GameSpy: Could you give us a quick overview of Lost Odyssey?
Adam Kovach: Lost Odyssey is the story surrounding Kaim and four other characters who come from a parallel world. They have no memories whatsoever for various reasons, and the game takes place 30 years after the millennium has ended. The world's on the verge of a magical industrial revolution, and the characters get caught up in a lot of political turmoil and upheaval. These guys are going to have to figure out a way to save the present world from evil guys that take advantage of magical powers that permeate the Earth.
The game is created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, renowned creator of Final Fantasy and Blue Dragon. He's on board to create this great storyline that really taps into the emotional psyche. This is an emotional investment where gamers can actually feel the excitement, sadness, joy and suffering of the characters as you traverse the world with them.
Others that have joined the development ranks are Takehiko Inoue, who's the lead character designer. He has a very elevated status in Japan because of his famous work around "Slam Dunk" and "Vagabond," which carry his art style. Nobuo Uematsu is the music composer for this game, and Kiyoshi Shigematsu is an award-winning novelist and short story writer, who will provide "Dreams of 1,000 Years," which are short story sequences that shed light on Kaim's past life during the past millennium.
GameSpy: How does this, in terms of overall goals, compare to the last Mistwalker project?
Adam Kovach: This carries a completely different storyline. This is an interactive drama that excites the gamers around the emotional aspects of the characters. Kaim, along with other characters, is depicted as a "cold fish" -- you know, carrying no emotions. When you actually start playing Kaim, and you actually saw him in the trailer, he doesn't really express a lot of emotions. But as he encounters past family members, and starts remembering things that happened in the past, then he's compelled to remember, and that leads to a lot of revelations about where he's going, and the future. You get onto an emotional rollercoaster of joy and suffering and so forth, and that's how Sakaguchi wants to tap into the emotional psyche, whereas Blue Dragon carried the art style of Akira Toriyama, around the shadows.
So the concept's totally different. Blue Dragon's about characters who receive empowerment by means of their inner strength, their inner disposition of the heart, or mental disposition, represented by their shadows, working in conjunction with their courage, and so forth, whereas Lost Odyssey is about a man who has been pained in many ways, and your goal is to travel with him and feel the pain as he does, and find the mystery -- the blessing and curse -- of 1,000 years.
