Baten Kaitos director again comments on cancelled Baten Kaitos III
Yasuyuki Honne, the director at Monolith Soft for the Baten Kaitos series, has again commented on Baten Kaitos III – which never released. He also once again confirmed that there were plans for a title on DS that was scrapped as well.
According to Honne, Baten Kaitos III was targeted for next-gen platforms – so if anything, it would have been on Wii and not GameCube. Unfortunately, things weren’t meant to be “due to Bandai Namco’s restructuring and budget review, as well as tri-Crescendo’s financial struggles”. Honne added that “Baten Kaitos is a complicated series with lots of circumstances involved.”
Here’s our full translation of Honne’s comments:
After Baten Kaitos II, we aimed to release Baten Kaitos III on the next generation of consoles, looking to Bandai Namco for funding, Monolith for the plot and artwork, and tri-Crescendo for programming, but due to Bandai Namco’s restructuring and budget review, as well as tri-Crescendo’s financial struggles, III was cancelled. After that, there were also plans for a DS version, but that was cancelled too.
I had heard about tri-Crescendo’s troubles from Shiba-san, being on the verge of bankruptcy. It seems development of Eternal Sonata averted disaster by reusing code during pre-production to lower costs.
There were rumors of under-the-table dealings between tri-Crescendo and Bandai Namco, of course, but for the sake of keeping the company running, Hatsushiba-san’s options were limited, and maybe management saw that he had no other choice. Anyway, Baten Kaitos is a complicated series with lots of circumstances involved.
Honne previously said in 2018 that there plans to have Baten Kaitos III take place in the sea, on land, and in the sky.
While there currently aren’t any plans to revitalize Baten Kaitos III, the series is finally making a bit of a return. Bandai Namco intends to release Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster on Switch this summer.
Translation provided by SatsumaFS on behalf of Nintendo Everything.
