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Project Prelude Rune (Hideo Baba's RPG) might be cancelled

Hudo

Member
If anyone remembers Hideo Baba, he was the producer for the Tales Of games at Namco Bandai (until he left after Zestiria after some drama with the voice actress of Rose). He then went to Square Enix and got money to found a new Studio, Studio Istolia. They then announced the development of that new RPG with the working title "Project Prelude Rune". Trailer at last year's TGS and everything.

Well, Baba left in April. Now, Studio Istolia's website (http://www.studioistolia.com) redirects to Square Enix's website and their Twitter is also gone. So... this might indicate that the project got canned?

Here's the trailer that they've shown at TGS:


(German) Source: https://jpgames.de/2019/05/project-...uftritte-nicht-mehr-erreichbar-status-unklar/

EDIT: He left the studio in December 2018, and he basically left Square completely at the end of March, beginning of April this year.
 
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Hudo

Member
Hideo Kojima's grandma?
Probably not, lol. Baba took over after the original team (Wolf Team) that worked on Tales of Phantasia had some beef with Namco management because the original designer and writer for the game, Yoshiharu Gotanda, wanted the plot and setting to be different and Namco interfered with development. Gotanda took some of his collegues and founded tri-Ace and made Star Ocean.
 
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Hudo

Member
Damn. Thanks for the info though. I wonder what he will do now.
That's a good question. I kinda can see him going to Kadokawa Games and doing some stuff there. Or mobile games.

Thing is, Baba has not a perfect track record... It can be argued that under his wing, the Tales series took a nose dive (When Wolf Team was folded into Namco and was consolidated into one Tales team; Xillia till Zestiria) and the cancellation of this project now isn't also something to write home about. Also, I am not even a big Tales fan, don't know why I know that stuff, lol. Only played Abyss and Vesperia.
 
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Shouta

Member
Not a surprise especially considering Baba's track record. I enjoy Xillia 1 and 2 but they had tons of problems. Zestiria was a trash fire to me. Berseria really managed to get things back on track despite still having leftovers from Zestiria.
 
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