Final Interview from Nintendo Dream (spoilers)

[VincentASM]

Via the main site

This interview was published in late April 2018 and talks about the conclusion of the currently planned DLC.

There's some discussion about the three characters added via the Awakening DLC Pack, some promoted costumes and also a nugget about Darios (where the spoiler comes from).

From what I can tell, development on FE Warriors is implied to be over (as evidenced by this being the "final interview", as well as the various remarks). I think a few people were expecting more DLC, but I believe there was some miscommunication in an earlier interview.

Anyway, hopefully we get a FE Warriors 2 with characters from other games!

(Also, I'm not very good at translating speech and I was practicing, so hopefully I didn't make any mistakes.)

Edited May 4, 2018 by VincentASM

[Fabulously Olivier]

Honestly, this interview frustrated me. They are the ones that held core, essential, fan favorite characters hostage for a sequel. That means they should follow through and make it clear that they are absolutely following through. 

I love the game we got, but it isn't half the game we deserved. And this isn't half the interview we deserved either. We deserved a focus on the future, not talk of fetishes and Olivia's perfect ass.

[Tolvir]

3 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Honestly, this interview frustrated me. They are the ones that held core, essential, fan favorite characters hostage for a sequel. That means they should follow through and make it clear that they are absolutely following through. 

I love the game we got, but it isn't half the game we deserved. And this isn't half the interview we deserved either. We deserved a focus on the future, not talk of fetishes and Olivia's perfect ass.

There is only so much Koei can do. They can’t decide to make the game, it’s Nintendo’s IP, Nintendo has to make the decision. Regardless of how you felt about the decision, there is only so much they can do. 

And it’s not like they didn’t put in fan favorites. They just didn’t put in the fan favorites you wanted. This is something people really need to figure out, they didn’t screw fans over here. Plenty of the characters in the game are popular and were put in for that reason. They couldn’t appeal to everyone, that was literally impossible.

[The DanMan]

11 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Honestly, this interview frustrated me. They are the ones that held core, essential, fan favorite characters hostage for a sequel. That means they should follow through and make it clear that they are absolutely following through. 

I love the game we got, but it isn't half the game we deserved. And this isn't half the interview we deserved either. We deserved a focus on the future, not talk of fetishes and Olivia's perfect ass.

Melodrama?

FEW was a partnership; one side can't just decide to do a sequel without the other's consent and involvement.

I'd say with the amount of vitriol and vocally hateful split, it's exactly the game that was deserved (especially with the 1m sales confirmation). 
Also, with Olivia you're ignoring the fact that they were (a) talking about overall design and how they went about making the promoted design, (b) that they outright said that they'd have "made some adjustments" if they'd designed her unpromoted version, and (c) it was the interviewer that asked the question in the first place.

Edited May 4, 2018 by The DanMan

[Fabulously Olivier]

4 minutes ago, The DanMan said:

Melodrama?

FEW was a partnership; one side can't just decide to do a sequel without the other's consent and involvement.

I'd say with the amount of vitriol and vocally hateful split, it's exactly the game that was deserved (especially with the 1m sales confirmation). 

Not melodrama. Fact. 

And ultimately, the decision to intentionally hold back some of the most important characters to potentially sell a sequel that was not yet agreed upon or licensed was on Koei. 

Calling something vitriol or vocally hateful doesn't make it illegitimate. The fact that there was such a backlash implies that there is a cause of said backlash. That's how PR works. 

And I am happy for the 1 million sales. That's great. I represent two of those copies myself. FEW is my most played Switch game. I've given the game positive reviews and word of mouth. But that does not mean that I should just accept the final word on the game being "it's all over. Dunno if there will be a sequel. Sorry if none of your favorite games were represented. Now let's talk about ass and legs."

[Tolvir]

5 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Not melodrama. Fact. 

And ultimately, the decision to intentionally hold back some of the most important characters to potentially sell a sequel that was not yet agreed upon or licensed was on Koei. 

Calling something vitriol or vocally hateful doesn't make it illegitimate. The fact that there was such a backlash implies that there is a cause of said backlash. That's how PR works. 

And I am happy for the 1 million sales. That's great. I represent two of those copies myself. FEW is my most played Switch game. I've given the game positive reviews and word of mouth. But that does not mean that I should just accept the final word on the game being "it's all over. Dunno if there will be a sequel. Sorry if none of your favorite games were represented. Now let's talk about ass and legs."

