Warriors: Fates Character Trailers + Rumoured Roster Leak

Following last week’s Awakening characters trailer, the Fire Emblem Warriors Twitter has dropped two more trailers showcasing all of the currently-revealed warriors from Fates.

Trailer number 2 features the black-clad royals from Nohr.

Meanwhile, the 3rd trailer highlights the Hoshidan royals–and features our first look at Sakura in motion.

In other news, there have been rumours about a new image of the European limited edition boxart revealing the full roster (the main one anyway), including a couple of yet-to-be-announced characters.

Although we generally don’t report our rumours, this one is fairly substantial and has been slowly gaining traction, so we might as well grab our magnifying lens to take a look…

The new boxart was discovered by Fire Emblem War of Dragons from a product listing on El Corte Inglés, which is apparently one of the largest department stores in Spain (and Europe).

Let’s start with the initial disclaimer: Given the reputation of the store, it’s unlikely the store added the image out of malice or to fool consumers. That said, they aren’t Nintendo themselves, so they aren’t prone to error–for example, uploading a fan-made boxart.

Moving on, the box itself is essentially the same as the one revealed by Nintendo of Europe way back, but with the addition of sprites. The one without sprites could theoretically be an earlier version or perhaps had the sprites removed to avoid spoilers.

The other thing to note is that the new box has been flipped and the angle is slightly different. If it was, say, photoshopped, whoever did it must have gone to great lengths to copy the box, re-position it and add all the sprites in the right places, with the correct angle.

As for other differences, the new box is missing the amiibo icon. However, the amiibo icon does not need to be present, if you check the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild limited edition, for instance. Also, if somebody edited the old box, surely they would’ve kept the amiibo icon, rather than spend extra time to remove it. (Or maybe it’s a trap?)

Now onto the main feast: the sprites themselves. We did a little photoshopping ourselves to make the sprites appear face on. In total, there are 25 sprites, which fits in with the 25 character art cards included in the limited edition.

Of these, 20 of the sprites are of revealed characters, with the other 5 being new ones: Young Tiki, Caeda, Anna, Lyn and Celica.

Tiki was essentially confirmed after it was revealed she would be getting a new amiibo figure alongside Chrom. Caeda is a pretty safe bet, being Marth’s love interest. Anna is also not too surprising given her mascot status–this one appears to be a fusion of her Warriors version and the one from Fates.

Then we have the two wild cards. Lyn is a very popular character, as evidenced by the Choose Your Legends poll for Heroes–and her inclusion would cater to the early Fire Emblem fans in the West who grew up with Blazing Sword.

Celica from Echoes could have been added to promote the latest game in the series (similar to Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee). Although it’s strange how she made it in, but not Alm. Likewise, it’s strange that Lyn is in and not Ike as well, considering he was the top scoring male in Choose Your Legends.

Looking at the sprites themselves, they all look well-designed, although Caeda’s pegasus looks very similar to Cordelia’s (especially the front), but this may have been done for thematic purposes. It’s a tiny bit odd that Celica’s sprite doesn’t resemble her Echoes one, but perhaps they wanted to adapt it to the Awakening/Fates style.

Personally, these choices–especially Lyn and Celica–seem so out of left field that I wouldn’t be surprised if the image was real. However, when considering all the news we’ve had so far, the likelihood ought to be pretty low.

Mainly, the developers mentioned that the game will focus on Shadow Dragon, Awakening and Fates. Assuming the image is real, this means Marth, Caeda and Tiki are the only Shadow Dragon representatives (ignoring enemies and secret characters), which is far, far too low. Especially considering Awakening currently has 7 and Fates has 10.

It would be more likely for Shadow Dragon to have at least 6 characters. In other words, filling in the remaining roster. So there would be 2 original characters (Rowan and Lianna), 6 Shadow Dragon, 7 Awakening and 10 Fates, for a total of 25. Others could be secret characters or gotten via DLC.

Anyway, that’s our take on the rumour. Don’t forget there’s a Nintendo Direct happening tomorrow and the Tokyo Game Show during late September (which will feature new character reveals), so hopefully it shouldn’t be too long before we can verify or debunk this rumour!

About the Author: VincentASM
Fire Emblem fan since 2002 and webmaster of Serenes Forest. Occasionally an online content editor or brand ambassador. Is a sucker for mage girls and has an unhealthy stash of Sylveon plushies.
Author Website: https://serenesforest.net