I listened to it. I had no problem understanding your accent, the main trouble I had listening to it was the distracting background track. But it was a good summary of the petition. Feel free to make a news entry on the front page of Panzer Dragoon Legacy to share the podcast and the petition in general (we haven’t covered it previously).
Ok, I didn’t know there was going to be a background track in fact. I was asked to choose a track but it is the one played at the end of our vocal chat.
I think the most annoying part must be when the sound gets weaker my end and the soundtrack becomes predominant. As I was not home, I had to use discord on my mobile, and even though I had a good gaming microphone headset with me, I think mobile network might have impacted the audio quality sadly 
Next time, I will make sure to record that kind of things from home with my optical fibre connection.
Thanks ! I will submit something asap then !
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Feel free to make a news entry on the front page of Panzer Dragoon Legacy to share the podcast and the petition in general (we haven’t covered it previously).
Ok, I just finished the news entry. It is now available for you to preview, english not being my mother tongue.
Maybe you can include/embed the podcast directly in the news ? I was not sure I could do this as the formatting options were quite limited. Thanks.
Thanks, I’ll proof-read and publish this today. I haven’t added support for SoundCloud embeds on the site (it’s a custom system that I wrote), and probably won’t as they’re not needed very often, so I’ll change it to a regular link.
It’s published. I also added Panzer Dragoon World as a “Partner Site” in the left hand side menu since you were kind enough to mention Panzer Dragoon Legacy on the campaign page.
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Thanks for that. It will help for sure.
Yukio Futatsugi didn’t answer my email so I’m hoping my contact can do better as the langage was probably a barrier.
Just need to be a bit patient and we shall see what comes out of their discussions.
Why go for an open world ARPG? Something I really appreciated about the Panzer Dragoon series was how minimalistic it was, relatively. With the rail shooters, that’s almost a limitation of the genre, but even Saga seemed like it had laser-precise focus on a main objective. Especially when a lot of other RPGs at the time felt bogged down with loads of filler content and pointless sidetracks. It clocks in at a beautiful 11-15 hours of gameplay, which, especially nowadays, is a big draw for me.
Why have fears about this? It definitely would be a great first step to bring the franchise back to life, but it’s also the main identity of the franchise. I’ll always think of Panzer Dragoon as a rail shooter first that had an RPG spinoff at one point.
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Because this “rail shooter” first step has never worked. It didn’t work with Orta, trying to revive the series, moving forward and it didn’t work for Crimson Dragon. We, never got another game after these. I think it has to start out as an rpg or it’s just going to be a failed attempt that goes under the radar again.
People need to initially see that “wow” factor of an immersive rpg to begin with, to spark interest.
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EXACTLY.
Rail shooters is a niche, as soon as you say “Here is my new game: it’s a rail shooter”, your audience is drastically reduced to a smaller fraction of players. I’m not saying they were not good, but for me as soon as I finished those rail shooters, I quickly forgot about them. Which tells a lot about a game for me.
It is only when SAGA came that I had the “wow” impression as said legaiflame. I remember the game for 20 years now. And it is only thanks to SAGA. A lot of players feels this way about it, they are just not here to say it.
I have fears that if you do another rail shooter now, you might KILL THE SERIES FOR GOOD, FOREVER and BURRYY IT.
Because a few original fans will buy it, those who are still alive. Seriously, we are getting old ^^ And how will you get interest from the younger generation with a rail shooter ?
Even myself, I would be very disappointed.
Sales would be very low AGAIN, and the conclusion would be > Look Panzer Dragoon doesn’t sell. Of course you are killing the series with the wrong decisions ! When you want to kill your dog, you blame it on rabbies.
We have had Orta since and it didn’t sell too much. Because it had been a long time since the previous episodes. Because the story was not that good. I give you that technically the game was VERY good. But the story was not that good, I didn’t like the characters, hated the flat Orta, the design of those dragonmares was awful. And the spirit of the previous games was somehow lost. Maybe also because Futatsugi was not involved.
What I respect is that the team behind this game loved the series enough to want to revive it.
I just think it requires more work, more commitment to give it justice and a chance to be judged FAIRLY.
I am pretty sure if you do a good RPG now, you could sell a few rail shooters next, but not the other way around.
Why an open world ARPG ? Because for me SAGA paved the way to this. If the developers didn’t have the Sega Saturn restrictions, I am pretty sure they would have made an open world without loading time. Who likes loading times and transitions ? It just interrupt the feeling of immersion, and I am pretty sure I read some interviews back in time where dev said without hardware restrictions we would have had open world (they didn’t use this term back in time).
I mean look how creative the world of PDS was, they clearly had a level of creativity that was limited by the hardware they had.
Now, this limit is pretty much gone, and this feels just so right to do an open world Panzer Dragoon. Where you can explore the world, meet NPCs, learn about the ancient world with side quests, ruins to explore. The lore has EVERYTHING to justify a brand new RPG game.
Regarding the gameplay, I am pretty sure you could come up with something fun to play and innovative. Maybe even something which would be acceptable for both rail shooters fans and traditional RPGs fans. Should we have the turn based combat system back ? I don’t know. Should we have a live battle system like in Zelda Botw, I don’t know.
