Today's Nintendo Direct made it clear that the publisher has been withholding details about a lot about Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave. What has until now seemed to be a relatively simple story of heroes fighting in a competition to gain a single wish is now much more complex.
In recent months, Nintendo and developer Intelligent Systems have been showing off the four main heroes of Fortune's Weave. Ostensibly, the game's pitch has been that players would follow one of these paths to its completion in an anime-inspired tournament arc called the Heroic Games. Today's Direct threw a wrench in that, revealing there is a grander narrative happening.
Near the end of the show, it was announced that there would be a Three Houses-style five-year time jump that sees the world of Fortune's Weave in ruins. The god Sothis, who players will know from Three Houses, summons Fortune's Weave's true protagonist to defeat the demon god Balor. With the help of the time goddess Fortuna, players will travel back in time to the Heroic Games to change fate and ally with the four heroes Nintendo has previously revealed.
This drastically changes the type of game Fortune's Weave is, and brings in the franchise's recurring political themes and world-ending stakes. It also makes the gameplay experience of Fortune's Weave clearer, including a massive quality-of-life feature. The four heroes of the Heroic Games each have their own path, just as Three Houses had its numerous paths that defined different playthroughs.
While experiencing every branch of Three Houses' story was incredibly rewarding, it also took a lot of time since players needed to start from the beginning each time. Nintendo revealed during the Direct that thanks to the power of time travel, players will be able to hop between each hero's story at will. Progress will be saved for each hero and the paths can be played in parallel. This means there will be less of a need to fully replay Fortune's Weave, while encouraging players to experience as much of the game's many branching paths as possible.
The Direct noted that players could try to face Balor in the post-time-jump world alone, though it would be a difficult fight. This implies that there will be some level of freedom regarding how the endgame can be experienced. It is possible Fortune's Weave will take influence from Chrono Trigger in this way, making it so that players can challenge the final boss at any time, possibly unlocking alternate endings. Obviously, most players will want to go through as many hero stories as possible to collect allies in the fight.
Fortune's Weave's use of both time travel and a time jump also reveals some of the game's possible influences from within the franchise. While not the first game in the series to do so, Three Houses is perhaps the most famous Fire Emblem game to use a time jump. As Fortune's Weave is set in the same world as Three Houses (hundreds of years later), this makes for a nice narrative homage. Taking control of a character who travels back in time to alter history is a plot pulled directly from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Unlike Awakening, Nintendo is making the interesting choice to cast players in the role of the time traveler in Fortune's Weave.
Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave will be released exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 on Sept. 17.