What was gained for the story’s conclusion by returning to the roots with “Trails in the Sky”

President Kondo

Compared to the original releases, we finished production in a relatively shorter time-span. Although it has taken a little more than three years, the work felt so fulfilling that time seemed to fly by. We've learned lessons and insight that we can carry forward to future titles. However, above anything else what was most significant is the younger staff who already liked Trails in the Sky being able to work together.

President Kondo

That's right, according to survey data, there were quite a lot of new players coming in. With the Trails series reaching its 20th anniversary, we had also been speaking about how to broaden the fanbase even further. In that sense, we felt that our efforts were paying off.

President Kondo

“Which title should I start with?” is a question I’ve kept getting asked time and time again, especially by news outlets overseas. (laughs) It was a significant moment for us to create a work for current-generation consoles that could earnestly and easily be recommended.

President Kondo

We had to design the world and visual style for the Trails in the Sky remake series from scratch. This meant meticulously paying attention to details such as character proportions for the 3D models, the appearance of these models against the world and the camera work involved. We could then use the foundation we established during development of the 1st for the 2nd. But as you had said, the sheer volume of content remained a major challenge. To address this early on we outsourced specific parts of the production to external studios. Thanks to these efforts we were able to release the sequel in less than a year.

President Kondo

We’ve established a meaningful collaborative framework with these various auxiliary studios who continue to be partners delivering high-quality results without needing too much instruction. We placed a number of orders with these studios for the 2nd.

President Kondo

The most pivotal change this time around was achieving a multi-platform, worldwide release with overseas markets. Previously, Falcom titles were worked on internally up until the final master was completed. The number of scenario changes, in particular, tends to be immense. A simultaneous domestic and worldwide release was incredibly difficult to organize because localization can only really begin after that point. Trails in the Sky, however, is a remake and since we could share the scenario (and other associated content) with our localization partners in advance we could start that work much earlier. This isn’t to say the process was entirely easy but we gained the insight needed to make this worldwide release possible.

President Kondo

That would be ideal but it’s not something we can commit to right away. However, this was a valuable learning experience and our hope is for the whole team, development staff included, to find a solution to deliver our work worldwide as soon as possible.

President Kondo

Yes. Up until this point we’ve either had to stagger out the release dates or relied on other publishers to release our works. However, this time we decided to release it on multiple platforms ourselves. And meaningfully, we found that most of our users had chosen the platforms we previously released later on. Seeing the metrics for that we felt, “Multi-platform releases are tough but well worth the effort.” We’d like to continue with this release approach going into the future.

President Kondo

The core gameplay loop for the Trails series has always been exploring the field, engaging in battles and returning to exploration. For the 1st we focused on picking up the pace of that loop. With the 2nd we aimed to create an experience where players who had already mastered that loop can enjoy it even further while retaining that same simplicity and speed. For example, party members other than Estelle can use Crafts and a new “Brave Rush” mechanic was introduced to pull in those allies. We’ve even strengthened the enemies as well, making them faster or stronger. They’ll close the distance quickly, rely on hit-and-run tactics and even use their own Crafts.

President Kondo

That experience has become much richer. If you find yourself thinking, “This is way too much..” in Field Battle that’s an opportunity to switch to Command Battle. It’s certainly become more challenging but I want each player to work up their own approach to that challenge.

President Kondo

Feedback from the 1st pointed towards players wanting more of a challenge, even on Normal. As a direct result, staff spent way more time than usual fine-tuning the game to achieve that satisfying level of difficulty. But during play-testing we ran into specific sections that were just impossible to get through… Which turned into quite a discussion about how to handle the difficulty. In the end we just bumped up the previous Normal to a new Advanced mode and rebalanced Normal from scratch. Our goal was a balance that the average player who had cleared the 1st would find enjoyable. That moment was the highlight of the entire development process for me (laughs)

President Kondo

That’s right. And it was something we started working on early into development as it was immediately noticeable how large that task was.

