As part of today’s Nintendo Direct, a trailer for Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes released, showing off a musou combat style for the game. This is a new take on Fire Emblem, which thus far has largely been about strategy and turn-based combat. It seems Nintendo isn’t afraid to branch out and try new things with an old franchise.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, though. Hyrule Warriors launched in 2014, and brought the Legend of Zelda series into the musou world, allowing gamers to take on hordes of enemies as classic Legend of Zelda characters. With its follow-up, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and 2017's Fire Emblem Warriors, Nintendo now has had multiple forays into musou combat with franchises that traditionally feature a much different gameplay style.
Now, the Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes trailer released by tie into the Three Houses story, it seems like it may be a retelling in a different style. The game releases on June 24, 2022 for the Nintendo Switch, and pre-orders are available now.
As the most recent game in the series, Fire Emblem Three Houses placed the player at the center of three school houses, which were all eventually involved in a war spanning a whole continent. So, there's plenty of opportunity of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes to be a massive game, with the perfect set-up to allow fans to tear through huge armies as is to be expected with a musou game. The trailer showcases gameplay as the main characters, the leaders of each house, and so presumably each character will have a special moveset tailored to them. A traditional Fire Emblem game allows fans to choose classes take on a variety of roles and fighting styles, from swords, to magic, to mounted combat, and while there is a brief shot of Claude on a dragon, it's unclear how exactly these various character types will be reflected in Fire Emblem Warriors. Additionally though the main character of Fire Emblem Three Houses is shown in glimpses of cutscenes taken from the game, there's no gameplay footage of them. Perhaps this game will have a branching story like its predecessor. The announcement trailer shows little besides the basic musou combat and some anime cutscenes.
Luckily, it's not a long wait, since the game comes out in just a few months. The most critical question, though, still remains: will the Gatekeeper, voted as one of the most beloved characters in a Fire Emblem Heroes "Choose Your Legends" poll, be playable? Only time will tell what exactly Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes exactly is.
Source: Nintendo