Yesterday’s Nintendo Direct was a meaty one, and one of its biggest announcements was the new look at Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave (release date included); a new entry in the huge turn-based strategy-RPG series set in the Greece and Rome-inspired (but fictional) Dagdan Empire.
After a closer look at the map shown at the beginning of the trailer (which you can watch below), however, it seems Nintendo and developer Intelligent Systems are directly referencing medieval Spain, too.
As pointed out by Eurogamer Spain in a YouTube short, Spanish Fire Emblem fans and those that know enough about medieval European history can catch two familiar regions on the huge map that represents the continent where the game’s events will take place: Kingdom of Arago and Castalia. The former – alongside the Kingdom of Brezarant – appears to be as important as the Empire, but Castalia is a part of Dagdan.
They’re direct references to the medieval Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, which were merged in the late 15th century. Nowadays, there’s one Aragon and two Castiles in Spain, but we know them as autonomous communities (regions). The relevant bit of information here is that, even if we go back to Aragon and Castile’s pre-unification history, they still were created centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire.
By all accounts, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is basing most of its setting on the Greek and Roman civilisations (and what looks to be a bit of Carthage), so it’s interesting to see the creatives pulling some names from much later periods in Mediterranean Europe’s rich history. That said, as someone born and raised in the south of Spain, catching visual touches and character designs – plenty of tanned folks in this one, for example – that go beyond the traditional, idealised Western takes on Rome (and that borrow from other Mediterranean cultures) has been fun and refreshing.
The game arrives 17th September, and will be launching exclusively on Switch 2.
