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I also think that Baten Kaitos could be seen as untapped potential by higher ups. GC wasn't exactly a booming system and BK was pretty out there at a time when fans weren't as receptive of that sort of thing or really present on the system. Besides Tales of Symphonia the GC had no other really successful rpgs. The market is way different today and much more primed for rpgs on Nintendo systems and for something as weird and unique as BK.
You show an image or clip of BK and it stands out, there's really nothing else like it out there. That's valuable. Especially for Nintendo as an exclusive. It's great the support Square has shown the Switch but all of those games are eventually releasing elsewhere. They want more like Xenoblade.
You show an image or clip of BK and it stands out, there's really nothing else like it out there. That's valuable. Especially for Nintendo as an exclusive. It's great the support Square has shown the Switch but all of those games are eventually releasing elsewhere. They want more like Xenoblade.
Baten Kaitos is one game, Xenosaga is three. You can't remaster Xenosaga 1 and call it a day, once you start remastering or remaking Saga you are commited to three games. That's a lot. You don't have that commitment for Baten Kaitos. Sure, people will inevitably ask for Baten Kaitos Origins, but Baten Kaitos 1 is nevertheless a game that stands on its own, that tells a finished story. And even if they decide to continue - Baten Kaitos Origins reuses most assets from the first game anyway, so once Baten Kaitos is done, remastering Baten Kaitos Origins would be comparatively easy. Not comparable to Xenosaga where every episode reinvented the wheel.
There are also other factors. They might still have the original background artwork files for Baten Kaitos while it's possible that all of the pre-recorded and pre-rendered cutscenes of Xenosaga were never rendered in HD to begin with to save on rendering time. It might be a case of Honne saying "Hey Nintendo, I established and lead your Kyoto support studio for a year, now please let me do my thing". It might be a case of Takahashi not being interested in overseeing a Xenosaga remaster project. It might be a case of Namco Bandai treating Xenosaga and Baten Kaitos differently, maybe they'd want Xenosaga to be multiplatform. There's a myriad of potential reasons.
They better learn to animate some fluffy fucking 3D clouds!! 🤣 I need the game to be beautiful (or heck, can you even imagine Mira?)
I'll definitely miss pre-rendered backgrounds. I was hoping some nostalgic indie RPGs would have done something with that by now haha
These must be emulator shots, right?
My brain can't comprehend this running on a GameCube
Nope, the only thing being rendered real-time are the character models, and the fruit cart for some reason. That's the power of prerendered backdrops. Same reason REmake still looks so damn good.
They're pre-rendered 2D backgrounds with some effects added over the top so not very taxing on the hardware.
Exclusively for a console (which I own) that will probably struggle to maintain 30 FPS...
disappointed.
disappointed.
This will be the most important part for me. I imported it and played it via Freeloader. It's one of gamings best Story Prequel/ Gameplay Sequel. Most Europeans never knew, what masterpiece they missed.
Please don't remake only the first one and then let the franchise ignore Origins again!
Yeah tbh I don't really care much for BK1 (I'd still replay it if anything else for unique it feels) but Origins really deserves more exposure. It's an insanely good game and it's hard to believe it only sold like 15k copies.
And yeah I can see "A new spin to a classic from the Xenoblade developers" do pretty well, especially since it will basically be like a new game for most people, not an exactly popular series, for better or worse.
And yeah I can see "A new spin to a classic from the Xenoblade developers" do pretty well, especially since it will basically be like a new game for most people, not an exactly popular series, for better or worse.
why don't you wait to see if the game even exists before complaining about the possible performance problems
We need Switch 3 in order to handle the prerendered glory of Baten Kaitos
Because I can be disappointed in such a rumored choice if I want to be, and believe it or not, I'm not the only poster in this thread discussing a game that may or may not exist!
You're not my dad
One of the few games where I actually didn't mind card battles. It's been so long that I don;lt remember much about it though except really liking the game. I'd play a remaster or remake for sure. I still haven't played Origins yet despite owning it since release.
double post but this is a interesting comment. Honne is too big within Monolith to be missing from being a part credits for several years. Unless he is not involved for personal reasons this means he is neck-deep in an unannounced project.
