Xator Nova

Fire Emblem is a dramatization of warfare and conflict, where the graveness of the conflict is amplified by the permanent death, forcing the player to deal with loss, and the movement in grid in long maps with emphasis on terrain to enhance the sense of scale. These elements inevitably polarize audiences by not conforming to modern console videogame design, but the result of inducing a mental commitment with the maps is an involving quality of Fire Emblem . What the Fire Emblem creator Shouzo Kaga then decides for the fourth game, even with the risk of polarizing players even further, is to expand the size of the maps and to construct them analogically to the world so that the progress through the continent is directly perceivable by the player in order to magnify the dramatic scale of the conflict. The anticipation to the battle alongside the sense of distance while the days in war pass by. This decision in its planning is part of what makes Genealogy of the Holy War a dedicated ap...

In spite of the advertising claims from developers, Three Houses doesn't really resemble Genealogy of the Holy War. The drama between the protagonists in Three Houses, Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude, is different than Sigurd's, Quan's and Eldigan's in Genealogy. In Three Houses, the student representatives are barely friends. They're rather rivals, while in Genealogy, the trio is perceived from the moment they're introduced that they're very close friends. It isn't about moral or political dilemmas or perceiving different perspectives either. The game becomes actually worse being interpreted this way, since one isn't conscious of the implications of each faction when you're choosing a team, and it avoids having a political position to suggest opposite options as equally positive to the social conditions of its world, which is a coward measure to dress a story with vagueness to fake depth while avoiding alienating the audience. A purely commerci...

Fire Emblem is based on two important aspects: The abstraction of the epic narrative within the videogame language, portrayed through the grid system to accentuate the scope of the conflict; and the human component, reflected in the permanent death alongside the characterization of the soldiers to provide gravity and seriousness to the strategic elements, according to the series creator Shouzo Kaga. His intention was to make a dramatization of warfare conflict, reminiscent to the epics of yesteryear that as an enthusiast of war history interested him. That's why even the first game has a Greco-Roman aesthetic, and the narrative style felt impersonal to the secondary characters. The presence of the world, and the repercussions of the war in the community took precedence to magnify the imponence of the conflict. In essence, Kaga was a classicist. After his departure from Intelligent Systems, Kouhei Maeda would join, who as main writer and later director would define a turning poin...