In the latest issue of Japanese magazine Famitsu, Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo, interviewed for the company's 45th anniversary, revealed that the company plans to announce the final Trails game in 2031, on the company's 50th anniversary, with a release planned for 2032. The ending has already been decided, too.
The Trails series (known in Japan as Kiseki, meaning "miracle/trail") is a long-running Japanese RPG franchise that is technically part of The Legend of Heroes franchise, though it has become its own distinct entity over time. The first game, Trails in the Sky, was released in 2004; in these twenty-two years, the IP has grown into one of the most ambitious continuous narratives in gaming.
Unlike Square Enix's Final Fantasy, for example, Trails is not an anthology series; it is a single continuous story told across multiple games and multiple arcs, set in the same world, with recurring characters, persistent consequences, and a long-term overarching plot that spans the continent of Zemuria. Events from the first game in the series have direct narrative consequences in games released many years later, and characters who were minor NPCs in one arc become major protagonists in another. Villains from one arc reappear with a new context in subsequent ones.
This creates an experience unlike almost any other in gaming: a serialized epic tale on a scale comparable to long-running novel series. There are four main interconnected story arcs:
- Trails in the Sky: a trilogy set in the Liberl Kingdom with Estelle Bright as the protagonist
- Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure: a duology set in the Crossbell State with Lloyd Bannings as the protagonist
- Trails of Cold Steel: a tetralogy set in the Erebonian Empire with Rean Schwarzer as the protagonist
- Trails through Daybreak/Beyond the Horizon: a trilogy set in the Calvard Republic. The first two games feature Van Arkride as the protagonist, while the most recent one features a tri-protagonist structure, splitting the campaign between Van Arkride, Rean Schwarzer, and Kevin Graham, a character from Trails in the Sky 3rd.
It is expected that the final games will feature a pan-Zemurian arc, that is to say, a convergence of all the series' major cast members and storylines from every previous arc into a single culminating conflict.
The president of Nihon Falcom also confirmed that a new game in the even older Ys series (the first entry launched in 1987) is in development.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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