Expectations, Intelligent Systems, and Atlus

Two years ago, Nintendo teased Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, no doubt as part of their new idea of lending their franchises to other companies in an attempt to fill in a dry release schedule that Nintendo can do little about filling. While rather unexpected, it wasn’t an entirely unwelcome idea. I am rather ambivalent toward Fire Emblem as a series, but Shin Megami Tensei is one of my favorite series of RPGs and the two aren’t entirely tonally divorced. Sure, Shin Megami Tensei already has Devil Survivor to fill any demon-related strategy RPG needs, but Fire Emblem has never really had a traditional RPG to go along with it.

After the announcement, the game went silent. All we had to go on was two pieces of concept art and a logo, but many, myself included, were looking forward to any new info. Yesterday, Nintendo held a Direct that contained a specific trailer (Footage captured by GameXplain):

Yikes.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it in my discussion of Persona 4, but I do not like anime. There is good mixed in with the sea of bad, but as a whole I am not a fan of the genre or its trappings. There are things I like that are definitely just straight up anime, but those things are few and far between. Recently, Atlus released a trailer for Persona 5 that went like this:

Still is recognizably anime, but infused with so much more style and personality that the uninitiated would have a hard time believing this is technically a spinoff of a parent series initially thought to be represented in the first video. I understand that Persona‘s popularity has eclipsed that of SMT, but there really wasn’t much to prepare me for what the first trailer delivered on. On one hand, SMT x FE exists. On the other, it looks like absolutely nothing like a game I want.

Illusory Revelations #FE — I’m done typing that now — is the new name for the game and reflects what changed during the course of development the past two years. The SMT elements are almost not present, the FE elements are hidden throughout the trailer’s garish and overdone use of color, bland J-Pop plays over cringeworthy scenes of spectacle-laden nonsense, and it feels like a trailer for a Persona game with all the style and pizazz replaced with a Sailor Moon transformation sequence. Only the briefest glimpse of a ruined Tokyo holds any promise for this to not just be Nintendo’s own Persona to wave around after 5 comes out. And we still have no idea what the game is about.

For the time being, we will have to take the companies word on it that this will mostly be a Fire Emblem game with a Persona-esque battle system set in modern times with occasioanal appearances from demons. And apparently, this was the idea in mind from the beginning: to envision Fire Emblem in a modern setting. And here I was thinking that was what Advanced Wars was for.

Now, Intelligent Systems and Atlus make some great games, but the direction this game has apparently taken leaves me cold. I was expecting a more traditional crossover of Fire Emblem and SMT themes and characters. From what I can tell so far, this seems to be its own, new thing. Which is fine by me I guess, but why bother attaching the names to begin with beside the obvious brand awareness? What began as a crossover now feels like a completely different thing with mere references to the two series it hails from.

Why shove Fire Emblem characters into modern life? They cannot possibly act the same way they do in the actual games, so they may as well just be new characters. Will I gain any insight into Marth as a character when viewed through a contemporary context? Like I said above, I get that Persona is more popular than the parent series now, but why force the comparison even greater when it and Fire Emblem have absolutely nothing in common except the relationship building elements reintroduced in Awakening? Persona 5 is already a thing that is happening, I don’t need another Persona game. Atlus will make sure I buy Persona 5 shit for the next five years. What I needed was a new console SMT game, an actual void that needs to be filled. As it stands, this project feels like its Atlus’ and Intelligent Systems leftovers.

SMT x FE is a clear case of announcing a game too early, something Nintendo is usually good at avoiding but something that needed to be done when the Wii U began flopping hard. It’s reveal was barely a concept and barely any of the concept has made its way to what we will be playing in less than a year. I’ll probably still get this game, at worst it will be a collector’s item in a few years and may very well be an enjoyable game in its own right. But it was a mistake to attached either franchise to its name because for now all I can think is what could have been.