As of right now, Nintendo is in a very good place in regards to its upcoming gaming library for the Nintendo Switch. Because starting at the end of June with Super Mario Maker 2, the console is set to get many major 1st and 3rd party titles just about every month. 3rd party wise for July, the Switch is getting Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. As for 1st party, the system is getting the highly-anticipated Fire Emblem Three Houses.
At Japan Expo, some of the team got to talk about the game and how Fire Emblem Three Houses will be different from recently titles like Awakening, Fates, and Shadows of Valentia. The biggest one of course is that the game is on the Switch, so the visuals are much better:
Thanks to the improved technical capabilities and screen resolution over the Nintendo 3DS, we could add more visual elements. For example, the use of battalions that support each unit – this was not possible beforehand. That said, there is another perhaps surprising side effect from switching to Nintendo Switch. As there’s a full HD screen, it was nice that we could show more text, like putting the names of each combatant on the screen. In addition, as we have more space for text, we could add pages that delve into the backstories of the characters, to enrich the game’s lore.
As Fire Emblem is by far the biggest “story” game in Nintendo’s library, that is indeed good to have. Now, like Shadows of Valentia, the game won’t have the staple of the “Weapons Triangle”. They did this because they wanted to give the player freedom to shape their students (as they’re a professor to start the game) in the way they wanted:
What we wanted to do in Three Houses is to give player freedom in tutoring their students, so that the player can give their favorites students whatever they want in weapons and skills. It helps the player identify with the team they’re raising.
BUT, what might be the biggest part of the interviews is the reveal of how long the game will take to play.
To complete the game with just one of the three houses, it took me 80 hours. I did not skip the dialogue or cutscenes, of course. So if you want to do the three paths, it can take you more than 200 hours.
That would easily make it the longest Fire Emblem game in history, even including Fates with its three paths. This is going to be a very special Fire Emblem game indeed. Three Houses will arrive on July 26th.
