Blue Dragon - Development

Development

Blue Dragon was first revealed on February 24, 2005 as one of two unnamed role-playing games in development by Mistwalker Studios for the console which later came to be known as the Xbox 360. In an IGN interview following the unveiling, Peter Moore stressed the importance to Microsoft of having Japanese games available on the system, commenting "... It's a main priority for me in the next 12–18 months to ensure Japanese developers are our partners." Contributors to Blue Dragon include a number of well known Japanese figures in the gaming industry. The title's original story was written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the game director of the first five Final Fantasy video games. It also features art from Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball and visual character and monster designer and illustrator of both the Dragon Quest series and Chrono Trigger.

Much of the actual software development work on the game was done at Artoon, with Takuya Matsumoto serving as director and Manabu Kusonoki responsible for the game's world view. Matsumoto previously worked as a designer on Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space, while Kusonoki is known for his work at Sega, including the world of Panzer Dragoon. Near the end of November 2005, roughly a year before the title was released in Japan, Artoon's Naoto Ōshima indicated that the game was around 40% complete. He also pointed out that Artoon had previously been known primarily for action titles, so that responsibility for Blue Dragon was originally somewhat frightening. Following this, a relative lack of media information for most of 2006 resulted in speculation that the title would be delayed until 2007, but Microsoft's Takashi Sensui confirmed in August 2006 that the game would indeed see a year-end 2006 release. Blue Dragon was eventually released on three full DVD discs, making it the first Xbox 360 game to span multiple discs.

In a November 2006 interview with IGN, Sakaguchi confirmed that the sequel, Blue Dragon 2, was in the planning stages, and would presumably start development shortly thereafter. Later in an issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, it was announced that Blue Dragon Plus was in the works for the Nintendo DS. It is a real-time simulation RPG, featuring 2D sprite graphics, and was released on September 4, 2008 in Japan and on February 19, 2009 in North America. In 2009, a second Blue Dragon title was released for the DS, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow. The latter is more action oriented, and follows a player-created character, rather than Shu.