Supreme Captain Of course, Matsuzo Machida wrote the story for N3II. You are going to need plenty of cutscenes. If you have played Shadow Hearts Covenant you are almost for the most time of the game watching cutscenes despite the low budget Nautilus received from Aruze. He is suitable for Sony games if he wants to get attention from the casual audience who wants to watch cutscenes all the time. Join Japan Studio would do great for the studio and for himself if he wants a global mass market reputation with big budget and strong marketing.
Ok, what do you think of the Japan Studio one. Bend Studio's project has already been announced as Days Gone. www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179632612&postcount=425 Same guy posted this in 2014 and people thought it was BS until Sony announced Uncharted The Lost Legacy at PSX 2016. It's no 9 you will look at. Everything is Playstation related from this guy. www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=144519589&postcount=178 In early 2016 we got this interview with Matsuzo Machida. gematsu.com/2016/01/shadow-hearts-creator-working-new-video-game His message is confusing: "Unfortunately, I can’t reveal any detail about it right now, but I’m working on a new game. In the future, I would love to create a western adaptation of it." I don't know, Japan Studio's project is a puzzle, especially when chief-in-editor Famitsu's Katsuhiko Hayashi is the only one who knows what JS is working on. His reaction on livestream gave him shivers and was amazed three times. He concluded by saying: "It's great to have such things. It's really fun. This will definitely be worth waiting for". He just knows about the concept and the title. Footages will be saved for E3 since it sounds like a big project. Japan Studio has pretty much westernized and you can tell that from Knack. They brought in God of War writer for Knack 2. Mark Cerny's writing of the first game was uninspiring. He is no longer the director either, they have one from Japan Studio. If we now focus on Matsuzo Machida he was a part of Sacnoth before they were acquired by Aruze and changed name to Nautilus when they were working on Shadow Hearts Covenant. Different western third party publishers localized it. Xseed localized the last one and the light-hearted one, From the New World. After that Aruze dissolved Nautilus. Three of them (Machida, Kato, and the cinematic director) went freelancing. All the other 40 people from the staff joined feelplus. Art director of Shadow Hearts series, Takamasa Ohsawa, was the art director of Lost Odyssey. Event director of The Legend of Dragoon was the producer of Lost Odyssey. When feelplus didn't got anymore projects they teamed up with Q Entertainment on N3II which Konami published. Phantagram did the first game and now feelplus did the sequel. Matsuzo Machida came back and wrote another home console game (N3II) until he went total MIA. Machida, Kato and the cinematic director worked on Arms' Heart with Hamster for PSP. N3II was released in the same year as Arms' Heart (year 2010). As for Arms' Heart, Machida had his scenario writer role and Kato was character designer. I don't see why Machida would want to create a western adaptation of a mobile game when the market is bigger in Japan. And he has been gone for more than 5 years. But at the same time I have hard time to see Sony pull off an JRPG with a team that is capable of doing it. Where will they find art designers? As much as I want to see an JRPG with a fusion of West/East gets over 90 on metacritic it's not an easy task. It takes years and a lot of patience to build such quality. I mean they have nothing to lose when Sony's western WWS are just now leaps and bounds above Japan Studio. They have to step up their game globally.
