Suikoden Creator hints at making a new IP targeted for the West.

[Skyblade]

I can't help but feel when a JRPG makers says 'Western Fans' it is a code word for 'we are going to be making something for a market we don't understand in a way that plays to none of our strengths'.

This was my immediate reaction.

[Jibril]

I can't help but feel when a JRPG makers says 'Western Fans' it is a code word for 'we are going to be making something for a market we don't understand in a way that plays to none of our strengths'.

This was my immediate reaction.

Yeah, although sometimes you get something great like Dragon's Dogma.

Konami's not doing anything with Suikoden and that's really sad. I always thought the only reason it wasn't successful in the west was because they didn't understand how to market it. Westerners are ho-hum about JRPGs featuring teenage protagonists, but they eat up bloody warfare and political intrigue. Suikoden had both. Don't know why they never saw that.

Whatever Murayama is planning on doing, I'm interested so long as he doesn't try too hard to make a "western" game. The three Suikodens he directed were on a level above every other Japanese game at the time... the storytelling hasn't been surpassed imo, even with the bad translations on the first two. The worldbuilding/lore was pretty similar to what The Elder Scrolls did/is doing. Was some innovative trout. Mixing strategy gameplay into a fairly traditional JRPG, the leveling soft cap eliminating grinding. All those characters and minigames. Suikoden 3's story structure was groundbreaking too.

Makes me sad when I think about the crazy stuff they could be doing nowdays if they had just kept doing it. A Dark Cloud-esque city-building system would have been a natural progression from 3. They had some great combat ideas in 3 that never got fleshed out enough, too. Oh well.