More Nintendo Wii Arc Rise Fantasia RPGs?

A recent chat with Japanese developer Image Epoch has revealed potential plans to expand on Arc Rise Fantasia for Wii, making it into a series. At last month's Tokyo Game Show Ryoei Mikage, President of Image Epoch, and Hideyuki Mizutani, Operating Officer at Marvelous Entertainment discussed how its lavish upcoming RPG for Wii, Arc Rise Fantasia, could very well end up turning into a fully-fledged series.

Below are some choice quotes from the interview about the game in general:

Siliconera: I played Arc Rise Fantasia using the Classic Controller. Do you plan to implement motion control too?

Hideyuki Mizutani, Operating Officer at Marvelous Entertainment: For the game you can use the Classic Controller, Gamecube controller, and Nunchuck/Wii remote. But, we don't really utilize the capability of swinging it since we were thinking of a traditional RPG where you sit down and enjoy it for a long period of time.

Siliconera: Can you tell us about the story?

Ryoei Mikage, President of Image Epoch: There are creatures called Fallen Dragons and they cause disasters within the world. There is also an energy called Ray, sort of like a magical energy and different countries, different places are fighting against each other over the Ray. The natural balance of the world is thrown off so all of these monsters are appearing. In the midst of that there is a boy and a girl. They both have an important part, sort of like the key of the world. Depending on the decisions they make they can change the balance of the world.

Siliconera: How long do you think it will take for someone to complete Arc Rise Fantasia?

Hideyuki Mizutani: Only the story part alone, probably 40 hours. Include the sub-quests and extra additional parts, 10-20 hours more.

As for whether a sequel is already being planned at the moment, Mikage stated:

"No comment. Right now we're working on a lot of different action games as well so we're learning and applying action skills. The basic concept of Imageepoch is fantasy games. That doesn't really mean RPG or action. Our games are within the fantasy genre."