In 2013, Fire Emblem Awakening saved the franchise — its developers have been vocal that, at the time, it was planned to be the last Fire Emblem game. But the success of Awakening was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, reinvigorating the defining strategy franchise. The question after that, of course, becomes, how do you follow up such a seminal game? The answer Nintendo and Intelligent Systems landed on was to do something wildly experimental, and even take cues from Pokémon’s dual-release approach. What resulted was an uneven trio of games, but an experience that is utterly and wholly unique.
Fire Emblem Fates tells the story of a young hero named Corrin, drawn into a brutal conflict between their birth family in the Kingdom of Hoshido and their adopted family in the Kingdom of Nohr. Like Robin in Awakening, Corrin is a defined customizable avatar with their own voice and personality, giving the player some wiggle room in how they interpret the protagonist.
