Horii, from what I read was almost the core to the original Trigger and reason it came to be along with Toriyama, Sakaguchi, and Aoki and regretfully, he is the one who stated he had no interest in making another Chrono game (technically, he is also freelance now though his company works exclusively with SE) and that was back in 2005 when he made that statement. Kitase and Nomura were drafted into the game midway from working on VII, and while Kitase is credited for being a director most sources I've read says his role was working on subplots he wrote and not so much the core of the game. Naora was a graphic designer working with Nomura on more of a technical side rather than a creative side so once again, their contribution is negligible.Originally Posted by Bolivar
Tanaka did work on Cross but most sources say that Kato was actually the main driving force of Cross as he was the main writer, designer, and director for the game and even he works freelance now. Most of the Cross team that worked with them also happen to be the Xenogears development team that left shortly after Cross was released and formed Monolith Soft which is now owned by Nintendo.
Kato and Mitsuda are the only members of the original Trigger/Cross team that is really interested in doing another title (despite both of them being freelance), it sounds to me like they want something along the lines of some of these big names to come back and work on it. Mitsuda mentioned a sequel would require a lot of "politics" so it sounds to me like they almost want the original Trigger team, even getting the Cross team would involve dealing with Nintendo. Of course there could also be more to the story than we know cause it sounds plausible to simply hire Kato to write a third title with a new team and hire Mitsuda to provide music but SE won't do it.
The VP of SE said shortly after the release of the DS port for Trigger that SE would only make a sequel if people actually started buying the games...
We like these games cause they stem from the creative outlets of certain individuals, despite being a simple name in a credit often times they are the heart and soul of a game. Cross featured only a small portion of the Trigger team and that's why it felt completely different cause only a few of the main contributors actually worked on the title. If a third party company was able to hire them on you might get something like Cross again but still making the same magic is hard, DQ does it by creating strict guidelines and maintaining their key creator you start getting new people in their and they will want to contribute and change the idea to suit them as well so yes, it will feel different.
Whether its good or bad depends on the production company but I'm not sure how many would actually want to tackle a series with an overwhelming historical background and legions of devoted fans. If Blizzard handed WoW over to Valve tomorrow, I think they would be sweating bullets on building that next expansion.
Tactics Ogre might be a bit safer bet since its more of a cult series and as Bolivar said, the series does live on in the FFT franchise. Yet, while playing through the "Ivalice Alliance", I do feel the Ivalice team has lost a bit of their magic without Matsuno to guide them and considering he created the Tactics Ogre series I don't see it fairing any better without his input. Besides, the teams that worked with Matsuno are too busy making the Ivalice Alliance and working on FFXI expansions and content. I would say SE bought Quest simply to kill the franchise so it wouldn't compete with the FFTactics series. They could make a sequel but why not use the sources to build the more SE centric FFTactics series? To be honest, I doubt Matsuno being there would really change whether a new Tactics Ogre game would be made. I might give you that TO was bought purely to kill the franchise and use the dev team to make more FFT titles.
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