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The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and Fates

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The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and Fates

Book 978-4198640569.png
The book's cover, featuring Ike, Eliwood, Marth, Sigurd and Lucina.

Game(s) represented
ISBN
  • 4198640564 (ISBN-10)
  • 978-4198640569 (ISBN-13)
Publisher

徳間書店

Release date

November 28th, 2015JP

The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and Fates (Japanese: メイキング オブ ファイアーエムブレム 開発秘話で綴る25周年、覚醒そしてif The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and if) is an art and design book released for the Fire Emblem series's 25th anniversary in 2015.

The book, as the title implies, primarily focuses on Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates, featuring very little coverage of the other games in the series, though it does reveal details of Fire Emblem 64 and an unnamed and unreleased Wii game.

Overview

The vast majority of the book is development text focusing on Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates, though there are development illustrations and interviews for a handful of other games.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light development info

Interviews reveal several things that did not make it into the final release of Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, it also includes concept sketches for some classes.

Early in development CG's were planned to feature in Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, the book includes a sketch of Lena and Julian fleeing bandits, which would presumably occur in chapter 3. These were cut during development due to space constraints.

Medeus appears to have went under the name Gaia, as well as a sea dragon boss, known as Neptune (Japanese: ネプチューン Neptune), was planned to be featured in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light. It was supposed to attack with tornadoes rather than breath, and its attack animation was intended to have it conjure a spell with its hands.[1]

Fire Emblem 64 and Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade development info

Main article: Fire Emblem 64

The book reveals that Fire Emblem 64 would eventually be heavily retooled into The Binding Blade.

The book contains an early story outline for The Binding blade, as well as an early unit recruitment list, a map of Elibe, and sketches of The Binding Blade's boxart.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn development info

A small amount of character concept art is provided for Mist, Soren, Titania, and Elincia.

Soren's name appears to have been different in earlier materials, it either reads as Rion (リオン) or Soan (ソオン), though the handwriting on the document makes it ambiguous.

Fire Emblem Wii development info

One of the screenshots provided in the book.

The book reveals the existence of an untitled entry for the Wii was in partial development after Radiant Dawn. The title was highly experimental and did not near completion.

The game reused assets from Radiant Dawn and features real-time gameplay and free roaming movement. Enemies would be seen and encountered in the overworld, rather similar to more traditional RPGs.

Fire Emblem Awakening


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Fire Emblem Fates


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A small amount of concept art is present for Elise, Felicia, Jakob, and Takumi. In Jakob's case, the artwork provided is the exact same present in the artbook Pellucid Crystal.

The book reveals many aspects in which Fates's first story draft provided by Shin Kibayashi differs from the final game.

It is mentioned Hinoka did not exist in it, meaning Hoshido initially featured only 3 siblings. Camilla and Sakura's personalities were different, as Camilla would be the kind of character to speak differently after "snapping", while Sakura was more cheery and less shy similar to Elise.[2] Lastly, Hisame was initially conceived as Hinata's twin brother before the idea was scrapped, as the developers did not want too many samurai characters for Birthright's initial roster.[3]

An early draft of Birthright Chapter 15's script present in the book also reveals that, while its overall narrative ended up similar to the final product, some facets of it changed during development.[4]

Takumi's name was originally "Takuma", and his hair was at one point in development red, per the book's provided concept art. A scrapped character named "Matheus" accompanied Scarlet while Corrin and the Hoshidan army climbed Mount Garou. Instead of the Wolfskin, the party would have been attacked by the Lightning Tribe, which was reportedly replaced due to the developers having issues rendering the effects of their lightning attacks. At one point, Corrin would have been pushed off a cliff due to the recoil experienced while trying to protect Takumi from one of tribe's lightning bolts, and Lilith would have come to their rescue instead of Hinoka. Lastly, this script's draft only features the outcome in which Kaze sacrifices himself for the sake of saving Corrin, suggesting his potential survival in Birthright was added later on during development.[4]

It is commented the Raijinto, Siegfried, Brynhildr, and Fujin Yumi's powers are meant to be themed after the sun, moon, earth, and sky respectively. Anankos having a Buddha's mask came to be under the idea the people of Valla carved the dragon's face when he was "at his most beautiful" and was later put on his burial.[5]

Miscellaneous

In an interview, it is mentioned that there was some lore about dragons which had not been revealed in previous games. In particular, that their bodies were able to contain immense power even after their death, which would lead to the side effect of having plants grow from their corpses, citing Mila's Tree and Anankos's mummified body lying in Castle Giges as an example.[6]

