Fire Emblem Engage is releasing near the end of January, as a celebration of the entire series and all things Fire Emblem. The game’s big selling point so far has been exactly that, some of the protagonists from previous Fire Emblem games such as Ike, Lyn and Marth are set to return in some way shape of form.
Fire Emblem Engage follows the character of Alear, the divine dragon, on a quest to reclaim his memories and honor the promise made to his mother. The most recent trailer of the game was full of exposition and new features, including Corrupted Emblems. While there isn’t much information out on them yet here are some things players should know.
6 Emblem Rings Are The Games Focal Point
As was revealed in earlier material, players can summon heroes from past games using emblem rings. These heroes fight with player units in spirit, and the plot of the game largely revolves around Alear collecting these rings and reclaiming his memories. These rings essentially act as the game’s ‘macguffin’ plot device and also serve as callbacks to previous games in the series.
5 The Villains Also Have Rings
The recent trailers reveal that villain characters also have emblem rings, much to the surprise of Alear, the two that were shown first were Lyn and Lucina, both fighting against the game’s protagonists. What can be ascertained from the trailers is that there are 12 rings in total, not 12 corrupted and 12 ‘proper’ rings, rather the entire collection can be swayed to either side of the battle.
4 The Rings Can Be Corrupted
As the trailer reveals, the emblem rings can be corrupted, making the heroes of the past the bad guys, they then fight against the player’s team and turn completely red, and seemingly possess other stereotypically villainous traits.
However, it also seems that the corrupted emblem rings can be ‘recruited’ as battle scenes show a red, corrupted version of Lucina fighting against Alear and his army. Later in the same trailer, Lucina is blue when Alear finally storms the castle, and she is fighting with his allies. This leads to the inference that there is likely to be some mechanics which allow players to essentially recruit or free corrupted emblem rings and return them to their side.
3 The Four Hounds Are After The Rings As Well
Nintendo has revealed some of the villains in the game, namely the four hounds who plan on reviving the fell dragon, they consist of Zephia, a dragon manakete, Griss, a violent and insane mage, Mauiver an honest and chivalrous paladin and Marni, a moody knight.
These hounds seem to have teamed up with the other villains in the trailer to corrupt the emblems and revive the fell dragon. It also seems that when a particular nefarious looking mage in the trailer wears the rings, he corrupts them and thus the hero spirit within.
2 Alear Can Be Corrupted Too
From the end of one of the recent trailers, it seems the antagonists of the game can corrupt Alear too. His color palette turns completely red and black and some Machiavellian lines are uttered but not much is known beyond this at this point. It could potentially be a major plot point, and it remains to be seen how Intelligent Systems tackle it.
This might be somewhat related to the story theme of him being a slumbering divine dragon searching for his memory, and can be seen to take heavy inspiration from both Fire Emblem Awakening as well as the original Fire Emblem and its remakes. The parallels with the characters of Tiki, Naga and even Byleth can easily be drawn, perhaps serving largely as a tribute to popular characters of the past.
1 Corrupted Emblems Are A Huge Missed Opportunity
While this might be proved to be wrong, from the outset it seems like corrupted emblems are simply following an established trope in the franchise, not only are corrupted units present in multiple previous installments of the game. It also seems as if the plot draws heavy inspiration from Fire Emblem Awakening and the Fell Dragon Grima, particularly the endings in which Grima wins. The entire lost memory scheme has been done on multiple occasions in previous Fire Emblem games as well.
The fact that the game’s antagonists can corrupt previous lords of the franchise instead of taking some characters from the impressive villains gallery Fire Emblem possesses may also rub some veteran players the wrong way. The possibility of bringing back villains such as Zephiel, The Black Knight, Ashnard and Gharnef among others is tantalizing. They should definitely consider bringing back some villains, at the very least in later DLC or expansions.
With all of the above in mind, there is still a lot to be hopeful about regarding Fire Emblem Engage. The corrupted emblem premise could also end up being executed exceptionally well, in terms of both the story and in-game during combat as well.