Fire Emblem Warriors Revealed

Earlier this week we had rumors about another Nintendo-based Warriors game from Koei Tecmo and after some consideration, Fire Emblem felt like the most natural choice. It seems like Nintendo and Koei Tecmo agreed on that and presented us yesterday with a small teaser about the game. There will also be a Fire Emblem Direct next week, where we'll hopefully can take a better look on the game.

The most important question for this blog is, what Fire Emblem Warriors means for the future of Hyrule Warriors. Well, overall this should be a good thing. Hyrule Warriors - Legends was done at the end of October, where certainly only a part of the team actually worked on the DLC, because the DLC didn't have any new environments or music. Koei Tecmo most likely wants the "Nintendo team" (if there's such a thing) to keep working, but it's too early for a Hyrule Warriors 2.

With Hyrule Warriors 2 it's to wait for the storm to pass that is Breath of the Wild. This game will be huge for the Zelda franchise and offer lots of new potential material. Just looking at the newest trailer from yesterday's presentation shows us quite a couple of potential characters that could join the roster, while the new world of Hyrule with its Sheikah technology could play an important part in the story as well. So, it's best to wait, until that game is out and Koei Tecmo can incorporate its contents to plan a sequel.

The alternative wouldn't be a true sequel, but something like Hyrule Warriors - Extreme Legends, where they simply release the same game a third time on the Switch with slightly better graphics, more characters, a few more scenarios and even more additional Adventure Maps. But you don't want the Switch line-up to keep feasting on rehashes like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and I personally wouldn't want to go through this massive game yet another time, since I already invested roughly 700 hours in both versions. After so much time it's growing a little stale.

But with a true sequel they can set the focus somewhat differently. They could invest in more enemy units (e.g. Gerudo, Zora, Robot, Guardian or Shadow Beast armies), have many more environments, new gameplay features and a complete new Adventure Mode experience (could be based on A Link to the Past). And of course much better visuals...

Fire Emblem Warriors can be a training ground for Koei Tecmo to find out, what's possible on the Switch. And they can use this experience to give us the best possible experience with Hyrule Warriors 2.