The upcoming Fire Emblem title, Fortune's Weave, is poised to continue the series' trend of referencing its past, but its most significant debts may be owed to a less commonly cited entry: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. While Fortune's Weave appears to be a direct successor to Fire Emblem: Three Houses in terms of narrative and gameplay, Three Houses itself owes a considerable debt to Echoes, the last Fire Emblem game released on the Nintendo 3DS.
Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, released in 2017, served as a remake of the 1992 Famicom title Fire Emblem Gaiden. Unlike its predecessors, Gaiden introduced unique gameplay elements such as open exploration, dungeon crawling, and the management of two distinct armies, features that would remain absent from the series for decades. Echoes modernized Gaiden, incorporating elements like free-roam dungeons and the support conversation system, while also omitting mechanics like marriage supports and the weapon triangle to better suit its narrative.
Despite receiving generally positive reviews for its art, storytelling, and voice acting, Echoes' gameplay, particularly its map design, drew criticism. Maps were often large, featured terrain that slowed units, and could become tedious with numerous dispersed enemies requiring long treks to engage. However, these same maps offered a novel approach to combat. The sprawling, hazard-filled environments necessitated careful unit positioning and enemy baiting, demanding a strategic approach distinct from the more aggressive tactics viable in titles like Awakening and Fates. This deliberate pacing, coupled with the narrative weight of traversing difficult terrain, created a sense of tension and foreboding.
Mila's Turnwheel, a mechanic introduced in Echoes, allowed players to rewind turns, mitigating critical mistakes that could lead to the loss of a beloved unit. While this feature undeniably increased accessibility and appealed to a broader audience, it also served a crucial design purpose for the evolving Fire Emblem formula. As character relationships and simulated life elements became more central to the series, players grew more attached to their units, making perma-death a more difficult pill to swallow. Mila's Turnwheel provided a way to balance strategic depth with the desire to preserve units and relationships, enabling the larger, more intricate maps and complex gameplay systems found in later titles like Three Houses.
Many of the core mechanics now expected in modern Fire Emblem games were first tested and refined in Echoes. These include turn rewinding, combat arts, and 3D dungeon exploration, all of which were integral to Three Houses. Furthermore, elements that are reportedly making a return in Fortune's Weave, such as dungeon crawling and parallel narrative routes, also have their origins in Echoes. Thus, Intelligent Systems' 2017 remake proved to be one of the series' most forward-looking installments, laying essential groundwork for subsequent titles.
