In an interview with GameSpot, Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo revealed that the Trails series, which began in 2004 as an offshoot of the larger The Legend of Heroes series, will soon be discontinued.
“In fact, the series has progressed to the point where its main story is about 80-90% complete. And so, while there will be games coming out, and they might be in the form of a second arc after this one, it won’t continue for much longer. And you won’t see a bow as big as Cold Steel again. Although we’re currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of the series, you won’t see a 30th or 40th anniversary.”
When asked about Falcom’s future plans, he had this to say:
“In terms of a direct successor to the Trail series, there is nothing in particular planned – we are just extremely focused on completing the Trail. However, in terms of new IP addresses, there are actually a few things that are actively being worked on right now.”
“You see, the Trails series has been going on for 20 years, and as great as that is, the problem is that it means a lot of people have been working on that title for many, many years. They want to try new things. They have new ideas. There are new challenges that they want to tackle… So in the background we allow them to create these new IPs and work on them – to talk about the things they want to do. I believe that this will make them even stronger developers and that they will have even better ideas that will contribute even more to our games.”
Later, Kondo also talked about simultaneous English and Japanese releases, noting that Falcom works closely with publisher NIS America to shorten the time it takes the West to get localized versions of their games.
He also shared one of his favorite things about Trails, with an answer fans will likely agree with:
“This is one of the few – if not the only – series that continues for this long, especially within the same world. There is a certain satisfaction in being a company that has been able to do that and deliver.”
“What’s more, the Trails series has characters that span multiple games. A good example would be in [Trails in the] Sky, you have a character that starts out as a girl. You meet her when she is 11 or 12 years old. And when you play the later games, you see that she’s all grown up now. She lived her own life and grew up throughout each of the arcs. Seeing her like this creates an almost parental feeling towards her and the other characters. We get to watch them start at one point and then hit all the other great points later in the series. There is definitely joy in that.”
