Hironobu Sakaguchi's Lost Odyssey has hit Australian store shelves, and Screen Play was the only Australian journalist to be granted an interview with one of the industry's most influential and respected auteurs.
In this fascinating insight into Sakaguchi-san's aims for his new role playing opus, he explains how he wants to stir a player's emotions, even producing a "tear".
Sakaguchi co-founded role playing masters Square in 1983 and was the pioneering force behind the colossus that is the Final Fantasy franchise. He left in 2001 to start his own company Mistwalker with the financial backing of Microsoft, and has now produced two exclusive role playing games for the Xbox 360 - last year's Blue Dragoon and now Lost Odyssey.
Penned by an award-winning Japanese novelist in conjunction with Sakaguchi, Lost Odyssey is a traditional and epic Japanese role playing game following the story of the immortal Kaim.
The full interview is via the link below...
17 years later, it still stands out.
Two of the few games I still own for Xbox360 . I have Magna Carta 2 , Last Remnant but also have the PS4 version so I may have got rid of it and I have the DS version of Blue Dragon. I think and a few others but I forget what they are since I don’t dust them off. that’s about it.
Another one I still havent got to try is infinite undiscovery. I read it was pretty linear but I usually fk with tri ace(star oceans are great).
Really my only issue with lost odyssey was the level cap they hit you with throughout the game. I enjoy just relaxing and doing some grinding every once in awhile. Could've atleast given the option. Other then that. Excellent game.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The 360 imo had atleast half or more that Gen of being the better jrpg system. I bought one earlier then I normally would have for some, and Alan wake. Japanese devs really got in their feelings that Gen and dropped the ball(thanks Phil phish, cocky ass ign, etc)
You'd be better off playing Lost Odyssey on an XBO or Series X as no disc swapping and it looks and plays much better. Same with Blue Dragon. I still keep my 360 hooked up for games not on the bc list. for everything else, I use the series x now. Just last night I installed arkham origins as there is no 8th gen version like asylum/city.
I love having bc on xbox one/series hardware.
Darth
When I bought the the Xbox one off a couple worker. That was the first thing indid. Bought blue dragon and lost odyssey. Been waiting to catch infinite undiscovery on sale but I forget to check.
I used to own the 360 versions but I bought these digital. I'd like to track down the 360 ones again but no huge deal. I was actually playing through lost odyssey waiting for starfield to drop.
The game was indeed amazing. Great characters, gameplay and story!
But the dream sequences penned by Shigematsu were sublime.
I still remember many of these stories and I have integrated in the past in my D&D campaign many years ago.
Microsoft should have just kept pumping money into these guys. Same with a lot of the other studios... the blundered hard.
Lost Odysee deserved a franchise even though development wasn't smooth
Am I the only one who doesn't wanna see every good game get sequel after sequel? It was a great game, but sometimes it's better to just make a one off and then create a new universe. Sadly that costs a lot more money and publishers don't wanna risk it, but I would definitely prefer it
I'm fine with sequels in jrpgs, even in the vain of ff sequels, all new stories and characters. It does get old in other genres though sometimes. For the most part I just game by game basis it all.
They could have done it like Final Fantasy, kept the title name and just start with a new world/characters, it's not like the creator isn't familar with that.
Idk, Japan never bit for Xbox despite their best efforts around this era. Mistwalker never exploded either, despite future partnerships with Nintendo whichhad a much better chance at success
It's not like it has had any competition since 2007. Would really like to own the short stories from it in book form.
360 had some amazing JRPGs in it's early days, Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Tales of Vesperia off the top of my head were all amazing games.
The problem with most MS games on 360 was they didn’t make the games they paid for them and that makes you less money in the long run and isn’t something you can continue to do especially with declining sales of consoles. MS should have been starting and growing studios from the beginning but they went for paid games and it leaves them without the knowledge and culture of making games.
Not to mention killing the Japanese market that had all sorts of crazy and fun releases up until 2009-2010. They could have gained momentum on Nintendo and kept that going into the Xbox One era, but decided to "unify" efforts and that all but ended their presents in the country. Now, PS4's outsell the Xbox Series S three years into the new system's life cycle, and the 2/3DS at one point was doing the same.
I had it all wrong...Blue Dragon is awesome!
I bought this game a couple of days ago, along with Lost Odyssey, while they're on sale in the Xbox Store. I never had a 360 back in the day so I missed out on these games, so I'm glad that I'll finally be able to try them out soon on my Series S.
Yep, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and Gears of War were my favorite 360 games back when they first released.
no doubt. To this day it baffles me when this game gets hate. Sure it wasn't as epic as Lost Odyssey, but in it's own right it was a great game.
Lost Odyssey is one of the best jrpgs of that era but got killed because it was bought up and released on the "wrong" console.
Is there a chance that Lost Odyssey will be released on PS5? I really want to play it and Blue Dragon, too.
Great game. The 360 had some really good turn based games back in the day. Absolutely loved Lost Odyssey too. I think they are both Sakaguchi creations.
Correction. Both Blue Dragon & Lost Odyssey (as well as Infinite Undiscovery) started off as in-house developed projects that went third party after MS killed off their Japanese development studios.
Doesn't really have anything to do with what I said though 😂 Sakaguchi wrote them both
This game together with Lost Odyssey, The Last Remenant and Tales of Vesperia convinced me to buy a 360. This game made my 2007 which ended off with mass effect.
Honestly, a fantastic game, especially if you were a fan of old-school JRPGs. I hate that this genre rarely can come back to these roots.
Destructoid: I remember where I was when Blue Dragon was announced. Although I already had an Xbox 360 and was ready for it, some folks I knew bought one just for it given who was involved (Nobuo Uematsu, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Akira Toriyama): as Mistwalker and Microsoft Game Studios made a mad dash to put out more games from Japanese studios on the Xbox ecosystem.
Blue dragon was fantastic. Love that game. It was my biggest reason for getting a 360.
i wanted to play it, but ...
1. its on xbox
and 2. i missed it when it was on gamepass ha.
I thought it was pretty good but I personally I think Lost Odyssey is better
Also, I know a lot of JRPGs are cheesy but damn…this one was amped up to 11.
Lost odyssey lost me when I started to realize my grinding to level up wasn't adding up. So I never picked it up again. I really really despise that.
Then you missed out on of of the best jrpgs ever made.
Did you at least reach the point where Jansen qas singing? 🥰
I really wish Mistwalker would remaster these games... they're too busy with mobile unfortunately.
Final Fantasy has been a much better series since Sakaguchi left Square Enix. His taste in poor-design shows with the current heap of garbage known as Lost Fraudyssey.
$niper
Dark Sniper simply cannot wait for Final Fantasy XIII to come out, as that garbage heap of a game is sure to finally convince all the Waitstation3 owners of the inferiority of their movie player, and to hopefully make the switch to the superior XBOX 360 gaming and entertainment console.
$niper
lot odyssey is at least original,ff 13 is tiresome garbage,ff 12 sucked and the series has ever since he left. you are probably a grill movie player flop 3 owner.
lol anytime i see that picture, i think of the phrase "Your gonna get raped"
other than that, good interview.. i wonder what unannounced games he has up his sleeve... can't wait to try LO for myself.