Could we have a form of rail shooting inside it ? Maybe ? I explained this before but imagine: once your dragon is strong enough, your level is good enough (considering you have a leveling system), at some point you would be able to take ‘routes’ and play as a rail shooter. This would be a fun tribute to the genre, but not the main gameplay.
I am trying to be pragmatic with my campaign, i am trying to propose something that can sell, to a much bigger audience than Panzer Dragoon has ever sold to.
Because I think the series deserves it.
Some people will like it, I think the most people will like that. Some people wont.
I am old enough to know sometimes you have to do what you believe is right, and not to care about pleasing every single person.
With all my respect.
There is a middle ground, if an open world RPG is out of the question (requires too large of a budget, etc). A linear action game, but not on rails, for example.
I believe Panzer Dragoon is suited to an open world, but it needs to be pulled off carefully. The construction of the world needs to feel intentional, as do it’s inhabitants. As @Shakespeare rightly pointed out, the lack of filler content and sidequests unrelated to main story helped maintain the focus of Saga. A joke is even made about this when Paet throws away the ship parts after he sends Edge on a fetch quest. In a new RPG, side quests must contribute back to the main story in some way, and not just be errands. NPCs must not feel repetitive. You could do this by making the much of the world desolate, with each human settlement being rare, and make finding the next set piece part of the downtime used to create atmosphere. Shadow of the Colossus did this well.
I agree with all this, it would not be an easy task to create a consistent world: story, quests, NPCs…
As Oscar Wilde once said " Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. "
In this campaign, I am trying to throw a lot of ideas, so that if Futatsugi comes to read it, he start re considering the series. Think about it at night, dream about it and have his own ideas, you see ? Like making an inception (the film) on him or whoever would want to work on Panzer Dragoon. They need to have their own ideas but making noise about it is the key now.
I am not saying all I said in the petition has to be applied.
I just don’t want an Orta 2. Please. Technically the game was perfect. The animation was spot on.
But the story omg, I was really disappointed. The voice acting was poor & far from what it was in Saga. I want a consistent story. It is probably more important than the open world if we have to sacrify that.
And again, a rail shooter is really for a niche. If they want that, I think they should just remaster/remake the old games first. They are a safe bet, and not much risk, it would sell. Especially when you see how long ppl have been screaming for that. Pretty sure the hype would even get curious gamers from youger generations to get them. Those old rail shooters would be great on Switch. You play one stage then console back in the bag. That’d be good.
But please no brand new PD rail shooter now, for me it would be wasted money and energy, it would lead AGAIN to wrong conclusions > “Panzer Dragoon doesn’t sell”.
I’d be ok with a linear game if we have some sandbox areas to have fun in. If it happens, we’ll have to make concessions.
Really in this campaign, the idea is to make Futatsugi WANT to do another game. We should almost forget the how. I am more trying to give a direction over another. Another rail shooter terrifies me… unless this is an hybrid game which we’ve never seen so far. Crimson Dragon was not even close.
Making an open world and sell the old games as DLC and/or standalone still sounds feasible.
You reduce the overall development cost but you increase your source of revenue.
I think we have to keep things in perspective here. The type of games that are major selling points these days are open world: Assassins Creed, The WItcher, GTA, Horizon Zero Dawn ect…
A rail shooter will most likely fail to grab attention. And a linear action game will probably fall into the same category. I mean Uncharted worked, but even that game had more open environments. With a strange and unique world like Panzer, concerning a linear action game, I don’t think people will understand what they are playing. Most likely it will go under the radar again as a quick rental from Gamefly and nothing more.
So, I believe this time, they have to take a risk or do nothing at all. I mean look, we’re getting Shenmue 3 after all these years and that game is sticking to it own formula, even within its limited budget. So, if Shenmue 3 can be revived within a certain budget, so could PD.
So, I guess with a limited budget, they could still make an open world game but it would have to be a smaller more condensed open world game, just like Panzer Dragoon Saga! I think it would be the perfect balance again. Not too long, not too short, open enough for exploration, with meaningful sidequests, and a focused story!
One think I really LOVED in SAGA was the cutscenes. I still love when games have some but it’s so rare these days as the game engines have progressed so much.
I think beautiful cutscenes, as well as a good voice acting localization make a huge difference between a good and a great game. It really emphasizes the feeling the game has been polished to the finest.
IMO, I think anything other than an rpg is setting the revival of the series up for failure. Like Ellot-Ness has said, during the development of this “potential” remake, they should re-release and remaster the rail-shooters; or even Saga somehow… Similar to like how Sega currently has plans to re-release Shenmue 1 and 2 in HD.
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We need something ! I’ll keep up with the fight, at my own rythm & path. It might take a bit longer we’ll see.
The ShenMue3 + 1/2 remasters sales might impact that.
Also the fact that Swery’s campaign will probably not reach its target so I assume Grounding will have to find another “job”.
Let’s see.
Uncharted is actually a good example of what a new linear Panzer Dragoon could aim to be. On dragon back of course, but aiming to be as cinematic and story driven.
You also have Call of Duty, Halo, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, etc. The list goes on and shows that the linear action genre is still as relevant as ever.
Assassin’s Creed is a good example of what Panzer Dragoon should not aim to become. The first game at least was far too repetitive, and although I haven’t played the sequels I’m doubtful they changed the formula fundamentally.