Today I translated a summary (or highlights) of a developer interview on Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance from Nintendo Dream’s June 6th volume (released May 21, 2005). I could not find this magazine despite my searches for the full interview, so settled on translating a Japanese user’s summary of highlights instead.
If anyone has this issue, I’d love to take a look at the interview in full, as highlights may miss some of the fun tidbits!
Enjoy!
Source: Nintendo Dream (June 6th issue, May 2005)
Staff:
- Kentaro Nishimura (Nintendo / Supervisor)
- Narihiro Tohru (Producer)
- Masahiro Higuchi (Chief Graphics)
- Masayuki Horikawa (Director)
On the fun of FE:
- FE’s development concept was to create a game with condensed simulation elements to match the abilities of the Famicom.
- The series’ charm is the accomplishment with the game system.
- “I think the reason for that is that the basic system is extremely simple and easy to understand, with different kinds of fun features such as character growths added intuitively on top of it.” – Horikawa
On the features of this game:
- This game has a stronger medieval setting than previous entries, with an aim to differentiate the story from the GBA versions.
- When converting to 3D, we aimed to ensure that operability did not drop.
- We gave the animated scenes our all, and think they really became an appealing point of the game.
On the difficulty:
- The FE series has been said to be difficult, but that may be when aiming to do a perfect play.
- “As a creator, I didn’t think to assume perfect plays [are to be done] from the beginning. I have heard opinions that say otherwise… but, I think the point of “a perfect play is not the default [setting]” will remain the same for the “Emblem” series for awhile.” – Narihiro
- Regarding difficulty of this game, Hard has been the standard level up until now. We made Maniac in response to requests of making a difficulty that is tougher than “Thracia.”
On Laguz:
- We wanted to expand the world and made plans for races aside from humans and dragons. This kind of image initially came about from Mr. Higuchi’s words, “How about we have non-human characters, or a continent only populated by animals?”
On the characters:
- The character creation process goes in this order: First, we think of the character image. Then, the image is fleshed out, and lastly, the illustration is drawn.
- To avoid difficulty in understanding the characters, we ensure that characters that share the same amount of letters* in their name all started with different letters*. In “Binding” for instance: Alen, Igrene, Wolt, and Elen all follow the aiueo-order* as seen.
- *(TN: Specifically Japanese syllable order あいうえお (a-i-u-e-o). Think of it as “alphabetical” for our purposes. Wolt in JP is lit. Uoruto, so the above example follows this order)
- The illustrator this time is a staff member who was connected to “Sacred Stones”, Ms. Senri Kita. A former SNK member. However, there are also illustrations drawn by internal staff.
That’s that! The note on names was fun, as was learning about how the idea for Laguz started.
Please note that I have no way of cross-referencing the accuracy of this summary as I do not have the original magazine. Please keep a degree of skepticism for this information. However, the source site does accurately summarize other interviews listed that the respective sources are available for, so I would say it is trustworthy!
Please let me know if you have access to this Nintendo Dream volume, or know someone who does!
kantopia 
“I think the point of “a perfect play is not the default [setting]” will remain the same for the “Emblem” series for awhile.”
for a while = exactly 7 years
Hehe, I found this funny in retrospect too 😀