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Sakaguchi lays out Mistwalker plans

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Elios83

Member
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6140546.html

Mistwalker, the independent game studio of former Square producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, is hard at work on three announced role-playing games, but apparently that's not enough of a workload.

In an interview with Famitsu, the man behind the Xbox 360's Last Odyssey and Blue Dragon and the Nintendo DS' Ash: Archaic Sealed Heat, revealed that he has another project in the works. Sakaguchi didn't go into detail about the project, except to confirm that it's something that hasn't been announced yet.

On more tangible matters, Sakaguchi said that he is planning to release a playable demo of Lost Odyssey sometime after E3 2006. The demo will contain the opening sequence of the game and the playable scene that immediately follows it.

Sakaguchi said development on Lost Odyssey is moving along as scheduled, and that the final product will be released shortly after his other 360 RPG, Blue Dragon. That game will be coming out next year, according to Sakaguchi.

Alhough Blue Dragon is based on the artwork of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Quest VIII), it will not use cartoon-like renderings like other games based on his work. Instead, Blue Dragon will use a different rendering style that Sakaguchi says is similar to claymation. While his first pick was to use the usual cartoon-like style, he explained that development techniques for games kept on advancing to the point that another graphic style became possible.

Sakaguchi also said that Blue Dragon will use light bloom for realistic lighting when a character is near a light source, and real-time motion blur to give battles a natural feel. According to Famitsu, Blue Dragon's development is currently 40 percent complete.
 
*I am not buying a 360 for Mistwalker. I am not buying a 360 for Mistwalker. I am not buying a 360 for Mistwalker...*
 
argon said:
Sounds like they are overreaching. Raven Blade and Thunder Rally come to mind..
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That's not a problem because Mistwalker only creates the assets for its games but actual development is outsourced to an other developer.
Personally I'd love to see a Mistwalker game developed by Level 5 on PS3 but who knows, we'll see what happens :D
 
clayfighter_tournament_edition.gif


I just had to. Regardless, if they could pull off a good claymation look that would be cool. I also love Toriyama's character designs.

Given Sakaguchi's comments, the fourth title could be a Revolution game, but only time will tell. The one thing he seems to be staying away from at the moment is Sony.
 
Elios83 said:
That's not a problem because Mistwalker only creates the assets for its games but actual development is outsourced to an other developer.
Personally I'd love to see a Mistwalker game developed by Level 5 on PS3 but who knows, we'll see what happens :D
Click to expand...


Isn't Sakaguchi directly working on ASH? Does this mean that the game is being developed in house?

Or was it outsorced like the other games?
 
littlewig said:
Isn't Sakaguchi directly working on ASH? Does this mean that the game is being developed in house?

Or was it outsorced like the other games?
Click to expand...

Honestly I don't know if Ash is being developed in house but considering it's a DS game it doesn't need a big team and much money to be developed.
But all their next gen games will be probably outsourced through second party agreements,at least until they become big enough to handle development by themselves.
 
Mejilan said:
*I am not buying a 360 for Mistwalker. I am not buying a 360 for Mistwalker. I am not buying a 360 for Mistwalker...*
Click to expand...

Hahaha... MistWalker is the main reason I want one!
 
Man, these confirmed Revolution games are coming left and right these days. I'm sure a Rev port of the two 360 games can't be far behind.
 
Mistwalker Developing Exclusive Revolution Title, Miyamoto Involved



Mark my words, that'll be on Sp__g front headlines in the morning.
 
Y2Kevbug11 said:
Does Mistwalker actually have any development teams in-house? I didn't think they did.
Click to expand...
I highly doubt they do, and even if so, I'm sure the team is quite small. It's been heavily rumored that Square Enix contributed a sizable portion to Sakaguchi to help with the startup capital required for Mistwaker (supposedly as a 'thank you' for his contributions to Squaresoft), and god knows Sakaguchi isn't a rich man by any means nowadays.

