As announced back inFebruary, Nihon Falcom’s President Toshihiro Kondo revealed new information on the two upcomingKiseki/Trailsgames and on the future of the series, at the Dengeki Game Festival 2019 event.
Please keep in mind that this article contains information which could be considered as spoilers forTrails of Cold Steeland allKisekigames in general.
Toshihiro Kondo answered questions from fans and revealed new information on the next main game in theKisekiseries:
MultipleTrails of Cold Steelcharacters will appear in the nextKisekimain game. As the next game will be set in the eastern region of the continent where theKisekiseries is set, there’s a very high chance that characters who appeared in theKisekiseries so far with ties to that region will be coming back. Kondo also said the game will include characters who haven’t appeared in aKisekigame in over ten years.
Now thatTrails of Cold Steel’s protagonist Rean is a master of swordsmanship, it’s also possible he has taken in a disciple and that we’ll see them in the next main game. As for Rean’s romance options inTrails of Cold Steeland how that will be reflected in the next games, Falcom doesn’t really know yet. Kondo explained that for example inTrails in the Sky, Estelle and Joshua ’s relationship is one of the main themes of the story, so it was obvious they’d be shown together in later appearances. But inTrails of Cold Steelgames, Rean’s love life isn’t really important to the global story so they allowed players to pair Rean with any of the girls. So they don’t know yet what they’ll do when Rean shows up again.
Kondo also revealed that they’re still deciding on whether the next main game followingTrails of Cold Steelwill feature a male or a female protagonist. He explained that nowadays when making a newKisekigame, they first decide everything about the setting and its story, including most of the protagonist’s background like which organization they’re part of. However, the protagonist’s gender is one of the final things they decide. For both the Crossbell games and theTrails of Cold Steelgames, they ended up deciding to go with male protagonists. Lloyd, the protagonist ofZero/Ao no Kiseki, has a typical superhero-like, hot-blooded personality, while they went with something different for Rean inTrails of Cold Steel. As such, it’s possible the next main games will feature a female protagonist. Following that, Kondo also revealed that in the past Falcom made a version ofTrails in the Sky’s story with a male protagonist.
We previously reported that the development team at Falcom working on theKisekigames teamwas split in two,one team working on the next main game which will take a while to release, and the other team working on a sidestory-like game which should release sooner. During the event, Kondo revealed new artwork, showing new and old characters who will appear in those games.
This man at the left looks a lot like Gaius fromTrails of Cold Steelbut is actually a new character. It’s “someone who looks a lot like a younger Gaius and wears clothes from the Nord Highlands”, the region Gaius is from, so you’re able to easily guess how the two might be related. The woman at the right is Rixia Mao fromZero no KisekiandAo no Kiseki. You can see she wears eastern-like clothes and should show up in the next main game seeing it’s set there.
This is Scarlet fromTrails of Cold Steel, and the other hidden character is Wald fromZero/Ao no Kiseki. For a certain reason, we might see them act together. This is also the first time we actually see Scarlet dressed as a sister, despite her background as a member of the Septian Church.
Kondo mentioned that he showed artwork with characters from eitherZero/Ao no KisekiandTrails of Cold Steelon purpose so we don’t know if these characters are coming back in the next main game, or if they’ll be in the spinoff-like game. He added it’s also possible all four characters he showed, the Gaius lookalike, Rixia, Scarlet and Wald, will appear in both games.
Lastly, Kondo said that they should reveal more information on theKisekigames in June 2019 when the series reaches its 15th anniversary.
In related news, during the event, Falcom also revealed thefirst gameplay videosandnew informationforYs IX: Monstrum Nox.
