem Gaiden, but at the end of the day three specific motivations prevailed: 1) The original Fire Emblem Gaiden couldn't fully explore its world and setting, so a remake would have given us more freedom; 2) Fire Emblem Gaiden featured unique mechanics that would allow us to show the players that the Fire Emblem series still has much to say; 3) There's a lot of Fire Emblem Gaiden fans in our team.

Q: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia lacks the so-called "weapon triangle" that defined the series for years. Fans from the latest entries of the Fire Emblem series are afraid that this will have an impact on the strategic approach. What do you think about this? Are you thinking of abandoning the weapon triangle in future Fire Emblem titles too or is Echoes an isolated case?
Kenta Nakanishi: Actually, we tried to stay as faithful as possible to the original, but we improved some elements from the game that we found particularly frustrating nowadays. The weapon triangle doesn't work well with the game we developed; had we chosen to implement that, we should have changed some things. For instance, we should have added axe users to Alm's party or created new units capable of wielding multiple weapons. In that case, however, it would have meant taking distances from Fire Emblem Gaiden and so we chose to leave out the weapon triangle completely.
Toshiyuki Kusakihara: It's true that Fire Emblem Gaiden lacks the weapon triangle, but there are different strategic elements. Terrain is much more relevant than in the past, especially because magic ignores its effects. Flying units are unaffected by terrain effects while archers have a much wider attack range while being less accurate. Technically you could position your army in a particularly evasive terrain and wait for the enemy to come close; another option is to attack with magic in case the ones protected by terrain are the enemies, so to force them to move. If mages manage to be on the right spot, it becomes very difficult to hit them. However you can try to weaken them with your archers and let your bulky units go for them and deal the final blow. There are so many strategies to elaborate and back then we developed maps and balancing for Fire Emblem Gaiden by thinking of these details rather than the weapon triangle. Focusing on terrain bonuses, you'll surely appreciate the immediacy yet depth of the game. Moreover, we improved the AI, so injured enemies will run away to safe zones in which they can heal. Now they act like real people who are in danger and I like this because it makes them seem more human. About future games, we'll decide whether to bring back the weapon triangle or taking completely different mechanics into consideration when the time comes. It'll depend on the game.

Q: In 1992 you chose the subtitle "Gaiden" to mark the game as a spin-off. Nowadays, every new Fire Emblem game has a title like "Awakening" or "Fates" so do we have to consider Echoes a main series game or is it still some sort of spin-off?
Kenta Nakanishi: First of all, we have to explain why we did not use the word "Gaiden" this time too. Fire Emblem Gaiden was the second ever Fire Emblem game to be released and so we chose the subtitle "Gaiden" - meaning "side story" - to differentiate it from the first Fire Emblem that had a long subtitle in Japanese, "Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light". Since then, many years passed and many games too, and the concept of "side story" when comparing to other games no longer fits. However, if we had chosen a completely different title, then some players wouldn't have been able to recognize Shadows of Valentia as a remake so we searched for a word that made its nature clear worldwide. Finally we thought of "Echoes" because we wanted players to hear the echoes from the original in this new adventure too.
Hitoshi Yamagami: In my opinion, the main theme of the game is the echoes. Just think of the relationship between Alm and Celica, the fact that you can take control of two armies at the same time and the way we modernized old mechanics to make them up to date. Even the fact that old players can share their opinions with those who came aboard with the remake makes me think of echoes. I really like this subtitle and if we'll decide to do another remake in the future, we could use "Echoes" again to distinguish it from new games.

Q: Fire Emblem Echoes is the only Fire Emblem game in which you can explore dungeons in a third person view. It's an interesting mechanic that we enjoyed a lot. Furthermore, full voice acting was a surprise: will we see dungeon crawling and full voice acting come back in future Fire Emblem games?
Toshiyuki Kusakihara: First of all, I'm glad you enjoyed these features. Truth to be told, we would've liked to implement dungeons in Fire Emblem Fates too, but we couldn't make it in the end. We wanted players to explore castles in a third person view, but we had to restrict it to just looking around while staying still. Dungeons were already present in Fire Emblem Gaiden and when we discussed how to implement that, we thought of Fire Emblem Fates again and we were able to make them the way we wanted. Moreover, Fire Emblem Gaiden has many classic RPG features, so dungeon crawling would fit well. About full voice acting, Fire Emblem Echoes is a first, meaning it wasn't easy. Eventually we realized that getting to know the characters and to understand them is easier thanks to voiced dialogues, so I hope to bring this experience back in the next titles.

