Fate/Samurai Remnant will have challenging Servant bouts and story from Fire Emblem: Three Houses writer team

When the first official trailer for Fate/Samurai Remnant appeared last June, it showed glimpses of not only the action RPG's gameplay scenes but also the storyline which will eventually be part of the Fate series universe. It turns out that the boss fights against enemy Servants will be more difficult despite the developer studio's reputation, and writers with Fire Emblem experience are also taking part in this title's storyline.

The 15th volume of Type-Moon Ace magazine — published a few days ago on July 26 — had a segment dedicated to Fate/Samurai Remnant. It also included an interview with Kinoko Nasu and Kou Shibusawa. The latter had not only played the PC version of Witch of the Holy Night and the console release of Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- in that order. The CEO of Koei Tecmo also revealed that he has been playing and following Fate/Grand Order for over six years.

The magazine's interview went through various aspects of Samurai Remnant's development process. However, one of the most notable points found here is that Koei Tecmo had employed the same team of in-house scenario writers who previously worked on the 2019 strategy RPG Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This team would produce most of Samurai Remnant's scenario content while Type-Moon's Kinoko Nasu, Yuichiro Higashide, and Hikaru Sakurai supervised them, as the latter group is still pre-occupied with producing content for Fate/Grand Order.

You can read our translation of the specific interview part right below.

Nasu: The FGO writer team, including myself, put together the whole story plot and character settings. Koei Tecmo's writer team would then write the scenario based on those. Higashide and Sakurai then supervised them... That's how the loop repeated. In the end, I would check the overall finishing. I spent a great portion of my energy for FGO's production, so I could not get my hands into the detailed areas. But even so, I have a stance of sending partial opinions on some absolute points, so I did a general supervision.

Shibusawa: Since we are creating a Fate game, I thought we needed to place outstanding staff. Our company does have a team of scenario writers that did Fire Emblem: Three Houses — which received high scores in Metacritic — so I asked the producer to have them work on Samurai Remnant's scenario.

Type-Moon Ace: What was your impression on reading the scenario from Koei Tecmo's writer team?

Nasu: Well, it was really amazing and I was surprised. I had also previously acknowledged the high skills of Koei Tecmo's writer team that did Fire Emblem: Three Houses among others. When I actually interacted with them for Fate/SR's production, they came up with things we exactly aimed for. I got to acknowledge that high level once again.

In a separate part of the interview, Nasu also noted the presence of foreign characters in Fate/Samurai Remnant despite the story taking place in the Edo period, when Japan was historically undergoing an isolationist Sakoku policy.

Nasu: Zheng Chenggong is a historical figure, so we are depicting him in a way that doesn't stray too far away from that. He's a straight and brisk man who also has a good relationship with his partner Archer. Please look forward to what kind of relationship he will form with Iori and others in the Waxing Moon Ritual.

Type-Moon Ace: Most of the Masters are Easterners, but we're also wondering that there is Dorothea as the only Westerner who comes from the Mage's Association.

Nasu: Even though it takes place in the Edo period, where interactions with foreign countries were restricted, having heroic spirits and mages from East and West interact and fight each other has been the real thrill of the Fate series. I want to have not only Servants but also mages from the West. Based on the writers' suggestion, we added Dorothea as a female mage from the Clock Tower.

Additionally, the interview covered the general direction of the gameplay system and difficulty level. Despite being developed by Omega Force — which is most famous for the Musou/Warriors series, Nasu noted that the exhilaration of using a character to beat many enemies at once would not be this game's selling point. Samurai Remnant will more accurately show the power gap between ordinary humans and Servants, as seen in other Fate titles.

The protagonist Iori had received tutelage in swordsmanship from the legendary Miyamoto Musashi, so he would be able to deal with most encounters against multiple bandits and ninjas by himself. However, the game's difficulty will reach a wholly different level when it pits Iori against a heroic spirit.

The team is designing the game in such a way that most players will taste defeat against these Servants in the first few tries, but they will be eventually able to win if they have leveled up the character or figured out the Servant's behaviors.

Fate/Samurai Remnant will be available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam on September 28 in Japan and September 29 for the rest of the world.