Square Enix recently announced their brand new IP, Project Setsuna, that is going to be developed by their newly-formed studio, Tokyo RPG Factory. Project Setsuna was announced during E3 with nothing to show for it other than few pictures that seemed more like concept art.
Although Project Setsuna is set to release next year, Square Enix boss Yosuke Matsuda was in an interview with Weekly Famitsu (via Kotaku) hinted that the game may become a trilogy since he believes that games tend to better by their third game according to his “Law of Third Titles.”. Matsuda thinks that the first two games allow developers to experiment and try new features since the game isn’t fully shaped yet. This has been proven in some cases recently such as The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt and Crysis 3.
“Cultivating a new IP is very important. This is my own personal view, but I believe that it is very difficult to immediately build up a big IP,” Matsuda said “Looking retrospectively at the gaming industry, many games take off or get their big break at their third title. There are cases where the opposite is true of course. [laughs] But regardless, you need at least three games before you can tell whether an IP is going to be really successful or not.”
“I call this my Law of Third Titles. [laughs] That’s why for the first and second games, you experiment to a degree where you can still be flexible, and if the series has grown enough to be able to expect a big hit for the third game, you expand the scale. If the third title is successful then all is well.”
The word Setsuna itself is inspired by the Japanese word “Setsunasa (切なさ)“ which refers to the feeling you have when you miss someone for a long time. Matsuda also confirmed that the word’s meaning will be related with the game’s theme.
Till now, we know almost nothing about Project Setsuna in terms of platforms but we know that it will release sometime next year. At least we are finally starting to know what kind of game it is.
