Monolith Soft Holds A Party

Xenosaga II and Baten Kaitos shown to the public.

At the Ebisu Garden Hall in Tokyo today, Xenosaga developer Monolith Soft held a public conference that marked the official launch of their two latest games?PS2 sequel, Xenosaga Episode II, and brand-new GameCube role-player Baten Kaitos.

The event, which was open to Monolith fans who won tickets in an online contest, started with president and Xenosaga producer Hirohide Sugiura discussing the aim behind the two new titles. "Xenosaga and Baten Kaitos are being made by two completely different teams," he noted. "In order to develop these two titles at once, we reformulated our group structure and employed young staff members in the top positions. Although both titles we're announcing today are RPGs, our aim with them is to deal with the lack of brand-new games brought on by the preponderance of tired sequels from the same old development teams."

Although Baten is a Monolith production, the GameCube RPG is receiving some very strong support from people outside the company. The opening sequence is being directed by Masataka Kurasawa and his team at CGI design firm Robot (the outfit behind the Onimusha CG movies), and Masato Kato, who wrote the script for PlayStation RPG classic Chrono Cross, is involved with the scenario creation. Motoi Sakuraba, the sound guy from Golden Sun, the Star Ocean series and many other games, is handling the soundtrack.

"Normally the scenewriter usually ends up programming the event-scene data by himself, but as the development cycle ends this tends to make everything fall apart a little," Kato commented. "With this game, though, the scenario's already wrapped up, so now all I have to do is wait and see how it turns out." Sakuraba was equally excited about his work: "In the music for this game, I tried working with a sound style different from what I've done before; some parts of it were the result of my playing around with different styles. There's lots of variation, from beautiful to violent, so I'd like to see what everyone thinks of it."

As co-director Hiroya Hatsushiba was quick to point out, there is more to Baten's battle system than is obvious from the screenshots. "The battle system appears to be card-based," he said at the event, "but these are not card battles here. All of the player's actions in battle are governed by these Magnus cards, but the player has to choose his moves from cards which are continually dealt out to him. It's not like a collectible-card game as much as it feels like a falling-block puzzle game of sorts. To launch a combo, all you have to do is use a card before your current attack is completed, so depending on your deck and the cards you use, your combos vary widely. Work it right and you can double the power of your attacks, but if, for example, you use a fire-element card with a water-element card, the net effect could be cut in half."

It's worth noting that everything you can do in battle?including using items and running away from enemies?can only be done if you have the right Magnus card in your current hand. There are also some "voice-only" cards that're used mostly to go with your combo moves and make your party look cool.

The Japanese version of Baten is due out December; a U.S. release hasn't been announced but seems likely. A couple more screenshots can be seen down below.

The Xenosaga project leaders show off the new designs for the Episode II characters. MOMO's practically an adult now!
Monolith didn't have quite as much to show for Xenosaga Episode II yet (it's not coming out until 2004, after all), but what was there?including a movie trailer and a demonstration of the motion-capture sessions Monolith is carrying out for Jin Uzuki's battles?looked impressive. "The story of Episode II is connected purely and simply with the previous game," stated producer Sugiura. "All the issues people had with Episode I have been fixed." These issues, according to director Ko Arai, run a gamut of topics: "We're concentrating on making the game easier to understand and get into. The tempo of the battles, in particular, is improved, and the load time in between maps and after battles has been greatly enhanced."

Xenosaga's story is still mostly a mystery, but it will concentrate on the Zohar[s] and the people surrounding them. Most of the new developments in the plot will concentrate around Jr.?"The more man-like areas hidden with Jr. will be revealed here," as Arai put it. Hmm.

While no release date for Episode II has been confirmed yet, Sugiura confirmed that it'll be sooner than later: "I can't tell when the date will be, but the way we're going, we'll have the software done by the end of the year. Development is going extremely smoothly right now, so I hope you're looking forward to the game."

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