Introduction
The Archanean Fire Emblem games have a lot of characters; I’d even go as far as to say they have a ton of characters. FE1 in particular was notable for having nearly 50 playable characters. For an RPG game that came out in the early 90s on the Famicom, that's a big deal, and if you count boss characters, you have even more. But would you believe that there were going to be even more characters? Well, you probably did, but you’ve probably never heard anyone talk about them much in detail.
Today, I want to talk about three particular cut characters who I find particularly interesting: Celio, Wyler, and Sabre. Characters who were planned to show up in FE1, but were all cut for one reason or another. So, without further ado, let’s dive in and take a look at Celio, Wyler, and Sabre.
Fan interpretations of Wyler, Sabre, and Celio drawn and/or edited by yours truly
Celio
Back in 2015, for the 25th Anniversary of the Fire Emblem series, they released a book in Japan called The Making of Fire Emblem 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and Fates. Aside from its title being a bit of a mouthful, the book also detailed some of the development history, scrapped ideas, and plans that didn’t make it to the final games of the series. Among the notes for FE1, there's an outline for Chapter 5, originally called “Princess Nyna,” which is remarkably different from the final game.
Screenshot taken from VincentASM on Serenesforest
These notes outline an opening narration for a tentative version of Chapter 5. While the general premise is the same, there are some bits and pieces of the Lefcandith Gauntlet Chapter sprinkled into the narration. Most notably, the mention of Minerva appearing as an enemy before fleeing the battle.
These notes also make direct reference to Macedon’s Iron Knight Division. A military faction of the Macedonian Army that goes unused in FE1, and is removed entirely in FE11’s ROM. These Iron Knights do however appear in FE3 Book 1, and the title is used by the enemy Armor Knights fought during chapters 4 and 5.
Assuming Chapter 5 still takes place in Aurelis, it would be safe to assume that the Maya Mountains that are described here are probably the same ones that are north of Aurelis which are unnamed in-game.
Aside from all that, you may notice that Nyna’s Archanean Free Company joins you, rather than Hardin’s Wolfguard, Wolf Knights, Coyote’s Men, or whatever. In this iteration, Nyna was not only going to be a playable unit but she was also meant to be a Paladin rather than a Bishop.
Alongside Nyna, you have other familiar names; Dolph and Macellan, who are now Cavaliers, Jeorge and Tomas who are now Armor Knights, and a mysterious 24th unit named Celio who is also an Armor Knight.
Aside from this name drop, we don’t have much information as to who this Celio person is, as their name was cut from the final version of the game, but there are a few theories.
But first, let’s talk about his name. The name Celio is the interpretation used by the translation provided on SF, while the same name is interpreted as Julio in the translation available on Kantopia, although that’s likely a mistake.
The name Celio is a male given name of Latin origin which has been linked to two root words; Caecus meaning “blind,” and Caelius meaning “heaven.” Celio is also the name of a location in Italy and is the 19th rione of Rome. It is identified by the initials R. XIX, and is located within the Municipio I. Celio may also be a reference to Célio Mata-Boi or Elton Divino Celio, who are both Brazilian football players. Gaspare Celio, an Italian painter. Or Swiss politicians; Enrico Celio and Nello Celio. The Japanese name, チェリオ (lit. Cherio) is also shared with a Japanese racehorse owned by the Japanese novelist Eiji Yoshikawa.
One of my theories is that Celio might be an older version of Boah. In this map, all the members of the Archanean Prisoners are recruited except for Midia. It's possible that during one of the revisions from this initial draft to the final game, the roles were reassigned: the Paladin role was given to a new character named Midia, Dolph and Macellan took on Knight roles, Jeorge was moved to a different chapter, reclassed, and promoted, Tomas followed a similar path but didn’t promote, and Celio decided to pick up a Bible, become a bishop and changed his name to Boah.
A different but similar theory is that maybe instead of a Bible, Celio picked up some HRT and became a Paladin and changed their name to Midia. Midia is also absent from the Free Company and Midia is important enough to the story for it to make enough sense for her role to exist this far back in planning.
Another theory involves one of the cut portraits found in the game data. If you look in FE1’s ROM or The Cutting Room Floor page for FE1, you’ll find two unused portraits. A piss-colored Castor and a blood-colored one. Since Tomas was reclassed to an Archer and Jeorge, a Sniper, it’s possible that Celio was reclassed into a Hunter or Horseman and used a palette-swapped Castor as his portrait, before they decided to cut him from the game altogether.
The last and most basic theory is that Celio’s data was simply repurposed and used for literally any other character that appears in the roster. He might have stayed as a Knight and renamed Roger, he may have been used as some other unimportant filler unit like Radd or Beck, or maybe he was never even programmed into the game at all. All we have is a single name and class in a design document, so there isn’t a whole lot to go from there.
