Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave made quite the splash on its arrival, quickly becoming the latest in a string of commercial and critical successes for Nintendo’s flagship strategy series. It came as no surprise then, when sweeping plans for three waves of DLC were announced to be on the horizon. Whether this DLC will live up to Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave remains to be seen.
There are a few hurdles developers will have to clear if they want to continue their recent hot streak. Players have been left almost entirely in the dark about what the Fortune’s Weave Expansion Pass will entail, so one can only speculate about the brass tacks of it all. However, the general outline we have given should raise some concerns about the nature of following up a route-based RPG like Fortune’s Weave.
From Fates to Three Houses, Fire Emblem Has a Rocky History with DLC
Perhaps the most obvious hurdle in front of developers is simply that they have their work cut out for them. Following up on the good will established by Fortune’s Weave will be difficult enough, but the DLC faces the far more intimidating challenge of adding to a game that is already ridiculous in scale. Fortune’s Weave features four different routes with complete stories in their own right. This has already been overwhelming for some players to keep up with, and adding to the stack runs the risk of drowning them out entirely.
Guess the games from the emojis.
In contrast to the structure of previous Fire Emblem games like Three Houses or even Fates, Fortune’s Weave allows players to take on every route semi-simultaneously during a single playthrough. There is still a level of player choice between these routes, and the order in which you tackle them matters more than one might think. When adding new stories to a game that already has a branching narrative, you run the risk of cheapening the choices that defined a player’s original journey.
When adding new stories to a game that already has a branching narrative, you run the risk of cheapening the choices that defined a player’s original journey.
This is certainly a pitfall Fire Emblem: Fates fell headfirst into. Whether players chose Conquest or Birthright, it all came out in the wash when Revelations was released as the definitive experience uniting both factions of the game’s conflict. Players were forced to ask why they should fight and die for one side or another when they could go their own route and make everyone happy. One version rendered both of its predecessors completely irrelevant.
-
-
-
By the time Three Houses rolled around, developers seemed to have learned a few valuable lessons. Rather than invest in yet another full-scale route, the Cindered Shadows DLC offered only a few additional chapters that ran parallel to the rest of the game. In other words, Cindered Shadows served as more of a cherry on top, intended to compliment the rest of the game rather than replacing it.
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave Expansion Pass Can Still Have a Bright Future
-
-
-
One can only hope that Fortune’s Weave will lean less towards Revelations, and more towards Cindered Shadows. If Fortune’s Weave focused on four new routes, as was reportedly planned in early stages of development, the DLC would completely shake up the decisions players made in the base game. Not only would it feel like they had been cheated out of a storyline that should’ve been included from the jump, it’d again make them ask why they bothered with the other four routes in the first place.
Whether Fortune’s Weave will show this much discipline is still up in the air. Nintendo’s official website has only given a basic outline of the DLC, with Wave 3 of the Expansion Pass stated to include “Explore new stories featuring Bertrand, Talimun, Orchel, and Anatolia.” The plural in there is a bit concerning, as it may mean the DLC is going for a more ambitious take than the already bloated game could handle.
This concern was further substantiated when a recent datamine revealed the DLC may not only include new playable characters, but different variations on those characters. Bertrand, for example, is depicted as he was before he became the White-Maned Demon. This implies that before playing as Bertrand during the Heroic Games, we’ll see a prologue of his life around the time he killed Leda’s father. This is similar to how, in Fortune’s Weave itself, Theodora has prologue chapters before she is grafted with Mahadu’s arm.
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave swung for the fences with four playable routes. While an undoubtedly massive undertaking, it is a deeply memorable experience nonetheless. Fates showed the dangers of writing over branching routes with an expansive DLC storyline, but Three Houses proved those concerns could be overcome. In the end, only time can tell which route Fortune’s Weave will choose.
- Released
-
September 17, 2026
- ESRB
-
Teen / Fantasy Violence, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, In-Game Purchases
- Publisher(s)
-
Nintendo