President Kondo

The amount of voice work we had to do this time was simply overwhelming so I shared my role of supervising these sessions with other staff members. Just like with the 1st, I was impressed by how thoroughly the cast studied the original work. It was because of that dedication that the staff and I rarely had to intervene, and recording concluded smoothly.

President Kondo

Personally, I was most looking forward to how Nobuo Tobita would portray Weissman once his facade had fallen. It was a total bullseye. He poured his very soul into that performance.. so much so that after the recording he left us a line spoken from Weissman’s own perspective, “Give me a chance at revenge.” It was incredibly chilling.

President Kondo

I was incredibly impressed by the voice acting done during the scene where Julia and Cassius are training. Unlike with anime, voice acting for games tends to be done without any visuals present. However, for this project we brought along available footage into the studio so that the voice actors could watch while performing. Eriko Matsui, the voice of Julia, delivered a flawless performance. It was as if she had seen the footage dozens of times already despite it only being her first watch. Seeing that I could only think, “Voice actors are truly amazing.” Ah, and then there was Gilbert (voiced by Kengo Kawanishi). Those who’ve played the original or any of its sequels know him very very well. A consistently large amount of effort went into his characterization despite the nature of his role. His presentation is generally comedic but the sheer variety of voice lines and special actions he has are incredible. It’s impossible to see everything he has to offer during a typical battle so I encourage all of you to prolong that fight as much as possible. Please enjoy everything he has to offer.

President Kondo

They are powerful, especially the higher level Arts which are no joke. It isn’t just offensive Arts that stand out, support Arts are even stronger. If you don’t configure your Orbments and master Arts, you’ll likely face a lot of challenges during the latter half of the game on higher difficulties.

President Kondo

EP typically isn’t a resource that replenishes endlessly so knowing when to use it is important. However, the 2nd is a game balanced to allow significant EP boosts depending on how you’ve organized your equipment. And by making use of the reward system in-game, you can receive high level Quartz early on which can be used immediately if you take the time to upgrade your slots.

President Kondo

We didn’t just want cooking to be this meaningless extra feature, we wanted it to be useful in battle as well. That’s why we revisited the concept from the original game and decided to retain it in the remake. We also saw the opportunity to make the feature whimsical. An example of this is the cast breathing fire in their animations. It makes for a fun experience.

President Kondo

It’s something that players might just obsess over given how it’s presented. We wanted to make the process of players gathering ingredients while exploring Liberl and then enjoying the dishes that come out of them as seamless as possible. From the perspective of development our intent was to balance the game with the expectation that players would, as was the case in the original, effectively use cooking, recovery items and Arts to grasp victory. I sincerely hope players make the most of these features.

President Kondo

The optimal approach depends on the difficulty setting you settle on but regardess of that, you should prioritize upgrading your Orbment slots as early as possible. Making effective use of the Quartz you obtain early on as you engage in what the game has to offer is the key to enhancing your combat capabilities.

President Kondo

And make sure to stay mindful of how to counteract status ailments. As you make progress, particularly through the latter half of the story, regular enemies will start to relentlessly hit you with statuses so severe you won’t be able to keep up. You’ll find yourself constantly poisoned or put to sleep. You’ll have to take the necessary precautions in these areas by equipping your party members with the right accessories. It’s a standard approach within the Trails series.

President Kondo

Well, in the original version players kept saying he was “too weak” so we released a patch to buff him (laughs). This time around he comes in that “full patched, ultimate” state. We had a debate about the balance of this fight as well internally but we decided to retain that level of difficulty even on Normal. Of course, I couldn’t beat it (bashful laugh) but when the staff tried it, they did it easily…

President Kondo

Yes. Beyond that you need to make use of everything at your disposal which includes items, food, Arts, AT bonuses and S-Break’s.

President Kondo

I’d say Kevin will be a significant help this time around. And now, when activating an S-Craft or S-Break, you can choose which one to use. Those small quality of life changes are much more user-friendly compared to the original.