Honne tweeted all the way back in 2018 that he had his last day at Monolith's Kyoto office:
View: https://twitter.com/honnesan/status/1055804419856465921?
It's not clear what he's been up to since then. He's hopefully working on a new project (e.g. Baten Kaitos), but it's worth to keep in mind that after being Kyoto's studio head for almost a decade it wouldn't be unthinkable for him to have further transitioned into a purely admnistrative role.
I don't think it's particularly surprising that he wasn't credited in Xenoblade 3 either. He was never very involved with that series and his main contribution to Xenoblade 1 was building an amazing sculpture of Bionis and Mechonis fighting to help the dev team visualizing the concept.
There are some definite difficulty spikes in the series. Particularly the first game, but they're pretty manageable for the most part. The biggest curve really is the deck building as you need to get a feel for how many of each card to have in order to consistently get a good hand. It's easy to have an out of balance deck that feeds you bad cards. First game is pretty straight forward as you have a dedicated Attack phase and Defense phase to combat. Poker rules kind of apply as the cards have numbers on the corners you can select when using the card and elemental aspects too so if you get like 4 cards with 4s on them or a straight 1, 2, 3, 4, etc you get bonuses to attack or defense, and if you play an Ice card and Fire card the damage will negate each other.
Origins changes things up and removes attack/defense phases and goes for an active time battle system that based around long card combos and cross team combos and no real defense besides some healing. So there's basic attack cards 1, 2, 3 that all party members use and then specialized ability cards for each character 4, 5, 6, and you want to start with the lowest and keep playing one number higher and then play one of those 4/5/6 ability cards that allows your next party member to continue that combo again starting with a low card and going higher. Like 125 card combos. It's amazing.
First game each team member has their own deck you need to manage and balance, second game there's just one universal deck that includes everyone's cards that you have to balance.
Did you miss the part where BN said "no" to a remastered Xenosaga trilogy because it didn't make sense from a market perspective?
If BK happens, it's because Nintendo wants it, same as Bayo 2 or 3.
Namco does not want to do Xenosaga. I don't think Takahashi wants to do Xenosaga. Honne very much wants to do Baten Kaitos, and Nintendo has a stake in the series after publishing Origins, owning MonolithSoft, and potential built-up goodwill with MonolithSoft Kyoto.
I don't even know why it's real but it's very clear why Xenosaga isn't happening. Harada even tweeted why, and there are other stakeholders here besides Namco for Baten Kaitos.
Even if this isn't real, the prospect of a Baten Kaitos remaster/remake is significantly more likely than anything from Xenosaga.
Check out Fantasian by Mistwalker. They actually built physical miniature sets and digitized them as pre rendered backgrounds. It's super neat and a shame that it's trapped on Apple Arcade
View: https://twitter.com/Baust528/status/1609010365051830274?t=XGqVq8h5lS2v_DJ-9tthFg&s=19
...You do know who was the main developer of the original games and where they happen to work now, right? Also you know who funded and published worldwide the second game, right?
Any other outcome would be likely a worse product IMO.
Aside from the moving clouds, these backgrounds are literally 2D paintings that were made by traditional means and then scanned.
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I absolutely do have to play this one, heck honestly: If nothing than to enjoy the amount of work that went into the backgrounds -- I bet it looks amazing~
In the Gamekult interview many years ago https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/...on-createur-tetsuya-takahashi-3050796525.html
Takahashi clearly states he would do it if someone can fund it but this was many years ago when Xenoblade 2 wasn't even released yet! However, Xenosaga has a special place for him and that's clear. Plus with all the Xenosaga/Xenogears references in Xenoblade 3/the Xenoblade games it's really impossible for him to not want Xenosaga.
This is what I want to believe. I also 100% agree on the "BK1 is nice, BKO is FIRE". BKO really shines because it is 100% built over BK1 (both from a technical, a story and a lore point of view) AND BK1 get even better when you have played BKO. This is a great duology which definitely feels like "Part 1 and 2 of one single great game" and I'm amazed at how they pulled Origins. The guy who wrote the scenario was an intern of the first game, this is insane! Sharing your love here.
