This week, Famitsu first revealed the latest Star Ocean title in six years. Exciting, huh? From the sound of it, Tri-Ace sounds keen to give you more.
In a round table with Famitsu, Tri-Ace CEO Shuichi Kobayashi say he had wanted to make a new Star Ocean for quite some time. “But I was in charge of marketing, so I kept hoping someone would do it, but…” Kobayashi told the weekly magazine with a laugh. “So I decided I’d go ahead and start the project. I decided to give my life to Star Ocean and changed departments and became in charge of production.”
For Kobayashi, it was important to get both programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda and Star Ocean creator Hiroshi Ogawa, who both worked together on Star Ocean 3, to collaborate on this latest entry. “I wanted to insert the essence of Star Ocean 3 heavily into Star Ocean 5,” Kobayashi explained.
When asked what the future plans for Star Ocean were, Kobayashi replied, “As I said before, I switched departments for Star Ocean. That’s why, I’d like to continue releasing games for the series. I’m working to make Star Ocean 5 so that not only will series fans will enjoy it, but newcomers will as well, so that people will want a sequel.”
And from the sound of it, there is enough material for future instalments, with Ogawa telling Famitsu, Of all the games I’ve worked on, I’ve written enough for this game alone to fill several novels. I don’t know if everything I’ve written will make it into the game, but I hope people will get to experience a grand story.”
Toshi Nakamura contributed to this report.
Picture: Famitsu
Comments
7 responses to “Square Enix Hopes You Want More Star Ocean”
The only thing i was from Square Enix is more Just Cause 3!
Isn’t it Tri-Ace who hopes we want more?
Enix own the Star Ocean IP so yes, they hope you want more since they’re contracting tri-ace to make it.
I imagine Tri-ace also hopes we want more. Because they’ve just been purchased by a mobile games company and if Star Ocean bombs, you better believe those guys will end up making shitty phone games for the rest of their careers there 🙁
Meh. Maybe Star Ocean is something I should take another look at sometime… it just seems like a lot of work, figuring out if there’s a coherent continuity and where to enter the series. I tried to get into Star Ocean 4 on the 360, but between awkward/unpleasant mechanics, some of the most horrific voice-acting I’ve ever heard, and nonsensical story, it was nigh impenetrable for me.
Star Ocean 4 was definitely the weakest of the series. As for continuity, it is pretty much the “origins” story, so set well before any of the other games.
As i recall Star Ocean 1 and 2 are set within a few decades of each other and Star Ocean 3 is pretty much it’s own thing story wise, with very little tying it to the rest of the series.
Star Ocean 3 was probably the best in the series too in my opinion, so it excites me the “core” minds behind 5 are the ones behind that and are trying to bring that SO3 feel into 5.
SO4 is utterly terrible, so as a first introduction it’d be particularly bad. Also all of tri-ace’s games have awful dub work. Don’t know why. SO4’s PS3 release at least has the option to swap in the (fairly decent) Japanese dialogue. Problem is that you don’t want to hear the bullshit issuing forth from the mouth of EDGE MAVERICK regardless of the language.
The other three games in the series were pretty good and quite interesting. I don’t know if they still hold up but SO3 is especially good. Which is why I’m excited by this one, since they’re specifically saying that they want to hearken back to 3 and put that whole thing with SO4 behind them.
I would much prefer a new Valkyrie Profile to be honest.
Well till it comes to Xbone, I hope to not hear about it or see about it.
I’ll admit, you Playstation fans are lucky, but I’m not buying a PS4 just for this game.