In an interview with Nintendo Dream, Fire Emblem Warriors Director, Hiroya Usuda, explains the team’s decision to put Navarre, Minerva and Linde as playable characters in the Shadow Dragon DLC pack.

Translated by NintendoEverything, Usada explained that Navarre was already an NPC and it was natural to make him playable, while Minerva acted as a balance due to her Axe, and Linde was chosen for her magic tome usage.

Nintendo Dream: What are the reasons for choosing Navarre, Minerva, and Linde as playable characters?

Hiroya Usada: Navarre already appeared as an NPC, so there’s no reason to not make him playable.

For the next one, the names of the three Pegasus sisters [Whitewings] were also mentioned, but we already have a lot of Pegasus Knights here, so we went with their leader Minerva. And we also had another reason to add an Axe character to balance the weapon types. We added Minerva because she’s coming from Shadow Dragon, wields an Axe, and we can also add a Wyvern Rider by including her.

And for the third one we thought of a magic tome user, and we also talked about Nyna as a curveball. But we picked Linde since we can reproduce magic spells from the original games like the Aura. We also had Jagen, Draug, Gordin, Merric, Abel, and Cain as other candidates, but when we think of weapon balance, we couldn’t pick just one from them, so we ended up omitting the Altean characters.