Nothing in video games has topped the pure adrenaline blast of hearing "Relay Combo".
It takes some. BK1 has a slow progression in its battle system, it's very repetitive and slow at first but then you reach a point in the game when you can use way more cards in a single turn and it becomes REALLY GOOD. It's still missing the best feature of the sequel : the ability to throw away the cards you don't want to build better combos. That's frustrating.
Pretty medium overall until some seriously damaging fights. But basically pretty okay.
that's because in a cutscene at some point in the game, a character knocks the cart over
There would be an insane scrubbing of characters that would need to occur, similar to what mario party superstars did to mushroom town
So weird, I literally was telling my partner about this game a couple days ago and musing aloud that it really needed a remake. DREAMS DO COME TRUE!
I dunno — this feels like simplifying things a bit. Of course Xenosaga holds a special place for him but that doesn't necessarily mean he would want to go back and work with Namco on a Xenosaga remaster given what was a very fraught relationship and, you know, what happened with Soraya Saga. I don't think anyone doubts that Takahashi cares about Xenosaga in some way, I'm just doubtful given how episodes 2 and 3 went down that he'd be that keen on revisiting the trilogy — though who knows, time is funny. But I would guess it's a much more complicated relationship than Honne's relationship with Baten Kaitos.
And it's all moot because Namco doesn't want to do it.
Wow, just browsing through his Twitter posts, it's littered with card-related content. His love of card games shining through!
You know, since the rise of card-based indie games, maybe a Baten Kaitos re-release would have a chance of selling better.
I think Monolith's growth to a genuine prestige studio for Nintendo is an even bigger factor, really. Advertise it as "the underground classic from the developers of Xenoblade" and you'll definitely get some eyes there.
Plus it's beautiful as heck. Especially if Honne goes ahead and restores all the source artwork and possibly even replaces some of the rendered assets. Heck imagine if the artstyle for the characters got a stronger watercolor shader like Valkyria Chronicles
I definitely think the market is in an infinitely much better place for a game like Baten Kaitos today than it was 17-20 years ago. Whether it's the card battle system, the visual style, RPGs on a Nintendo system, or just simply Monolith's pedigree/renown. They've all drastically changed since 2003/2006.
There's simply a much larger and diverse market in general and on the Switch and a more mature and aware market at that. Shit was pretty dire back in the day and the GC was plagued more than ever before by the kiddy label for Nintendo systems. A super bright and colorful game like BK I doubt helped with that at first glance for many gamers at the time. The system barely had any RPGs, and to say Sony dominated that genre is an extreme understatement, only Tales of Symphonia found any real success on the GC.
And yeah Monolith now is a much more well known and respected a developer. Social media certainly has a lot more power and influence to get eyes on a game and to get people aware of projects from a favorite devs. It would totally make sense to market the remake playing up Monolith's fame and recent successes.
There's simply a much larger and diverse market in general and on the Switch and a more mature and aware market at that. Shit was pretty dire back in the day and the GC was plagued more than ever before by the kiddy label for Nintendo systems. A super bright and colorful game like BK I doubt helped with that at first glance for many gamers at the time. The system barely had any RPGs, and to say Sony dominated that genre is an extreme understatement, only Tales of Symphonia found any real success on the GC.
And yeah Monolith now is a much more well known and respected a developer. Social media certainly has a lot more power and influence to get eyes on a game and to get people aware of projects from a favorite devs. It would totally make sense to market the remake playing up Monolith's fame and recent successes.
Also helps up their brand label, they haven't had an international release that's personally their own outside of Xenoblade in over a decade. Especially something that's unique like this game
I imagine that at an absolute minimum, all the improvements from BKO will be the default.
Guillo's FULGADRUM and SIGIL'S CRY are in my head.
Oh and Sagi saying some form of "--scension"
Incredible battle system though. I always liked the game keeps increasing your deck size, but I think a smaller card desk was actually ideal lol.