Nintendo used its August 4 Direct to reframe Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, revealing a time-travel narrative that sits above the tournament arc the game had previously been presented around. The Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive launches on September 17.
Polygon reports that the game had until now been pitched as following one of four heroes through an anime-inspired competition called the Heroic Games. The Direct revealed a five-year time jump, in the style of Three Houses, that leaves the world in ruins.
After the jump, the god Sothis, familiar to players of Three Houses, summons the game's true protagonist to defeat the demon god Balor. With the help of a time goddess named Fortuna, the player travels back to the Heroic Games to change the outcome and ally with the four heroes Nintendo had already revealed.
Parallel hero routes
The structural change carries a quality-of-life feature. Each of the four heroes has their own path, as the houses did in Three Houses, but Nintendo said players will be able to move between hero stories at will, with progress saved separately for each and the paths playable in parallel.
Polygon notes the Direct indicated players could attempt Balor in the post-time-jump world alone, though it would be a difficult fight, implying some freedom in how the endgame is approached.
Guns and elephants
A weapons segment in the same Direct confirmed firearms, a first for the series. The narration described "gauntlets that look like firearms" over footage of a character named Anatolia using one. The weapon, which appears to be called a Salamander, resembles a pistol and fires an energy blast that kills an opponent in a single hit. It is not yet clear whether it is the only firearm in the game.
Gauntlet-class weapons in earlier Fire Emblem games typically raise a unit's evasiveness while dealing reasonable damage. The Direct also confirmed a new advanced class, the Elephant Rider, adding elephants alongside dragons, winged horses and birds as mounts.
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