So unless he's partially using the funds from MS to build his own studio (and when you hire Artoon, you just know that's gotta be a possibility. I mean, what would they demand? 400¥ an hour and some poprocks?!), I really don't see where he could afford financing an internal studio.
 
They put together all the money they saved from working on their Revolution launch title, and built a new studio from scratch.
 
Stop infecting threads you Revolution fuckmonkeys!

I am currently in the camp of Mistwalker being the only company that has shown stuff that makes me want an X360.

I definitely think MS sort of missed the boat on getting this shit in production waaayyyy earlier, as it would have maybe made the 360 Japan launch a potential success.
 
im pretty sure he's onhand to make all the important decisions when comes to gameplay design. Afterall, it is his name being thrown around, and his reputation as a game designer on the line.

The other companies just do all the tech, Sakaguchi gives them direction.
 
Prine said:
im pretty sure he's onhand to make all the important decisions when comes to gameplay design. Afterall, it is his name being thrown around, and his reputation as a game designer on the line.
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yeah he is.

peep what he said about Lost Odyssey:

Kikizo: If the character can't die, then how does the game work if the player is immortal?

Sakaguchi: Yeah... I've made this new system - he doesn't die...

Kikizo: But is there a punishment system for the player doing things wrong - if you don't solve puzzles or beat enemies? How do you reach Game Over?

Sakaguchi: So mostly, it won't go Game Over! Sometimes it might, but...!
 
In other news Sakaguchi says it's easy and fun to announce as many games as he wants without showing anything. In fact, next week our sources say that Sakaguchi will be announcing over 20 games, for all major platforms and one for the dreamcast.
 
Alhough Blue Dragon is based on the artwork of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Quest VIII), it will not use cartoon-like renderings like other games based on his work. Instead, Blue Dragon will use a different rendering style that Sakaguchi says is similar to claymation. While his first pick was to use the usual cartoon-like style, he explained that development techniques for games kept on advancing to the point that another graphic style became possible.
Click to expand...
tor0041sg.jpg
 
A manga artist getting his 2D work converted into 3D for a videogame has been done many a time before, but getting his 2D work converted into claymation for a videogame is somewhat unusual.

But not so much unusual for Akira Toriyama, who's done it before (as my pic was supposed to show, but it might've been a little too fuzzy).
 
ruby_onix said:
A manga artist getting his 2D work converted into 3D for a videogame has been done many a time before, but getting his 2D work converted into claymation for a videogame is somewhat unusual.

But not so much unusual for Akira Toriyama, who's done it before (as my pic was supposed to show, but it might've been a little too fuzzy).
Click to expand...

Where is that from? it looks very nice... I hope they can do something like that. Much better than the so called cel-shadings in games we have seen. IMO.
 
Dude, Mistwalker's office in Daikanyama is about the size of my apartment.

They're all about the outsource, that's how they roll
 
Shompola said:
Where is that from? it looks very nice... I hope they can do something like that. Much better than the so called cel-shadings in games we have seen. IMO.
Click to expand...
It's "Torneko: The Last Hope" on the PSone. In Japan it was known as "Torneko no Daiboken 2: Fushigi no Dungeon" and it's (odd as it sounds) in the same series of games as the Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon game coming soon to the DS/GBA. Torneko/Taloon is the fat merchant from Dragon Quest/Warrior IV.

It's just FMV (and concept art) of Toriyama designs, made into actual claymation and filmed using regular means. It's not "computer generated claymation" or whatever the heck Sakaguchi's going to be trying to produce, but I just thought that Toriyama + videogames + claymation meant that I had to give this game a mention.
 
Pellham said:
i doubt mist walker has any revolution games in development, much less a dev kit.
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Why would you doubt that? It's just as plausible as anything else anybody has said in this thread but he did undoubtly talk to both MS and Nintendo about their next-generation systems and could easily have a revolution title in development as well. It's pure speculation by everyone, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mistwalker is one of the developers on-board with a title for revolution when Nintendo decides to release a list, probably at E3.
 
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