What did you want them to talk about “here is what we would do with the characters that were never in the game at all, and might be in a sequel we cannot confirm”

and on top of it, it was literally impossible for them to include all the fan favorites people were wanting. Someone was going to be left out, and they still at least included characters like Lyn, and Celica, who are fan favorites. They just didn’t include Ike and Roy. Which so what. Considering Lyn and Celica were clones, Ike and Roy wouldn’t have worked anyway. 

[VincentASM]

9 minutes ago, Etheus said:

And I am happy for the 1 million sales. That's great. I represent two of those copies myself. FEW is my most played Switch game. I've given the game positive reviews and word of mouth. But that does not mean that I should just accept the final word on the game being "it's all over. Dunno if there will be a sequel. Sorry if none of your favorite games were represented. Now let's talk about ass and legs."

I understand your frustration somewhat, but I think you're reading too much into things. It's just a fun little interview to discuss the newest DLC and tie up some loose ends ^^

With regards to a sequel, I feel like they want to leave it open-ended, like with Darios's fate. Besides, it's not like they can state "yes, we're definitely making a sequel!" without Nintendo and IS's permission. For bigger IPs, announcements have to made via the proper channels. The fact they're interested is already a good sign.

Edited May 4, 2018 by VincentASM

[The DanMan]

7 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Not melodrama. Fact. 

And ultimately, the decision to intentionally hold back some of the most important characters to potentially sell a sequel that was not yet agreed upon or licensed was on Koei. 

Calling something vitriol or vocally hateful doesn't make it illegitimate. The fact that there was such a backlash implies that there is a cause of said backlash. That's how PR works. 

And I am happy for the 1 million sales. That's great. I represent two of those copies myself. FEW is my most played Switch game. I've given the game positive reviews and word of mouth. But that does not mean that I should just accept the final word on the game being "it's all over. Dunno if there will be a sequel. Sorry if none of your favorite games were represented. Now let's talk about ass and legs."

"Held hostage" isn't a sign of stating things melodramatically?

Due to the fact that if it was all the lords it would've been pretty much entirely sword users (far more than what we got).

I was talking more about the fandom divide as a whole.

And you're just being plain ignorant of context/willfully misrepresenting parts of the interview.

[Tolvir]

Anyway, the interview was interesting. Especially what characters were considered originally for DLC. Gaius May have been a bit interesting, but their statement is pretty true on the Lonk situation. Overall I think Olivia was a solid choice. 

I do find the concept of Darios being the main characters of a sequel a decent idea. People liked his design, and him as a character overall. So it would be a good choice. 

I’d love to see a sequel at some point. I don’t expect anything soon, but a good sequel that includes Elibe, Tellius, and likely FE16 would be great. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

6 minutes ago, The DanMan said:

"Held hostage" isn't a sign of stating things melodramatically?

Due to the fact that if it was all the lords it would've been pretty much entirely sword users (far more than what we got).

I was talking more about the fandom divide as a whole.

And you're just being plain ignorant of context/willfully misrepresenting parts of the interview.

One can use rhetorical speech while still saying something factually accurate. 

And how would that be different from the status quo? 3 of the 9 DLC characters were sword characters, with 2 being clones. We didn't need them. One of the dlc characters was a 4th clone of the same archer moveset. We didn't need him. Fact is, the dlc barely helped weapon diversity, aside from giving us a couple infantry lances. 

[Eqstrian819]

53 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Honestly, this interview frustrated me. They are the ones that held core, essential, fan favorite characters hostage for a sequel. That means they should follow through and make it clear that they are absolutely following through. 

I love the game we got, but it isn't half the game we deserved. And this isn't half the interview we deserved either. We deserved a focus on the future, not talk of fetishes and Olivia's perfect ass.

I agree; I would have liked to see what plans they have for this game and/or any future ones. Didn’t they say they’d consider fan request for future dlc back when they first announced the season pass? Seems strange that they’d suddenly go “lol, nah, we’re done”. I believe there was also someone who had a spread sheet  where people could submit their requests so the person could send it to the devs. Did they ever get around to doing that?

[Etrurian emperor]

So we almost got Gaius eh? Glad we dodged that bullet. 

