Credits: Arch, Memento Mori

(Revised: 2nd February 2011)

Around July 2008, the webmaster of the Fire Emblem Universe website, Arch, managed to obtain detailed information about a number of Fire Emblem prototypes (Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776 and Binding Blade) from an online contact, Memento Mori. The information originated from a girl whose father allegedly worked as a programmer for Intelligent Systems (the series’s development team). This girl collected notes about the prototypes over the years, saved as PDFs, albeit written in poor English, with some words left untranslated in Japanese (which is entirely understandable, given that the girl was Japanese).

No screenshots were given and, to this day, it is probably impossible to verify whether the information is true or false. Still, since there remains a chance that the information could be true, it serves as a useful resource as to what the games could have been like. Initially, the intent was to keep this information a Fire Emblem Universe exclusive, however Arch has kindly allowed the information to be hosted on this site as well. Below, you will find my interpretations of the prototype notes and you can also read Arch’s version (for all three games) here.

Warning!

(The details here have yet to be confirmed!)

Character changes

• Janne, Daisy, Asaello, Arthur, Femina and Hawk from Genealogy of the Holy War were planned as playable characters. The first five have unused portraits in the final release, but oddly Hawk doesn’t have one.
• Femina had Karin’s role and Hawk had Sety’s role. Hawk’s stats were: 14 Mag, 17 Skill, 14 Speed, 12 Def, 13 Mdef and 9 Build.
• Daisy appeared with a band of thieves, presumably as an enemy. She was probably recruited by Asaello (although in Genealogy of the Holy War, Asaello had to be recruited with Daisy).
• Nanna was able to wield the Beo Sword. The official Thracia 776 site temporarily listed her father as Beowolf, so this could be true.
• Gunna (theorised to be Asvel’s father or grandfather) and August were playable. In the release, Gunna’s unused data can be found amongst the playable character data, while August’s data is located faraway.
• Reinhardt was recruited by talking with Olwen.
• There was a mention of “Evayle being Briggid”, which perhaps meant Evayle was already known as Briggid from the start of the game.

Plot changes

• Initially, there was a chapter in the desert (Yied Desert?) where the player used the Kia staff to restore people turned to stone. Amongst these people was Lachesis. This sounds a bit like an alternate version of Chapter 24x in the release, with Lachesis replacing Evayle’s role.
• Yurius and Manfroy appeared in certain chapters to attack the player if they got into range. Ishtar was also meant to make a battle appearance. All three characters have unused character data and there is unused dialogue indicating that Ishtar did fight at one time.
• Areone was supposed to kill Dean (a NPC) because of his close relationship with Linoan. This causes Linoan to despise Areone. It is assumed that this occured during around Chapter 14, leading Linoan to leave Tahra.
• Mareeta’s mother was originally Ira. Her mother is never stated in the final release, so Ira is still a possibility. That said, the 20th Anniversary Encyclopaedia indicates that Galzus is Ira’s nephew so I’m not really sure how likely it is anymore…