Considering that it is a full remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, many may wonder why Nintendo chose to rename the rejuvenated Famicom release to Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.
The answer to that question has now been shared in Dengeki Nintendo, where it was revealed that their concern was largely stemmed from the word Gaiden, which, in Japanese, refers to a side story. As it has already been used in previous Fire Emblem games, they were worried that it would confuse Japanese players.
With the word needing to be used for the worldwide release they settles on ‘echoes,’ and, if more remakes were to be made, they would like to use the title once again. Their conversation around the topic can be read below, with thanks to Kantopia for the translation.
“Well, when Gaiden came out, it was just Dark Dragon and the Blade of Light before it,” game director Kenta Nakanishi explained, asked as to why they had chosen to use Echoes within the title.
“Fast forward over ten releases later to [the] modern day, and it can be confusing which Fire Emblem’s ‘gaiden’ this is! We wanted to emphasise its status as a spin-off without using the word ‘gaiden,’ so started to think hard about it…”
Game director Toshiyuki Kusakihara soon shared his thoughts: “A lot of the recent Fire Emblem games all have extra maps called ‘gaiden chapters,’ so we feared players being left very confused. So Mr. Nakanishi specifically told us to avoid calling it New Gaiden.”
Then, Fire Emblem series producer Hitoshi Yamagami added: “Avoiding calling it New Gaiden is something we had in mind from the start of development. At the same time, we wanted a title that the rest of the world would also use, so wanted to settle on an English word.
“Somewhere in that conversation, the word ‘echoes’ surfaced. We imagined it was fitting as older games could now ‘echo’ to the modern players. We were very pleased with the choice, and, if there were to be more remakes in the future, we figured we could use the Echoes title again.”
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows Of Valentia will release exclusively for Nintendo 3DS in Europe and North America on May 19th.
