The development team behind upcoming tactical RPG Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave has discussed the great amount of freedom the game offers players, as well as the lofty ambitions the title began with.
In the latest installment of Nintendo’s Ask the Developer interview series, Director Toshiyuki Kusakihara revealed that Fortune’s Weave was originally going to have eight protagonists, up from the three main characters seen in 2019 predecessor Three Houses.
“The three powers in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are fundamentally at odds with one another,” Kusakihara explained.
“This time, we decided to take the opposite approach, with the stories unfolding along each path ultimately coming together into one. From there, we worked to refine the concept.”
Producer Genki Yokota explained, however, that it soon became apparent to the team that eight protagonists would make the game too complicated.
“Kusakihara-san had really developed a clear theme for each protagonist, and I felt it could lead to something really interesting,” Yokota said.
“But with eight protagonists, there was almost too much we could do… It seemed like players would have a lot to keep track of, which could make the game feel complicated. So, we decided to put the focus on four of those protagonists instead.”
Associate producer Kenta Nakanishi later discussed how players are free to choose which of the four protagonists they’d like to start with, and switch between them as they please.
“The protagonists are each involved in the same event in different ways, so as players progress through the story, they may encounter the other protagonists,” Nakanishi explained.
“If you think, ‘I want to see this character’s story too,’ you can jump over to another protagonist. So, you can start with one protagonist, and change to someone else partway through if you feel like it.”
Yokota explained that players need not worry about making an irreversible choice in their journey.
“Once players reach a certain point in the game,” he said, “spots on the world map that they unlocked in one path will be available from the start in other paths as well. So, I think exploration will be easier than it was the first time.”
Producer Masahiro Higuchi added that this means players can choose to focus on a single protagonist in their playthrough, or fully experience all paths.
“The more they play, the more I think they’ll come to understand this title’s world,” Higuchi said.
“What we were aiming for was a kind of culmination of the gameplay, where everything comes together at the end, and all the experiences players have had up to that point are woven together.”
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave will launch exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 on September 17th, 2026.
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Written by Reece Heather
A veteran Zelda Universe editor and First-class journalism graduate, Reece emerged with a Nintendo 64 and a lifelong obsession after a narrow escape from Santa’s Naughty List in 1998. Outside of games, he’s reading Punisher comics, being bossed around by his cocker spaniel, and cornering innocent bystanders to rant about the importance of game preservation.