President Kondo

Honestly, winning on just your first attempt is difficult. However, winning isn’t the only way to advance the story for some of these battles, such as the one against that silver-haired man. You can decide to watch the resulting scene play out even if your entire team is wiped out, allowing you to continue on with the story. If you’re determined to win, you can always come up with a new strategy and try again after beating the game. Victory is not impossible, after all. Furthermore, Enforcers have the powerful enhancement “Legion Boost” at their disposal making for a gauntlet of challenging battles in the second half of the scenario.

President Kondo

The Trails series is fundamentally designed as a single-player experience but we do hope that players share their experiences on social media and generate more excitement around the game. That hope was behind the motivation for this mode. Though it originated as a debug mode initially, a lot of the capabilities and settings arose from that.

President Kondo

We re-arranged the UI elements in a way to make it enjoyable for everyone to use, even with just a controller. You'd think this would be an easy thing to implement, since it would be repurposing features of the debug mode, but we'd keep encountering a lot of bugs during that process. As a result, it took a fair bit of effort to implement fully.

President Kondo

I’ll have to bring that up with our PR team (laughs). That said, I’d be happy if players were to share individual shots with each other on social media– I’m hoping they can come up with exciting new compositions that we wouldn’t think of before. I don’t usually interact with these kinds of modes; even when they’re included, I tend to play around with them for a bit and then leave them alone. However, this time I’d spent 2 hours in the photo mode before I’d even realised it. I think it’s a feature that truly feels rewarding to get lost in.

President Kondo

In regards to the 3rd, we’ve yet to decide anything at this stage. However, we as a team have already expressed our desire to tackle it in some form, both internally and externally, so we do intend to approach it eventually. As for the conclusive sequel to Trails Beyond the Horizon, we’ve been planning the scenario alongside the Trails in the Sky remakes, but given our company’s resources it would be difficult to work on both titles simultaneously– as such, we’ll be staggering the order of release for those two entries.

President Kondo

Of course, there’s been times in the past where we shared a similar intent but ultimately were unable to deliver on it… But, given how long every player has been waiting, there is a strong sentiment on our part as we continue development to bring things to a definitive end with the next title.

President Kondo

There are members among the original Trails in the Sky staff that’ll be reaching retirement age in a few years, some of whom have told me, “We’d like to see this remake project through to the Crossbell arc before we retire.” That sentiment made me really happy so it’s something I’d like to see come to fruition.

President Kondo

We’re currently working on the new Ys title internally. There’s also the sequel to Trails Beyond the Horizon, the 3rd and two other unannounced titles. While I can’t reveal the schedule just yet, I can at least share that this is how our development pipeline is currently structured.

President Kondo

Coincidentally, we announced Ys X during the series’ 35 year anniversary (2022) but ended up releasing it the following year. At this point in time it would be difficult to get a release ready in time for the 40th anniversary. That being said, I’d like to share something. In regards to Dragon Slayer, we’re currently considering when and where to reveal more information. I hope to share more news without keeping everyone waiting too long. However, it’s a project involving several external collaborators and requires extensive coordination so I ask for your patience.

President Kondo

We’ll be showcasing various development materials, packaging from older titles and life-size replicas of character weapon’s. Attendee’s will be able to hold the weapons for photos so please come by and check it out. We also plan to give away pin badges at the booth along with booklets summarizing our released titles and stylized handheld fans. There are ten different designs being distributed at random so getting the specific character you want might be challenging…

President Kondo

For those who’ve experienced Trails in the Sky for the first time with the 1st, I’m sure you’re curious about what happens next given the cliffhanger. 2nd picks up right after and carries the story to its conclusion. We’ve packed it with even more content than the 1st so I hope you enjoy it to the fullest. To those who’ve been faithfully following the Trails series, I’d like to sincerely apologize for the hiatus in the main series. In the interim, we’ve prepared the 2nd with the confidence that it’ll be a fulfilling experience so please enjoy it to the fullest for this year. We expect to make an announcement regarding the main series soon so we ask for just a little more time. Thank you.