Today marks the release of Cipher Series 16 “O Courage! O Soul Aflame!”. Which means a whole lot of new cards to collect and artwork to appreciate! But that’s not why I’m here today…
As part of the marketing, the Cipher team showcased various previously unseen concept art for Binding Blade–one of the four factions featured in Series 16. This is very cool because we don’t often get to see concept art, especially not for older games.
Now, some of you may recall that the Making of Fire Emblem included some concept art from Binding Blade, but not a lot. Still, if you haven’t seen it already, please check out this article from way back.
The first time they revealed the new concept art was during the Winter 2019 special livestream. Ryota Kawade–one of the hosts from Intelligent Systems–brought along four folders containing development materials used when creating Binding Blade.
Logo design (note the placement of the sword)
Cover art, world map
Opening demo (there was a part involving the symbol from the file menu)
Lots of Roys
Lilina, Clarine
Fae, Larum, generic soldier, Al (from the manga)
Halfway through, they showed the sketches used for Fae’s Divine Dragon animation. This included the dragon transformation, attack, human transformation and dragon dodge.
Height charts featuring Bors, Alen, Lilina, Roy, Wolt, Lance, Marcus, Guinevere and Elen!
Bottom page has Merlinus, Eliwood, Hector, Astolfo, Ogier, Barthe and Gwendolyn.
More height charts! With Klein, Clarine, Rutger, Dieck, Wade, Lot (or maybe swapped around) and Shanna.
Bottom page has Thea, Juno, Zelot, Trec, Noah, Fir, Bartre, Karel.
Alen, Lance, Elen
Dieck, Bors, Zelot
Saul, Dorothy
Lugh, Raigh
Hugh(?), Astolfo, no idea
Unfortunately, they didn’t go over every page in the folder–and there were a few pages they skipped over despite advertising them on Twitter prior to the livestream. Thankfully, the latest Cipher Frontier column showed off some of the missing pages.
Cover art
Roy
Lilina, Dieck, Sophia, Melady
Saul, Dorothy, Larum, Cath, Ogier, Gonzalez
Pegasus, Wyvern
If you’re interested, you can also compare the concept art with the final artwork. It should be noted that the concept art is a reference point for designers and does not necessarily reflect the final product.
Anyway, it’d be really nice if they released a new book with all of the game’s concept art–plus those for Blazing Blade and The Sacred Stones. Or any game for that matter! At the very least, there’s the Fates art book “Pellucid Crystal” to look forward to.
