Be Excited For Fate/Stay Night

Rejoice! After twenty long years, developer Type-Moon has announced that the long beloved visual novel Fate/stay night will be remastered and finally see a worldwide release sometime this year in 2024. Fate/stay night Remastered will be a remastered port of the PS Vita Réalta Nua version of the game featuring Japanese, English, and Simplified Chinese language options, marking the first time the origin story of the long running Fate franchise has ever been released outside of Japan. This is an exciting time to be a fan of the franchise as we have been clamoring for a port of the original visual novel for two decades, wishing desperately to no longer need unofficial fan-translations and translation patches.

Fate/stay night tells the story of Shirou Emiya, a young man who is thrown against his will into a conflict between seven mages (Masters) who use summoned beings known as Heroic Spirts (Servants) to do battle for the chance to obtain the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail in this setting is a magical vessel that grants any wish of both the master and the servant, proving to be a very tantalizing reward for both parties. Emiya manages to form a contract with the purported strongest servant, Saber, seemingly by pure chance in the early hours of the Holy Grail War. The two go on to forge alliances, face enemies, and compete with the other Master/Servant teams throughout the visual novel.

A very big reason over the excitement for this remaster is not just the first time that there is an official English translation of the story, but that this will be the first COMPLETE telling of the whole Fate/stay night story, which is famously broken up into three separate “routes” for the reader to follow: the Fate route, the Unlimited Blade Works route, and finally the Heaven’s Feel route.

Over the years there have been many different adaptations of varying quality of the original Fate/stay night’s story content from anime series to movies. The brand has had a very famous reputation for being hard to follow or understand because of all the different places fans had to look in order to keep up with the lore and expanding world of the Fate franchise.

The first adaptation of note, 2006’s anime series titled Fate/stay night produced by Studio Deen was an attempt at adapting the Fate route for television audiences. The series has received a negative reputation since release for being a poor telling of the route, choosing instead to mash up aspects and story beats from of all three routes in the visual novel. The series would receive far better treatment in 2014 and 2020 with an adaptation of the Unlimited Blade Works route and the beginning of a movie trilogy of the Heaven’s Feel route respectively. The anime and movie trilogy in this case were both produced by Ufotable and are widely considered to be well made and accurate representations of their respective routes, treatment that the Fate route has yet to receive according to fans.

This is the reason for excitement; at long last, the Fate/stay night story in its entirety will be able to be read and enjoyed as Type-Moon intended all those years ago. No more adaptations of varying quality. This is as pure of an experience one can get aside from learning to read Japanese and obtaining an old copy of the game. No longer will fans be met with derision when they tell newcomers to the Fate franchise to “go read the visual novel” as their starting off point. Now there is no longer an excuse not to read it.