The Next Fire Emblem Game Should Be Set In the Future (But There Are Reasons to Stick With the Past) (2025)

Fire Emblem, as a series, has always been associated with vaguely-European, vaguely-Medieval settings. The main exception to this is Fire Emblem Fates, which heavily features Hoshido, a kingdom clearly based on feudal Japan. There are very few other nations that feel directly inspired by one culture or another, often preferring a mishmash of different fantasy settings.

As the series continues to grow and change, remixing and removing different elements in each game, it begs the question: is it time for something larger? Should the Fire Emblem series make a change as large as not using a medieval setting for the next game? Should it even fully embrace sci-fi elements in the next game?

Fire Emblem Is Already Set to Jump to the Future

Sci-Fi Elements Have Made Their Way Into Fire Emblem for Years Now

The Fire Emblem franchise has always been very flexible. There's no established continuity, and the series can pick and choose whatever it wants when it comes to a setting. Some games have information that is outright contradictory between them. For example, the dragons in Shadow Dragon only have slight similarities to the dragons in Three Houses, which are only tangentially related to the dragons in Engage.

Every Fire Emblem game that’s not an explicit sequel is essentially starting from scratch in terms of lore and worldbuilding, which players will quickly notice if they try to play the games in order. There's so much time between entries like Awakening and the Archanea games that the titles don't have that much in common. For that reason, it wouldn’t be as large of a jump to move in a more sci-fi direction. Any lore changes that have to be made to accommodate that can simply be chalked up to being a new game in a new setting.

In fact, several recent games have already done that, at least in terms of lore. Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem: Engage suggest that their dragons originate from outer space, and Three Houses features enemies with advanced technology, such as robots and missiles.

The mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes serves as a testing ground of sorts for different settings and genres, as each book focuses on a different enemy and kingdom. Heroes has already included many sci-fi elements, such as wise sages who use guns instead of tomes, teleportation, and even mechs. These all feel right at home with the game's high fantasy elements and use of Fire Emblem characters—even as they get confused about what a car is.

A Futuristic Fire Emblem Game Would Have a Lot of Freedom

There's More Than One Way to Make a Sci-Fi Fire Emblem

Sci-fi is also a very broad spectrum and doesn’t have to simply mean “high-tech.” While a Fire Emblem game probably wouldn’t work as well in a Star Trek-esque hard sci-fi setting, several of the elements could absolutely work in softer settings like Star Wars or Dune. It’s totally possible to justify pegasi as weird alien horses to explain why people ride them while using laser swords and throwing space cars at the opposing side, it simply requires creativity and a bit of risk-taking.

And while the Fire Emblem series does have recurring elements, none of them are required. It’s not even mandatory that the games literally have something called the Fire Emblem in them, as neither Gaiden nor Shadows of Valentia have one. Things that are thought of as being key to the series, such as permadeath, paired endings, breakable weapons, or supports, have all been missing from one game or another. Awakening and Three Houses both took several risks with their plots that, in the long run, have paid off and helped the franchise grow.

For any series to be successful, it has to be willing to change or, at the very least, try new things. Fire Emblem, as a franchise, is in a very good place right now. Three Houses is one of the most popular games on the Switch. Heroes is one of the best-performing Nintendo mobile apps and shows no signs of slowing down, and while fan reception was mixed, Engage still did very well.

The series is not at the point it was when Awakening came out, where it might’ve been the last game in the series if it did poorly. Intelligent Systems and Nintendo can afford to take a chance and play with the setting and tropes to see if something new ends up drawing in more fans. If it doesn’t work, they can simply go back to what worked for the next game, and everything will be fine.

Becoming boring and stale is one of the worst things that can happen to a series, as is becoming self-congratulatory, where everything revolves around reminding fans of older entries that they liked them. Engage has enough going on to stand on its own, but if the series continues down that path, it’s not a promising direction. A radical change might be necessary to ensure it still has room to grow after all this time.

Going Back to the Past Would Change a Core Aspect of Fire Emblem

A Lot About Fire Emblem Can Change, But Not The Setting

While a futuristic Fire Emblem would be exciting, it's hard to separate the series from the medieval and high fantasy setting it has always been rooted in. Everything from the weapons players use to the fact that armies consist of small groups of individual units fighting hand to hand justifies keeping the series in the past, where those mechanics make sense instead of modern warfare techniques. How would a legendary sword help in World War II, let alone in the future?

At some point, it would just be transcribing sci-fi aesthetics onto fantasy objects, and when does that dissonance become too much? If the only changes are that horses become robots and swords glow because of technology instead of magic, what’s the point of setting the series in the future?

Certain Fire Emblem classes, like archers, myrmidons, and cavaliers, would need to be completely revamped to match the expected power levels of a futuristic setting. It’s one thing to see a swordsman take down an old-fashioned wooden ballista, but what about a tank? How would pegasi and wyverns fly in space?

What does a future setting offer, story-wise, that wouldn’t just be the same kind of plot, only set on a made-up alien planet instead of a made-up fantasy kingdom? Keeping it familiar as Fire Emblem would reduce the sci-fi elements to mere set dressing, while fully embracing them would risk creating a game that’s Fire Emblem in name only.

At that point, it might be better to create a whole new franchise with its own lore and sci-fi elements, separate from Fire Emblem entirely. That way, all eras would be covered in Nintendo’s SRPG lineup: Fire Emblem for the vague past, Advance Wars for the vague present, and something new for the vague future.

Other series have done this well. Rather than have a Persona game set in a medieval fantasy kingdom, Atlus released Metaphor ReFantazio, which has a lot of the same DNA but is set in the past and is ultimately different from Persona. The modern-day setting is integral to the tone and aesthetics of the Persona series, and releasing a brand-new game makes more sense than changing the entire series.

Creating a new futuristic strategy RPG series would also give developers the freedom to craft their own lore without trying to force a square peg into a round hole, something that looks like Fire Emblem but with more Tron lines. Overall, it would be a much better use of resources to create a new franchise rather than contort Fire Emblem into something it’s not.

It’s true that not every game series requires a certain setting, and things like Final Fantasy can cover a much broader range of genres and apparent time periods, but that is simply not true of Fire Emblem. It’s been too long, and a change this large would be too jarring. It’s also worth noting that games related to Fire Emblem but set in the modern day, like Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, haven’t done particularly well and remain unacknowledged by the series as a whole. It’s safe to assume there isn’t much interest in that kind of game.

While the idea of a futuristic Fire Emblem is interesting, the end result would likely alienate existing fans, while any new fans drawn in by the sci-fi elements wouldn’t be interested in the rest of the series since it’s all standard high-fantasy fare. It’s a recipe for disaster. Intelligent Systems shouldn't be afraid to change Fire Emblem, but moving from the past to the future might be a bridge too far.

Fire Emblem Heroes

Tactical

RPG

Systems

Released

February 2, 2017

ESRB

t

Developer(s)

Intelligent Systems

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

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