Table of contents

This is the table of contents provided within the book itself.[7] The start of chapters are in bold.
Table of contents
Page # Description
2-30 The History of Fire Emblem
33 From the Beginning of Fire Emblem up to Awakening's Development
Interviews
34 Project Manager and Director
Project Manager: (Masahiro Higuchi 樋口 雅大)
Director: (Kouhei Maeda 前田 耕平)
48 Art Director
(Toshiyuki Kusakihara 草木原俊行)
50 Planner
(Nami Komuro 小室菜美)
52 Sound Director
(Hiroki Morishita 森下弘生)
54 Director
(Genki Yokota 横田弦紀)
57 Fire Emblem: Awakening
60 Planning Stages
74 Beginning of Development Stages
98 Production Stages
112 Post Release Stage
160 Fire Emblem Fates
180 On the Direction
194 On the Graphics
208 On the Characters
222 On the Sound
236 On the Production
247 25 Years of Fire Emblem
Interviews
248 Shunshi Nakamura 中村 俊之 (President of Intelligent Systems)
260 Toru Narihiro 成広 通 (Intelligent Systems Founder)
269 Yuka Tsujiyoko 辻横 由佳 (Series Composer)
314 Masahiro Sakurai 桜井 政博 (Super Smash Bros. Series Creator + Fire Emblem Fan)
346 Ryouichi Kitanishi 北西 亮一 (Executive Producer)
255 Design Documents
254 Fire Emblem Festival Report
258 A Look Inside INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
322 A Compilation of Promotional Posters
324 Fire Emblem Development Documents
56 Marth illustration (Daisuke Izuka)
129 Sigurd illustration (Katsuyoshi Kouya)
246 Eliwood illustration (Sachiko Wada)
295 Ike illustration (Sachiko Wada)
313 Lucina illustration (Yusuke Kozaki)

Etymology and other languages

Names, etymology, and in other regions
Language Name Definition, etymology, and notes
Japanese

メイキング オブ ファイアーエムブレム 開発秘話で綴る25周年、覚醒そしてif

The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and if. "if" is the Japanese name of Fire Emblem Fates.

Gallery

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light development images

Fire Emblem 64 development images

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade development images

Fire Emblem Wii development images

Fire Emblem Fates development images

External links

  • Kantopia XKAN's translation blog, featuring translations for Tellius Recollections.

References

  1. Making of Shadow Dragon (NES) - Serenes Forest
  2. jokerthebutler, [1], tumblr.com, Published: December 10, 2015, Retrieved: September 5, 2021
  3. jokerthebutler, [2], tumblr.com, Published: December 9, 2015, Retrieved: September 5, 2021
  4. 4.0 4.1 "Fates Random Trivia: Here's an early draft of Chapter 15 (Birthright) from the "Making of Fire Emblem" book (2015). Although there are a lot of minor differences, it seems the general outline was the same. Please note that there are **major spoilers**." — SereneForest.net, Serenes Forest (@SerenesForest)|Twitter, twitter.com, Published: June 28, 2020, Retrieved: September 5, 2021
  5. "Interviewer: Speaking of effects, do the siblings' weapons each have some sort of elemental effects to them?
    Kusakihara: That's right. From Maeda, I've received notes that the siblings' weapons are each themed after the Sun, Moon, Earth, and Sky. The Raijinto is the one themed after the Sun though, so it's not like the names and imagery completely match. There do seem to be people that see the Silent Dragon's attacks and Brynhildr's attacks as similar, but since Brynhildr is based on the earth, we've pictured magic that spawn things like Crysantheums in mind. That being said, the 4 siblings' weapons have the dragon's strength at their core, so you could say that they are one in the same.
    Interviewer: Speaking of midpoints, the Silent Dragon leaves a very exotic impression.
    Kusakihara: I believe that came from a conversation I had with Maeda once, "What if there were something like a mask of Buddha buried in the wall, and you fought against that?"
    Interviewer: Is the reason for the Buddhist imagery because of Valla's role as the "central kingdom"?
    Kusakihara: There was some lore that we based it on. "The Vallite people made a mask of the dragon's blessed face when he was at his most beautiful, and put it on him at his burial."... But there's cracks in that face now, so it's now really scary.
    Interviewer: It really was scary. Was that your design?
    Kusakihara: Yes. One day, that scene came up in the back of my mind." (The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and Fates (translated))
  6. "Kusakihara: Truth be told, there's actually some lore regarding dragons that has been in the series since Awakening that we've never actually revealed. I've always had this mental image that despite being a corpse, the remains of a dragon have this immense energy, and from that energy a lot of plants grow. In Awakening, the Tree of Mila is actually a tree that grows atop the corpse of the old goddess Mila. Going off of that mental image, the Vallite Dragon itself is dead too and mummified underground, and from that there's a lot of trees growing from it. When I discussed the idea of the Vallite Dragon sucking energy to grow trees to the Effects staff, they were able to go with the ideas to achieve that effect. (translated)" (The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and Fates)
  7. xkan, Contents of the Fire Emblem 25th Anniversary Book (Translation + Review), kantopia.wordpress.com, Published: December 14, 2015, Retrieved: October 10, 2016
  8. "The dialogue above reveals who they are, as the final line of the page is (in Japanese): “弓は得意なんです!いっつも山で狩りをしてましたから.” This is the exact same line presented in that screen shot. Who says it? Well, it is attributed to Rei. Who is that next to her? Well, it is Ephraim, as right before that he is the one speaking to her, and they are the only two who did not have a “disappear” unlike the rest" — XKAN, Fire Emblem 64: Rare Dialogue Document Translation + Analysis, kantopia.wordpress.com, Published: January 14th 2016, Retrieved: January 15th 2016
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