You might recall way back before Fire Emblem Heroes (Free) launched, the game’s website held a special poll asking players to choose their favorite characters from the entire series. Separate polls were held for male characters and female characters, and the winners were supposed to be added to the game. The thing is, most of those characters were so well-known that they would have been added to the game anyway, so what’s all the fuss about? Well, it turns out that Nintendo had other plans for those results, and we’re seeing them come about now with the Choose Your Legends special event.

First of all, a new Voting Gauntlet is starting today. Previous Voting Gauntlets have been fairly easy to predict if you knew the characters and the general feelings of the Fire Emblem fanbase. This one might be tougher, as it’s pitting the top eight heroes from that poll against each other. Thanks to the underdog advantage introduced a little while ago, this should actually be interesting. Ike, Lyn, Roy, Lucina, Hector, Tharja, Chrom, and Camilla will battle for the love of the fans. Can Lyn’s massive Western support overcome Ike’s Smash appearances? Does Roy have what it takes to beat his Uncle Hector? Will Camilla’s chest conquer all? We’ll know soon enough.

Next, there are three new Summoning Events to draw new characters from. One represents the top four men from the Choose Your Legends poll in their regular Fire Emblem Heroes forms. Test your luck to see if you can pull 5-star versions of Ike, Roy, Chrom, and the ever-valuable Hector. Another covers the women’s side, with the standard 5-star versions of Lyn, Lucina, Tharja, and Camilla available. The third is the most exciting. The Brave Heroes Summon gives you a chance of pulling four special new versions of the top choices from the poll. Ike wields his father’s axe Urvan, Lyn takes to horseback and sports the Mulagir bow, Roy grabs Eliwood’s sword Blazing Durandal and hops on his shining white steed, while Lucina tries out the Dragoon life with her spear Geirskogul. The best part? You can choose one of these four for free, no strings attached.

Finally, there’s a new Paralogue called Brave Heroes to play through, some new missions to complete connected to it, and some free Orbs just for logging in during the event’s duration. They really went all-out on this one. Do not forget to go and claim your free hero. If you hate Hector, I recommend Lyn as one of her skills is basically a Hector-buster. Also, Lyn is awesome.

Oh, one more thing. Due to this event, we had the opportunity to interview the directors of Fire Emblem Heroes, Mr. Shingo Matsushita of Nintendo and Mr. Kouhei Maeda of Intelligent Systems. I’m in the process of transcribing it right now, but please look forward to reading that soon. There are some interesting answers about the game itself, and I even asked some general questions we all probably knew the answers to already but wanted confirmation about.