Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE devs share thoughts about their time with the game

I think it was in 2011 when I was first approached by someone saying, “Hey, there’s going to be a collaboration with Fire Emblem – want to do it?” Next thing you know, five years have passed, and here we are handing the final product over to all of you. I’ve been making RPGs with Atlus for over ten years, but I think my anticipation for a project like this goes back even further… It’s hard to express the exact feeling I had when I heard the news about this project, but it was something like, “Finally”.

As a creator looking back on Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, the opportunity to collaborate on such a storied franchise as Fire Emblem, to work side by side with an industry giant like Nintendo, to have such interesting partners as Avex and Toi8, and to be developing for unique hardware like Wii U… it made for a fresh and stimulating time. And when you get the feeling tat the project you’re working on may be a “once in a lifetime” opportunity, it really fuels you to keep going. But when the road ahead is five years long, you still may feel sometimes like you’re going to run out of fuel.

When that happened, I would shift gears from the creator side of me to the fan side for that extra bit of fuel that would restart the engines and propel me forward. “If I want to hold people’s interest, I can’t do it halfway – it’s time to swing for the fences!” “People have been waiting for this, so I need to make it the best!” This was what my creator side was constantly hearing from my fan side over the last five years.

Now that it’s all over, I feel a bit lonely, and I might still feel over the course of the next year or two that I’m still working on this game, haha. But of course that’s not so. We developers have stepped away, and the time has come for Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE to belong to you. I do think that when it releases, I will turn back into a fan and play the game from that perspective. All I can hope is that you play the game with the same feeling.

Finally, I want to say a word of thanks to Satoru Iwata, who created the opportunity for this game to come into the world. It was my own small dream to be able to share stories of developing Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE with him in an “Iwata Asks.” Thank you, Mr. Iwata.