It’s been a while, but Viewpoints is back. For this episode, I chatted with Kotaku’s Gita Jackson about our love for Fire Emblem: Three Houses and why we think the tactical role-playing series is so popular in the West. While plenty of people have been happily diving into Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it’s not that long ago that the series was in serious trouble. In an interview with a Spanish magazine, Fire Emblem Awakening’s developers Hitoshi Yamagami said Nintendo threatened to cancel the series if Awakening sold under 250,000 copies. Thankfully, Awakening turned out to be a hit, selling over 2.1 million copies globally and saving the series from extinction. Surprisingly, 43% of those sales came from North America. How exactly did Fire Emblem enter its new renaissance? We also talk about our first experiences with hearing about Fire Emblem via Smash Bros. Melee and how hopeless we felt before the Japanese games came to the States. Watch the video above to hear Gita and me hypothesize and share our own experiences with the Fire Emblem series.