TheOutrealm Gate (Japanese:異界の門The Gate of Another World) is a location inFire Emblem Awakening which facilitates the operation of the game'sdownloadable content functions. The area is unlocked after completingchapter 4.

Once the Outrealm Gate is entered,Anna, unknown if one native to theYlissean world or not, will greet the player and give them their options. The options available at the Outrealm Gate involve playing already downloaded chapters, purchasing chapters not yet downloaded, or exiting back to theworld map.

Within the context of the game, the Outrealm Gate is the means theShepherds travel from their world to theOutrealms, a series of alternate realms with their own plights.

Playing chapters

If the player opts to play a chapter already downloaded, the player will be given a list of chapters they have already downloaded. Once the player selects a chapter, that chapter load. In international versions ofAwakening, any chapter listed as purchased as part of a three-chapter pack that had yet to be released (in most cases before the chapter's formal release date, although there were a few chapters made available ahead of time to buyers of three-chapter packs) would prompt Anna to tell the player that the chapter has yet to be released and to return once the chapter has been released; the player was then returned to the Outrealm Gate at that point. As all currently-released versions ofAwakening have released all of the downloadable chapters, this only happens should the player not have updated their DLC file since before the release of the chapter in question.

The exact ordering of the chapters at the Outrealm Gate varies by region. If a player has all downloadable chapters available to them, these are the known ways the chapters are ordered:

Purchasing chapters

Choosing to purchase chapters will take players to the game's shop interface. The game will first connect to theNintendo eShop servers. After the Nintendo 3DS's version 7.0 update, this includes aNintendo Network ID login step. Once the game is connected to the eShop servers, it will first check to see if the player has the most up-to-date files for already-downloaded DLC chapters and will update the files accordingly if needed; this is how players who bought multi-chapter packs with chapters yet to be formally released gained access to the newly-released chapters.

Once the game's shop interface is ready, the game will prompt the player to use touch controls to make their selections. Once the player confirms this choice, the game will upload the lineup of downloadable chapters and packs; to browse the selection, the player can select the chapter/pack to bring up information on the top screen, or the arrows to scroll between pages. In the Japanese version, there are nine pages total, eight full pages of three and a ninth page with one chapter; international versions have eleven full pages of three due to the addition of the eight multi-chapter packs. Information about a selected chapter or pack will display on the top screen and will include its name, a very brief summary, its price, its release date, its block size, its difficulty (not available for packs) and the player's current funds. The player can add funds by selecting "Add Funds"; this works the same way as on the regular Nintendo eShop. If the player wants to buy a chapter/pack, they select the "Buy" button, after which the buying process works in a similar fashion to buying a title on the regular Nintendo eShop. The player can also select the "Exit" button to disconnect from the shop server and return to the Outrealm Gate. The "Buy" button becomes a "Delete" button when a purchased chapter/pack already present on the SD card is selected; selecting this button allows the player to erase the chapter/pack from their SD card.

This is the only method one can purchase the game's DLC. To this point, no DLC chapter has been formally discontinued in any region. Nonetheless, there have been reports of some people attempting to purchase the game's DLC from the regular Nintendo eShop's DLC listing forAwakening, which is a limited listing of the most recent DLC releases, which also leads to inaccurate reports of discontinued DLC.

Trivia

• The Outrealm Gate is one of five locations on theworld map that connects to only one other location (in this case, only toSouthtown), and as such is a dead end. The other four arePlegia Castle,Law's End,Warriors' Tomb, andGrima.

Etymology and other languages

See also

• Dragon's Gate (location)

References