Fire Emblem Warriors devs explain why Darios wasn't a playable character

Nintendo Dream magazine has been interviewing the Fire Emblem Warriors dev team for a few issues now, and they've just wrapped up their interview series concerning the latest round of DLC for the game. Hiroya Usuda and Yosuke Hayshi discuss a number of things about various DLC, including character designs and costume inclusions. In one snippet, we also get to learn why Darios made an appearance, but wasn't playable.

ND: Why did you not make Darios a playable character?

Usuda: When we were writing the game’s main story, we were planning for Darios to be rescued via DLC… Originally, we considered removing a character from the main game to add Darios.

Hayashi: While we were trying to add all the characters we needed, we couldn’t find an opportunity to add Darios.

Usuda: It’s not so simple to make a playable character even if they already exist as a NPC in the main game. There’s a lot more dialogue and animations that we need to create.

Hayashi: We also need to create Bond Conversations as well.

Usuda: At some point in time, we were thinking of having, say, a free History Map where Darios could be saved. When the Chaos Dragon was revived, Darios fell into a void in space-time, but we intentionally made it unclear if he actually died. We left Darios’s fate open-ended, so that his storyline could potentially continue. While we had a story for him being saved, we had to omit him to make other characters.

ND: Perhaps a rescued Darios could be a main character in the next game?

All: (Laughs)

The full interview, translated by the gang at SerenesForest, contains a lot more information how the game's characters and other DLC came together. Check it out here (thanks AveynKnight!)