With Final Fantasy VII Remake recently coming out and Dragon Quest XI getting a definitive edition, it seems like classic JRPGs are starting to experience a rebirth of interest, least from their publishers. But there’s one classic series which has laid silent for several years, Konami’s Suikoden series, a victim of the shift from video games to themed gambling devices. Today, a group from the original Suikoden games launched a Kickstarter to fund a spiritual successor titled Eiyuden Chronicle and hit their funding goal.
Newly formed Rabbit & Bear Studios is lead by Yoshitaka Murayama, who directed and wrote for the first two Suikoden titles. Joining him are Junko Kawano (lead artist; Suikoden, Suikoden IV), Osamu Komuta (director; Suikoden Tactics), Junichi Murakami (art director; Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow), and composers Motoi Sakuraba (Tales series) and Michiko Naruke (Wild Arms series).
As reported in The Verge, this particular project is something that the creators have wanted to make for a long time, but couldn’t. As Murayama explained, “Over the past years the core creators have met up at different events, and of course you talk about the glory days as well as regrets. One common thing that always came up was, ‘Isn’t it about time we make a game for ourselves? Something we really want to make? Something we can make for the fans?’ And that dream provided the spark for this current project.”
Despite an outage on the main Kickstarter site, the project has (at the time of this writing) surpassed the roughly half-million-dollar goal they set out for with almost 5000 backers. And with a whole month still ahead of them, it’s likely their working budget will grow sufficiently to ensure they not only make their PC release but also hit the stretch goals which are intended to allow for release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The tentative release date is October of 2022, but if you want to get in now, the project page is still up.
