Fire Emblem Engage Developers Worried Alear ‘Was Being Too Vulnerable’

Fire Emblem Engage Developers Intended to Make Alear Relatable

A new, official interview with Fire Emblem Engage Director Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi from the Entertainment Planning Development Department, Production Group 2 went over how Alear’s development resulted in a bit of balancing. The goal was to make someone who would “resonate” with players. However, during development, the two noted they almost “overdid” it and made the character difficult to connect with. As such, they needed to adjust the protagonist to show growth and fragility.

Recommended Videos

As Nakanishi noted when discussing Alear’s development, “We were worried that players would give up on the protagonist before they could get emotionally attached to them.” Nintendo also stepped in and noted there could be connection issues.

Here are Fire Emblem Engage Director Tei’s comments on Alear from the official interview.

That said, we had many twists and turns with Nintendo regarding the characterisation of Alear… When a protagonist is a royal, they are often associated with bravery, or thought to have a sense of mission to fight against fate and challenges, and I believe those are the traits that people generally associate with heroes. However, I thought such heroes are unlikely to resonate with people today.

Let’s say someone tells you one day, out of nowhere, that your mission is to save the world. My guess is that your response wouldn’t be like “OK! I’ll do my best”… So, at the early stage of development, we had many moments where Alear fears the enemies and says unheroic things.

…Well… we overdid it and Nintendo pointed it out to us.

So, we decided to keep a good balance. We kept Alear’s fragile side in the beginning but showed them gradually growing braver.

The protagonist – in other words, the actual player of the game – embarking on a journey is a classic storyline of a Fire Emblem title, but we knew we wanted to create a story that matches the modern world and made some adjustments.

Fire Emblem Engage will come to the Nintendo Switch on January 20, 2023.


Siliconera is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy
Author
Image of Jenni Lada
Jenni Lada
Jenni is Editor-in-Chief at Siliconera and has been playing games since getting access to her parents' Intellivision as a toddler. She continues to play on every possible platform and loves all of the systems she owns. (These include a PS4, Switch, Xbox One, WonderSwan Color and even a Vectrex!) You may have also seen her work at GamerTell, Cheat Code Central, Michibiku and PlayStation LifeStyle.