Fire Emblem: Three Houses' devs felt a lot of pressure bringing the series back to a console

The last time we saw a Fire Emblem game for a console was back in 2007. While fans of the series certainly know this, no one felt it more than the team working on Fire Emblem: Three Houses. In an interview with RPG Site, director at Intelligent Systems Toshiyuki Kusakihara, and Nintendo's Genki Yokota commented on the pressure associated with bringing the series back to the big screen.

Genki Yokota: It was a big pressure for us!

Toshiyuki Kusakihara: It was also for me a real pressure - the hurdle we had to cross was very high. Gamers are very impassioned - they've been waiting for this for such a long time. So we really did our best to provide the best game we could.

Yokota: Regarding the approach, we had to handle the HD screen, you know? We had a lot of meetings and a lot of discussions with Koei Tecmo and Intelligent Systems about what we could do regarding the new HD graphics aspect of development.

...Well, for example, we worried about the size of the screen. When you're in a battle against someone, up until now it was just one-on-one battles. That worked on a smaller screen, but we thought maybe for the new game generation it was too simple. So we discussed with Mr. Kusakihara, and we suggested what he wanted - what he's wanted for a long time - is a new aspect, which we call battalions. It should be better looking first, but it could also make the game more fun.

Kusakihara: Time after time, the gaming consoles are getting more powerful than before. It became really difficult for us to really demonstrate that this is actually a war when you only had one-on-one battles. It's just not realistic. So it was, of course, a big subject. Also, Koei Tecmo is very good at this sort of big, huge battle simulation. So we had a great amount of help from them in achieving that.