1 hour ago, Etheus said:

Honestly, this interview frustrated me. They are the ones that held core, essential, fan favorite characters hostage for a sequel. That means they should follow through and make it clear that they are absolutely following through. 

I love the game we got, but it isn't half the game we deserved. And this isn't half the interview we deserved either. We deserved a focus on the future, not talk of fetishes and Olivia's perfect ass.

In principle I agree. Fire Emblem still hasn't reached it potential and that's mostly because of a lot of bad choices that were probably made to ensure the game was popular enough to get a sequel. Thefore the game not getting a sequel would a very bitter pill to swallow. 

But they haven't exactly said they wouldn't do a sequel either. I'd be surprised if there wouldn't be a Fire Emblem Warriors 2 somewhere down the line. Its Koei, they love making sequels. 

[Kahvi]

Fascinating how they make it sound like the reaction to the game was overly positive, when as far as I'm aware the reaction was more like "it's okay". It is a bit annoying they talked about fan service so much rather than focusing on more interesting subjects, but this is Team Ninja we're talking about…

I am happy that they would clearly like to make a sequel. While I do enjoy the game, I just wish there was more to it in the base game (you know, more characters, less clones etc)

[Tolvir]

11 minutes ago, Kahvi said:

Fascinating how they make it sound like the reaction to the game was overly positive, when as far as I'm aware the reaction was more like "it's okay". It is a bit annoying they talked about fan service so much rather than focusing on more interesting subjects, but this is Team Ninja we're talking about…

I am happy that they would clearly like to make a sequel. While I do enjoy the game, I just wish there was more to it in the base game (you know, more characters, less clones etc)

Problem is that “negative” reaction has been within the community alone. We are a loud minority, we don’t reflect the 1 million people who bought the game. Hell, we only made up roughly 1% of Fate’s total sales. 

So between sales and reviews and all that, yeah. The reception has been overall positive.

[Fabulously Olivier]

5 minutes ago, Tolvir said:

Problem is that “negative” reaction has been within the community alone. We are a loud minority, we don’t reflect the 1 million people who bought the game. Hell, we only made up roughly 1% of Fate’s total sales. 

So between sales and reviews and all that, yeah. The reception has been overall positive.

As perhaps it should be. It's mechanically one of the best Warriors games. My frustration lies only in so much of the franchise being unrepresented in a game that exists solely as a celebration of said franchise. I'm just hoping to get a sequel.

[Sayyyaka]

The difference in quality in care between Hyrule Warriors and this is insane.  You can tell the staff actually cared about HW.  Here it's literally just whatever gets their dicks hard.  That was a whole 1/3rd of the interview.

[Tolvir]

10 minutes ago, Etheus said:

As perhaps it should be. It's mechanically one of the best Warriors games. My frustration lies only in so much of the franchise being unrepresented in a game that exists solely as a celebration of said franchise. I'm just hoping to get a sequel.

The problem was unless the roster was going to be set at a high number, representing the entire series was impossible. Just getting all the lords in the game would have been around half the roster all by itself, leaving not much room for anyone else. And then when you include the characters that have to be there, you have 0 room left for any freedom from the Devs, and that’s still going to go over the roster count we have. 

It wasn’t possible to represent everything. It’s why they made the choice they did. And all these statements that Koei didn’t care is silly, considering one of their ideas for the game was a literal recreation of Genealogy. The funny thing is, if that was what they did, FE fans would be cheering, despite the fact that it wouldn’t at all be representing the series. Just one game. 

But at least a sequel will include some of the fan favorite games from the series. I am looking forward to the possibility myself.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Tolvir

[Fabulously Olivier]

22 minutes ago, Tolvir said:

The problem was unless the roster was going to be set at a high number, representing the entire series was impossible. Just getting all the lords in the game would have been around half the roster all by itself, leaving not much room for anyone else. And then when you include the characters that have to be there, you have 0 room left for any freedom from the Devs, and that’s still going to go over the roster count we have. 

It wasn’t possible to represent everything. It’s why they made the choice they did. And all these statements that Koei didn’t care is silly, considering one of their ideas for the game was a literal recreation of Genealogy. The funny thing is, if that was what they did, FE fans would be cheering, despite the fact that it wouldn’t at all be representing the series. Just one game. 

