Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia originally released as Fire Emblem Gaiden back in 1992 for the NES in Japan. While Echoes carries over many of its original version’s aspects, tons of new features have been added to this latest iteration to update the title and make it feel fresh and new.
In a recent interview with Polygon, Fire Emblem Echoes’ director Kenta Nakanishi spoke about bringing the title up to date by today’s standards, noting that the game’s story and characters weren’t “as memorable” back when it first released. Nakanishi cited the reason for this lack of depth being the fact that “a lot of the story element was explained in the manual.” Thanks to the possibilities of modern hardware, Nakanishi and the development team were able to remake the game with enhanced characters and story elements, creating a more complete product.
While Fire Emblem Echoes will be getting a lot of changes thanks to advancements in technology, Nakanishi does point out that there were some things he wanted to leave true to the original game. For instance, while more recent games in the Fire Emblem series have the ability to pair characters up so they can create children, Nakanishi decided against this, saying the following:
“We did consider adding things like My Unit and the Avatar [personalization options from the previous 3DS Fire Emblem games], but we really wanted to focus on Alm and Celica.”
To read the entirety of the interview with Nakanishi, you can go here.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is available for the Nintendo 3DS.
