A fairly unlikely possobility of Square going under.
Lets say, for the sake of discussion, Square enix goes under and sells off it's IP's. Who would you like to see pick up each IP?
Atlus, I think, is the best canidate for Valkyrie Profile. When I played Covenent of the Plume, I loved the Idea of Sacrificing your allies to obtain great power. The Idea that the people you sacrificed were actually characters with personalities and stories was amazing. The problem was the execution was abysmal. The characters were poorly written, and the characters had little to no relevance on anything after their introduction arc. Give a franchise and Ideas like this to Megaten, and I could see an absolutely stunning game unfold.
Obsidian seems like the most logical choice to hand Deus Ex over too. These guys can write a damned good open world game, as we saw with Fall Out New Vegas. Hell, that is one of the only WRPG's that I fealt your choices actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. I certainly feel they would handle the ending of thier game far better the Square/Eidos did.
Lufia was a bit harder to pick. There aren't a lot of companies out there that really do much to crank out more traditional SNES/PS1 era RPG's anymore. Though thinking on it, I came up with Camelot Game Studios. Their work on Golden Sun was always great. They have experience setting up more Puzzle based Dungeons, which was always one of Lufia's Highlights for me.
What got even harder was the next two franchises. Firstly Dragon Quest. There was the Idea I had to hand that one over to Camelot as well. A good choice, but I have a bit more radical Idea. One that will probably make poor Wolfy shake his head at me with shame. But Gust Studios, the makers of the Atelier franchise. I think they could easily capture the more light hearted nature and hilarious use of PUns from the Dragon Quest games, and they have always done good with keeping a great narrative. As long as they can reign in some of the more excessive goofiness they like to use, I think they could churn out a great DQ game.
And of course, there is the inevitable 'Who get's Final Fantasy?'. There are two options I would consider here. I think I would go with the later, but I'll throw out option one first.
Mist Walker Games. The reason should be obvious, this is the Studio run by Sakaguchi, the guy who was involved in all my favorite Final Fantasies. This man is an amazing director. The problem is the quality that they have been turning out. Both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey were highly disappointing games, and I hear mixed Reviews of Last story. If Sakaguchi could hand over the running of the company to another, and actually put his full focus behind the game, I think he could give a lot of us what we've been waiting for, another great FF.
Since I don't know if that would happen, I will go with option 2, Level 5. Look no further the their work on White Knight Chronicles to see how much detail they can put into their worlds, or DQ IX to see their talent at more typical JRPG's. (Even though IX was way to easy and exploitable. :p) Pair that with the interview with Level 5 creator I posted in General gaming a while ago, I think it's a safe bet a good FF game could be made by these guys.
There are a lot of games under Squares wing right now, so I wont' get through them all, but what are your thoughts? What games would you like to see handled by what compaines?