But at least a sequel will include some of the fan favorite games from the series. I am looking forward to the possibility myself.

To be honest, Geneology's story would make a fantastic framework for a crossover, with characters from across the franchise (albeit, I would personally prefer that the Tellius series - by far their best universe - serve as the core story inspiration).

The story we got was effectively Sacred Stones lite with cliffnotes versions of Fates and Awakening set inside. 

But aside from that, we do have history mode to potentially tell important stories from across the franchise.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Etheus

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Tolvir said:

The problem was unless the roster was going to be set at a high number, representing the entire series was impossible. Just getting all the lords in the game would have been around half the roster all by itself, leaving not much room for anyone else. And then when you include the characters that have to be there, you have 0 room left for any freedom from the Devs, and that’s still going to go over the roster count we have. 

It wasn’t possible to represent everything. It’s why they made the choice they did. And all these statements that Koei didn’t care is silly, considering one of their ideas for the game was a literal recreation of Genealogy. The funny thing is, if that was what they did, FE fans would be cheering, despite the fact that it wouldn’t at all be representing the series. Just one game. 

But at least a sequel will include some of the fan favorite games from the series. I am looking forward to the possibility myself.

Representing the entire series would indeed have been impossible but a much better balance was very much possible. Had they given the newbies either Awakening or Fates, the Western veterans Elibe or Tellius and the Japanese Archenea then every group would have gotten something and as a result every group would have been happy. The biggest reason why things could get so toxic was because one group was so obviously getting snubbed. 

1 hour ago, Sayyyaka said:

The difference in quality in care between Hyrule Warriors and this is insane.  You can tell the staff actually cared about HW.  Here it's literally just whatever gets their dicks hard.  That was a whole 1/3rd of the interview.

I wouldn't go that far. Truth of the matter is that Zelda was just far easier to work with. If you got the triforce trio, Impa and a representative from the Goron and the Zora you've already gotten the vast majority of things that absolutely need to be in the game. This is in contrast with Fire Emblem where you got lots more plot important characters to implement which are scattered around three mayor parts of the fanbase that all need to be kept happy. 

Another reason is that the HW team just made better decisions and they ensured there wasn't a big gap in their roster. Part of this is because of what I said above but the team also went out of their way to get proper villain representation. The decision making skills of the Fire Emblem team was rather questionable in comparison. The villains were never going to be the star villains of the franchise considering the three games they chose but going out of their way to pick the worst villains from those games certainly didn't help. I have a feeling the team's decision making was held back by some faulty beliefs like the Hoshidan and Nohrian siblings needing equal and full fledged representation despite Hinoka not being relevant or Elise being rather obsolete by sharing a moveset with Leo and a character archtype with Lissa. But bad decision making skills aren't the same as bad faith. I don't think the supports and cute little history mode events could be done by a dev who didn't care for Fire Emblem. 

[Lau]

So it's highly unlikely that there's going to be more DLC? ...alright, that's fine.

As for a potential sequel...Darios would be a fantastic main character thank you Xander Mobus. And for the games I'd like to see represented...honestly, I'm only bothered about Elibe. I don't like Tellius, I've never played the Jugdral games, and I wasn't too keen on Magvel either. Valentia was great, and it would be an opportunity to declone Celica.

Do you think they would bring back some of the characters from the original game for the sequel. Give Archanea the respect it deserves

[Alkaid]

Interesting to see just present fanservice was in the development process. The bit about Tharja's victory pose was especially funny. Doesn't bother me, but I'll guess that's another blow to the fans who dislike the game over that stuff. Bummer about Darios getting left out, but at least we know they intended for you to save him.

I guess Warriors 2 is rather up in the air, despite how adamantly they seemed to propose it even before this game even came out. Considering how surprisingly good the sales ended up being and yet they're still not on track for the next game already, I'm a bit worried if it'll actually happen. I guess it'll be a good few years even if it does.

Also, I don't really see why we need to argue over the roster again. The representation in this game seems to have been a popularity contest(which makes sense business-wise), and the older entries in the series lost. I'm not sure if I'd expect a big shift in the next game either. (FE 2018 would probably take up most of the spotlight anyway)

[Soledai]

Actually surprised they didn't jack jerk DLC for days on in, I'm actually seriously surprised considering how much potential for them was there and considering how often they do it with literally any other game lol. Anyway, when it comes to those people doing that "talking" thing, I expected nothing but what I got.

