Yokota: We decided that we wanted to release a Fire Emblem game on Nintendo Switch by the end of 2019 at the latest. However, it was looking like regular development was going to take some extra time, so we looked into getting another developer in the mix in order to shorten the length of production. At pretty much that exact same time, Koei Tecmo was making FE Warriors for us, and as a result of consulting with Mr. Hayashi (head of Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja), we ended up asking the Kou Shibusawa team to help out. That’s how things went.
Kusakihara: Speaking of the Kou Shibusawa team, they’re well-renowned for making SRPGs – they’re the best of the best. We knew it’d be great if we could get them on board, so we started hashing plans out again. It was only after we decided to work with the Kou Shibusawa team that we considered their sense of world-building with three balanced kingdoms.
That’s interesting. The setting in Three Houses where three different kingdoms are at war is certainly like Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Kusakihara: In regards to staffing, Intelligent Systems provided Koei Tecmo with a minimum crew of several designers, a music composer, and an adviser to the programmers – not including myself, of course. We then left Koei Tecmo in charge of basic game development.
Was there any aspect of this style of development that you were particularly happy with?
Kusakihara: To put it simply, it was just fun (laughs). Koei Tecmo rounded up workers who were fans of the series, so the team was really motivated all throughout development. In the beginning, I was wondering what kind of pace they’d be able to keep, but as it turns out, the Kou Shibusawa team’s development skills are limitless! (laughs) I accidentally got a little greedy there and went overboard on the size of the game.
Yokota: Yeah, we never intended to put this much stuff in the game (laughs). It’s gotta be about twice as big as we set out to make.