For now, though, I want to go back and look at the FE1 portion of this 25th anniversary book. Aside from the lore about Nyna’s Archanean Free Company, there are also a lot of cool early sketches, planned CGs, and unused ideas.
Originally, there were going to be two evil dragons; Gaia, the Earth Dragon, which eventually became Medeus, and a scrapped water dragon named Neptune. There is actually unused data of Neptune’s Dragonstone in the final game, but it does nothing when hacked into the game. Ironically, FE3 also had planned water dragon class which was also scrapped in that game, and only map sprites for this class exist. Water dragons never became a thing until Echoes. Speaking of Echoes, I wonder if the dual dragon gods, Mila and Duma, were based on this scrapped idea.
Aside from these unused plans, there were plans to make certain scenes more extravagant, like making Julian and Lena’s escape from the Ghoul’s Teeth have an accompanying CG of them running similar to those that appear in a lot of PC-98 games. Unfortunately, this was scrapped in the final game due to technical limitations, and the remakes didn’t even attempt to recreate this.
There also existed plans for Jagen to die during the main story and the CG accompanying it sounds pretty metal. The CG for this was obviously scrapped, and the idea for Jagen to die during the game wasn’t used at all. However, this trope was reused or modified in other SRPGs, such as Langrisser’s Volkoff.
Volkoff’s death CG from the PC Engine version of Langrisser 1…
Spoiler Alert btw, Volkoff dies…
Wyler
The next character I want to mention is a character named Wyler, a boss character in FE1 whose only appearance in the game is within the game’s Battle Test mode which is accessed via the Sound Test.
Wyler as he appears as a Cavalier in the Battle Test Mode of FE1’s 2020 Localization
In FE1’s Battle Test mode, you can watch a sequence of battle cycles nested within each other. The two combatants consist of a bunch of randomly generated enemies against a randomly generated playable character. They both have the exact same stats and the two units cycle through every usable weapon of their classes. After all the weapons are cycled through, the red unit will shift to the next class, it starts with Cavalier, and moves on to Armor Knight, then Pegasus Knight, and so on. Once all the classes are cycled through with the red class, the blue class will then shift to the next class.
Aside from Wyler, in the Battle Test, you can also fight Gazzak, Gomer, Merach, a Grust soldier, a Samsooth bandit, a member of the Galder pirates, and Navarre. And in the game’s ROM, the text string for his name is located between “Gazzak” and “Grust.” This leads me to believe that Wyler was meant to be an enemy fought in the early game, and maybe as the second boss of the game.
Wyler’s name is spelled as “5D31583F” with EF being the line break. Here’s a completed TBL for FE1 so you can transcribe the other names.
In FE3, his name appears in the game’s data but he does not appear in the game at all. His name is located at unit slot 0x35, just after Gotoh at 0x33. If we assume that Gazzak is the unit at 0x34, then that would further prove that Wyler was meant to be the second boss of the game, and maybe aligned with the two Grustian Cavaliers who appear in Chapter 2.
In FE11, his name was removed from the game’s ROM altogether, which isn’t surprising as a lot of other unused terms from FE1/3 were also removed, such as the aforementioned Iron Knights. It’s a shame that the name was removed though, with the added characters and bosses that appear in the Prologue and Gaiden chapters, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to name one of them Wyler, as a reference. Personally, I headcanon the unnamed Gra Captain that appears in Prologue 4 to be Wyler.
Anyways, the name Wyler is a name of German origin and is thought to originate from the name Weiler, which refers to a small village like a hamlet. It can also be a masculine name originating from Old English which is a variant of the name Wiler or Wheeler, which translates to "wheelmaker."
The name Wyler was popularized by the German filmmaker William Willer. Amongst a lot of the works Wyler directed, in 1941, he directed Mrs. Miniver, based on the 1940 novel of the same name. Initially, the film was seen as controversial because the message was intended to cause the United States to be less isolationist in the war. Despite that, the film was successful in changing the US people’s minds about the war and had people sympathize with the British people by showing the war negatively affected the people of Britain. Much later, having been in the war himself, Wyler said that his film "only scratched the surface of war... It was incomplete.”
While there isn’t too much to suggest how the game would have portrayed Wyler if he appeared in the final version, it’s cool to think about how this real-world equivalent could have informed his potential role in the game.
Anyways, aside from Wyler, FE3 has a lot of cool unused aspects and little details, and while that warrants its own dedicated post, I wanted to talk about some of the cool little details I learned about FE3’s Debug Menu while researching info about Wyler.
You can access this menu too by setting RAM addresses 7E074A and 7E0C0B to 06 using a program like BSNES+
Like FE1, FE3's menu contains a battle test mode, but this time, you can actively choose the settings and conditions of each battle, rather than waiting for your specific battle to load up from a predetermined sequence. That certainly isn't the most interesting part though, a lot of the coolest parts come from the unused class and item names.
