Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey Creator Shoots Down Remaster Hopes
Don't expect these classic Xbox 360 RPGs to return any time soon.
Legendary game developer Hironobu Sakaguchi, best known for his work on the Final Fantasy series, has shot down hopes tied to remasters of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. After Sakaguchi left Square Enix in the early 2000s, he went on to found the studio Mistwalker. The developer's first two major releases after being established were Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, a pair of RPGs that were exclusive to the Xbox 360 platform. And while both games were largely well-received and have gone on to be cult classics, Sakaguchi has no desire to bring them back for new hardware.
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Sakaguchi said plainly that he isn't interested in remastering or remaking either Blue Dragon or Lost Odyssey. Within the past month, rumors began circling online which suggested revivals for both of these Xbox 360 era RPGs could be happening. However, such an announcement never came about at Xbox's June showcase and has now been followed by Sakaguchi himself saying that he's not drawn to such an endeavor.
Interestingly, Sakaguchi did express bringing back one game from Mistwalker's past, but it's one that console gamers likely aren't too familiar with. That game in question is Terra Battle, which originally launched in 2014 for iOS and Android devices. Terra Battle remained active until the middle of 2020 at which point its servers were taken offline. As such, this is why Sakaguchi wants Terra Battle to come back as there is no way to currently play it.
Moving forward, Mistwalker and Sakaguchi do have a rather large release on the horizon in Fantasian Neo Dimension. Set to launch at an undetermined date in Q4 2024, Neo Dimension is a port of the game Fantasian, which originally game to Apple devices in 2021. For this new release, Mistwalker has partnered with Square Enix to publish the title across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The move brings Sakaguchi's career full circle to some degree and represents a collaboration between Mistwalker and Square Enix that many thought would never happen.
