The Radiant Dawn design book Tellius Recollection Volume 2 was released in Japan a few weeks ago. If you’ve been keeping up, Kirokan has been diligently translating the contents over on our forums, just like for the first volume.
Before diving straight into the new book, I should mention that the translations for the first volume (which covers the previous game, Path of Radiance) are pretty much complete.
In fact, not long ago, Kirokan translated the last major segment, which features the developers’ thoughts on the game. Here’s a link to Kirokan’s website, where the translation can be found.
What’s interesting is that the developers considered changing the story depending on if you followed Titania’s or Soren’s advice. Fans may remember that Titania was strict but understanding, while Soren was heavily focused on the results.
It’s unknown how influential these choices would have been–would it have led to a few (or many) branching chapters, like The Sacred Stones, or perhaps something more subtle, like the difference between Eliwood’s and Hector’s story in Blazing Sword?
Like many dropped ideas, this idea was thrown around the place and eventually implemented in a later game, namely Fire Emblem Fates.
(If you recall, something similar happened with the explorable base, which was planned for Genealogy of the Holy War, then Path of Radiance before finally becoming a thing in Fates.)
Kilvas is situated atop a lofty mountain peak.
The other thing is that the staff designed (presumably battle) maps for Kilvas, even though you never visit the Ravens’ kingdom during Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn.
Perhaps at one point, you would’ve went to Kilvas to seek out Naesala? It’s too bad you never really visit any of the Laguz realms, except a bit of Gallia and (ahem) Serenes Forest.
Moving onto Radiant Dawn, we begin with a collection of details pulled from the various character profile pages:
Just like in Volume 1, the book shies away from revealing actual ages for most characters, preferring to list their “apparent age” instead–the age you’d guess from their appearance. A possible reason is that the developers simply prefer fans to use their imagination.
Sadly (and rather strangely), there isn’t a lot of new trivia. Only a few Dawn Bridge members and Hatari inhabitants have something listed, with characters such as Laura, Aran, Pelleas, Volug, etc. getting the short end of the stick.
Afterwards, we have a few of the character profiles themselves.
(As a reminder, you can find all of these images–and more–on Kirokan’s website, Kantopia.)
What’s particularly neat is that Edward’s and Nolan’s profiles reference the developers’ notes on the Japanese Radiant Dawn website.
Another thing is that Sanaki’s profile explicitly states that Apostles can only be women. A fact that can easily be inferred from the events of the games and the timeline of Tellius (where all known Apostles are female), but was never directly stated.
Next, a bunch of concept art for various characters.
As always, it’s impressive to see the amount of detail put into the designs, which are used as a reference for many things, such as the 3D map and battle models.
From a trivia perspective, the most interesting pages are the ones featuring the Serenes herons, where a rare image of King Loraziah can be found. It’s unclear why they drew him, but perhaps his portrait was going to be used in the character relationship diagram?
Speaking of which, the book has its own version of Radiant Dawn’s character relationship diagram, which you can see above. What’s rather cool is that there are unused portraits of Elena, Largo (with a collar) and Ashera (different angle).
Related, there’s a double page spread that showcases the original face designs for many characters.
For the most part, the majority of the character resemble their original designs, although there are some notable changes, such as blonde-haired Sigrun, Brom with a lot more hair and a version of Astrid that looks straight out of Genealogy of the Holy War.
On the topic of original designs, the next double page spread takes a look at the work that went into designing the cover artwork for Radiant Dawn.
It appears that it didn’t take long for the developers to settle on a design, with the main focus always being on Micaiah, Sothe and the generic Daein Dracoknight.
To finish off, we have scans of the front and back cover of the book, depicting the two main characters, Micaiah and Ike. As with the first volume, the artwork is by none other than Senri Kita, the illustrator for both Tellius games.
That’s all for now, but hopefully we’ll have some more Tellius-related discoveries for you soon!