Just my thought: """"""""""Representation"""""""""" can come in more forms than characters, as there's more that make up a game than that. So theoretically, isn't it possible to cover an entire series in some format or another? Not that I expected it. This isn't intended to single anyone out, nor am I bothered about """"""""""representation"""""""""" so don't mistake it...

[NSSKG151]

Surprised to hear the Lon'qu of all characters was considered for Warriors. Now I kind of wish he was in just to see a support conversation between him and Navarre. Though I'm pretty sure Lon'qu was dropped quickly once the decision to put Lucina and Owain in the game.

[SoulWeaver]

To repeat my comment on the home site's coverage of the interview(thanks for getting us this btw Vincent):

Let me see if I got their official statements on their main reasoning behind not including Gaius or Lon'qu right...

"Gaius wielded daggers and daggers were a new weapon type then"

...Except he actually wielded Swords, that's Asugi they're thinking of.

"if we added Lon’qu, ->another Sword user<-, in the 3rd DLC Pack (Awakening), well… (painful grin)"

...So you're still going to act like 'too many Swords' was the most pressing concern for you guys, and then give us Olivia, who wields...Swords?

...I'm trying to figure out just how stupid they think we are. It seems like they think we're really stupid. Someone tell me I'm not the only one getting this vibe.

[The DanMan]

4 hours ago, Sayyyaka said:

The difference in quality in care between Hyrule Warriors and this is insane.  You can tell the staff actually cared about HW.  Here it's literally just whatever gets their dicks hard.  That was a whole 1/3rd of the interview.

LoZ was far easier to work with. And if you want to dive into that hyperbole, HW had 8 female characters to 5 males at base which is a nearly identical ratio to FEW's 9/14. And most of that was specifically about Tharja (whose popularity is entirely based on fanservice); we have a single comment on Linde and the interviewer flat-out asking about Olivia. But if you want to be completely ignorant of context and find stuff to bitch about, then I can't stop you. HW had as much "care"/lack thereof in it.

4 hours ago, Kahvi said:

Fascinating how they make it sound like the reaction to the game was overly positive, when as far as I'm aware the reaction was more like "it's okay". It is a bit annoying they talked about fan service so much rather than focusing on more interesting subjects, but this is Team Ninja we're talking about…

I am happy that they would clearly like to make a sequel. While I do enjoy the game, I just wish there was more to it in the base game (you know, more characters, less clones etc)

It did sell 1 million and had mostly positive reviews (with the more negative ones categorically hating it because it's a Warriors game/bitching about the roster). 

5 hours ago, Etheus said:

One can use rhetorical speech while still saying something factually accurate. 

And how would that be different from the status quo? 3 of the 9 DLC characters were sword characters, with 2 being clones. We didn't need them. One of the dlc characters was a 4th clone of the same archer moveset. We didn't need him. Fact is, the dlc barely helped weapon diversity, aside from giving us a couple infantry lances. 

Because of the lords, there are exactly 4 that don't primarily use swords; Hector, Ephraim, Robin, Micaiah (Celica can be argued either way). Done that way swords would've outnumbered everything else 2 to 1, compared to 9/23 at base and 12/32 after DLC. And infantry lancers were really the only thing needed for weapon diversity.

1 minute ago, SoulWeaver said:

To repeat my comment on the home site's coverage of the interview(thanks for getting us this btw Vincent):

Let me see if I got their official statements on their main reasoning behind not including Gaius or Lon'qu right...

"Gaius wielded daggers and daggers were a new weapon type then"

...Except he actually wielded Swords, that's Asugi they're thinking of.

"if we added Lon’qu, ->another Sword user<-, in the 3rd DLC Pack (Awakening), well… (painful grin)"

...So you're still going to act like 'too many Swords' was the most pressing concern for you guys, and then give us Olivia, who wields...Swords?

...I'm trying to figure out just how stupid they think we are. It seems like they think we're really stupid. Someone tell me I'm not the only one getting this vibe.

He does have daggers in Heroes and Tellius thieves were the OG dagger wielding units; associating him with daggers now doesn't seem too out-there.
Olivia has a completely different style, whereas they'd be hard-pressed to make something different for Lon'qu.

Edited May 4, 2018 by The DanMan