The first class is the dismounted female knight class, which is called Lady Knight, a name which would be reused in Tear Ring Saga, and in the fan translation of Berwick Saga. Likewise, female mages were called...Female Mages. Female Bishops were called Mothers, likely to parallel the Cleric class being called Sister in Japanese. Merric's promoted class is called Sage, which makes sense as it closely resembles the Sage class in FE2, and in the DS remakes, he does become a Sage. And funnily, Tiki's unique Manakete class is called Tiki-chan.
As for weapons, the Ladyblade was originally going to be called the Magekiller, and I assume it would have been effective against Mages instead of Bandits. The Swordslayer was called the Eimilion (エイミリオン ) which I theorize comes from the name Aemilian, a Roman Emperor. The Killer Lance is called Master Lance. The Watch Staff is called the See-Through Staff. Lastly, Anew is called Freeze, a name which would be reused in Fire Emblem Fates.
The unused Shadow Dragonstone is called the White Dragonstone, which is interesting as there is a class in Gaiden called White Dragon, and you fight them near the end of the game. Speaking of Valentia, the Ocean Dragonstone appears here and uses the item slot that the Book 2 Aum staff uses. The last interesting thing is how the Dragon Breaths are named in a very basic and formulaic manner: Breath 1: Fire, Breath 2: Cold, Breath 3: Poison, and Breath 4: Mist.
Sabre
The last character I wanted to talk about is Sabre (セイバー) not to be confused with Saber (セーバー) who appears in FE2 and 15. A Michalis look-alike with Gotoh and Elice’s growths, Wendell’s epilogue, and was programmed to be recruited by Ogma.
Sabre is the character we simultaneously know the most about and the least about. His name in the ROM is located between Elice's and Gotoh’s, which likely implies he was meant to be recruited late. Meanwhile, another instance of his name is located between Castor and Jake, as enemy units who are recruitable refer to a separate instance when pulling their names. He doesn’t have any base stats or a class designated to him, but judging by his name and how late he might have joined, it’s safe to assume he would have been a Hero.
If he’s hacked into the game, his recruitment dialogue would just display Wendell’s recruitment conversation with Marth. And unlike Wyler who had the decency to wait until FE11 to have his data removed from the game, Sabre’s data was removed as early as FE3.
From the context of everything we have, a theory I have regarding Sabre may be that he may have had a similar backstory to Samuel. In Ogma’s recruitment dialogue with Samuel in FE3 Book 2, Samuel mentions that the two were both slave gladiators from Knorda, but Ogma helped him escape. Maybe instead of impersonating Navarre though, Sabre traveled Archanea to train his sword-arm and become a legendary Hero.
Another theory is that Sabre is probably the Saber from FE2, similar personality and recruitment, but you had to use Ogma instead of, uh, Celica. Since Ogma is a Mercenary and Sabre is also a Mercenary, the two probably had some kind of bond regarding their occupation. Conversely, they could have been rivals or something, since Ogma’s rivalry with Navarre wasn’t established yet. And so, Sabre joined the army and fought under Marth’s banner. But then they thought maybe a seventh Hero would have been redundant, so they changed his name a bit and moved him to Valentia.
In some old designer’s notes from Kaga about Archanea, it was discussed that Ogma was born in Pyrathi. His father was a lower-class noble of Archanea who was executed during a political strife. Meanwhile, his mother was a citizen of Grust who died protecting Ogma while they stayed at Pyrathi.
This backstory of Ogma isn’t even remotely brought up in any way shape or form in the game. But if this backstory was planned during the development of FE1, maybe Sabre was somehow linked to it. Maybe Sabre taught Ogma how to use a sword back when he was a boy in Pyrathi or something like that.
While there isn’t much else to say regarding Sabre, despite his recruitment convo using Wendell’s as a placeholder, Wendell has an alternative unused recruitment conversation. Ironically, this one aligns more with his different recruitment in FE3.
Image taken from TCRF
In the context of Wendell’s character, I always felt this made more sense. He’s a powerful Bishop who doesn’t like fighting, so naturally they’d lock him up, rather than him just showing up alongside a bunch of random Macedonian goons in Chapter 5.
Conclusion
So yeah, I just wanted to ramble a bit about some of the overlooked unused Archanean characters, discuss some speculations and headcanons, and also spew some interesting trivia about these games that a lot of players may not know. …Well, I find them interesting, and that’s my primary target audience.
In any case, I wished that a lot of the unused characters in Fire Emblem had more discussion that surrounded them. These three characters I talked about today barely scratch the surface of the unused characters in the series. In fact, you could probably make a game featuring every unused character in the franchise and have that game’s roster be as large as FE1’s base roster. Until a fangame like that comes to fruition though, I’ll see you next time.
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