Q: It's worth saying that you showed great respect towards Fire Emblem Gaiden while developing Fire Emblem Echoes. For instance, you didn't add too much new content. However, when you developed Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, you implemented some features that weren't there in the original. Why did you choose to stick more to tradition this time around?
Kenta Nakanishi: Despite Fire Emblem Echoes being very different from other Fire Emblem games like Awakening and Fates, we believed it had its charm regardless. That's why we decided to improve the most frustrating and out of date features, so that people who never played Fire Emblem Gaiden could face a whole new adventure while others who already played it could feel a strong sense of nostalgia. In other words, we focused on its weak points, that are the plot and the characters. Back then I played Fire Emblem Gaiden a lot because my father had recently passed away and the game was one of his favorites, but the protagonists and its story didn't really stand out to me. The fact is that the story was mostly told in the instruction manual that my father had lost. On the other hand, players love Fire Emblem especially for its story and relationships between characters lately; consequently, while remaking Fire Emblem Gaiden we imposed on ourselves to improve that aspect of the game so that the characters and the world they live in could stand out a lot more.

Q: Fire Emblem Echoes is spectacular also thanks to beautiful animations, but many veterans of the series would like a come back to 2D graphics and traditional sprites. Do you think you will be able please them in the future?
Masahiro Higuchi: I worked personally on the animations found in SNES and GBA titles, so I'm very glad to know they were so much appreciated. At the time being, I cannot completely rule out the possibility of a return to bidimensional graphics, also because Fire Emblem Heroes, a recently released title for smartphones, is fully 2D. However, some features can only be implemented by working on polygonal graphics, so we should think of that at a proper time and depending on the circumstances.

 

Edited May 17, 2017 by Pikappa93

[VincentASM]

Thanks for the share!

Hopefully they do keep full voice acting in future games. That's probably the biggest (new) thing that I enjoyed in the game.

[Kirokan]

Thanks for sharing! I know how much work goes into this sort of thing, so it's much appreciated.

The full VAing is great for Japanese learners too who may not have understood some kanji but knew the word itself. I don't know how the ENG is though. xD

[nocturnal YL]

Thanks for sharing and translating! That makes me like Shadows of Valentia more. I actually thought they're being a bit too faithful this time. They should have at least had proper resistance growth and give the magic and pegasus class paths an extra class tier for parity. But then again, my run's Faye gets Res like crazy for this game's standard (I'm lucky) and you can pretty much destroy everything at 20/20 without a third tier. And the improved accuracy turns saints into awesome tanks, so I won't complain too much.

The injured AI thing managed to make them act stupider. Now I can almost-kill enemies and be assured that they won't fight back, even when they're magic users that could OHKO my units. And I can predict their retreat paths.

One reason I was pretty thrilled about this game is its sheer quality (minus the weird game mechanics part). It gave me confidence that FE16 will be good. And seeing (almost) full voice acting here is very reassuring.

I'm not really looking forward to another 2D game (I don't dislike them, though). There are many other games in the SRPG genre these days (including those from Kaga himself), so the high-fidelity graphics help make FE stand out. I actually miss 3D map units.

Overall, I'd say they have done a great job mixing new visuals, music and story and old mechanics. I was worried that having a Gaiden remake is basically deliberately making something that won't be popular, but it looks to me that this is part of their calculated risk.

[Pikappa93]

19 minutes ago, nocturnal YL said:

Overall, I'd say they have done a great job mixing new visuals, music and story and old mechanics. I was worried that having a Gaiden remake is basically deliberately making something that won't be popular, but it looks to me that this is part of their calculated risk.

That's why I found interesting that Yamagami claimed he didn't want to remake Gaiden at first, but rather another game. I'm wondering if he had a specific game in mind or if he meant he just thought Gaiden was not the best choice, but it turned out to be the best one for what they wanted to do.

[Etrurian emperor]

Nice interview though the question about Shadow dragon confuses me a bit.

Because with new characters and a more updated story it seems to be Echoes which is changing things up while shadow dragon sticked to traditions to rigorously. 

[nocturnal YL]

1 minute ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Nice interview though the question about Shadow dragon confuses me a bit.

Because with new characters and a more updated story it seems to be Echoes which is changing things up while shadow dragon sticked to traditions to rigorously. 

I think they meant things like the prologues, level limit of 30 for those who can't promote, the weapon triangle, and items like the Brave Axe and Hauteclere. FE1 treated certain unit types pretty badly, and FE11 balanced things a bit. It also had new characters that no one would get (the recruitment requirement for those ended up making me skip that game).

[VincentASM]

3 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Nice interview though the question about Shadow dragon confuses me a bit.

Because with new characters and a more updated story it seems to be Echoes which is changing things up while shadow dragon sticked to traditions to rigorously. 

It really depends on your perspective.

Mechanically, Shadow Dragon has a lot more stuff that is different when you look on the surface. For example, Reclass, forging, sidequests to help players will massive losses, Loan Units, multiplayer, etc.

I personally think Echoes has a similar number of changes, but the Shadow Dragon changes are probably more, I dunno, memorable for some?

[Cute Chao]

I'm still glad they added in supports, although I would've liked to see more. That was SD's biggest downfall for me (that and new characters only being recruitable by killing off most of my army. No thanks!).

It's great to hear why they remade it - plus they seem very open to future remakes :D I didn't like FE4 that much but I loved FE5... and I'd love the play them both in English properly ^.^

[Pikappa93]

The fact that they intend to bring back full voice acting for the next games too makes me very happy.

[sirmola]

13 hours ago, VincentASM said:

It really depends on your perspective.

Mechanically, Shadow Dragon has a lot more stuff that is different when you look on the surface. For example, Reclass, forging, sidequests to help players will massive losses, Loan Units, multiplayer, etc.

I personally think Echoes has a similar number of changes, but the Shadow Dragon changes are probably more, I dunno, memorable for some?

Plus, lots of the changes to SD are questionable from a game-play design perspective. I love SD, but i can't defend the "killing your characters to get the sidequest" thing. I obviously can't really speak for SOV (having not played it yet), but it seems that the changes were considered to all fit with each other.

[Sentinel07]

So, they thought the biggest weakpoints were the story and characters. Oh boy, I can just see those thinking the biggest weakpoint is the map design seething at the teeth right now. :D

But in all seriousness, I'm glad they decided to mostly faithful in terms of game mechanics. I want to experience what made this game different, and I feel like I wouldn't get that if they changed everything to be like the modern games, mechanically-speaking.

[Pikappa93]

3 hours ago, Sentinel07 said:

But in all seriousness, I'm glad they decided to mostly faithful in terms of game mechanics. I want to experience what made this game different, and I feel like I wouldn't get that if they changed everything to be like the modern games, mechanically-speaking.

I couldn't agree more. It's not rare for remakes to change quite a few things and thus becoming more of a reinterpratation rather than a remake. I'm glad they went this way, even for map design. While I do think it's inferior to other games, I also believe that complicated maps are overrated (but that's just my opinion).

[Armagon]

2 hours ago, Pikappa93 said:

I couldn't agree more. It's not rare for remakes to change quite a few things and thus becoming more of a reinterpratation rather than a remake. I'm glad they went this way, even for map design. While I do think it's inferior to other games, I also believe that complicated maps are overrated (but that's just my opinion).

I agree with this. The map design in Echoes is pretty bad, but given that battles aren't meant to last that long (most of them *looks at Cantor and desert battles*), it makes sense why the maps are the way they are.