Sakaguchi lays out Mistwalker plans

Mistwalker, the independent game studio of former Square producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, is hard at work on three announced role-playing games, but apparently that's not enough of a workload.

In an interview with Famitsu, the man behind the Xbox 360's Last Odyssey and Blue Dragon and the Nintendo DS's Ash: Archaic Sealed Heat, revealed that he has another project in the works. Sakaguchi didn't go into detail about the project, except to confirm that it's something that hasn't been announced yet.

On more tangible matters, Sakaguchi said that he is planning to release a playable demo of Lost Odyssey sometime after E3 2006. The demo will contain the opening sequence of the game and the playable scene that immediately follows it.

Sakaguchi said development on Lost Odyssey is moving along as scheduled and that the final product will be released shortly after his other 360 RPG, Blue Dragon. That game will be coming out next year, according to Sakaguchi.

Alhough Blue Dragon is based on the artwork of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Quest VIII), it will not use cartoonlike renderings like other games based on his work. Instead, Blue Dragon will use a different rendering style that Sakaguchi says is similar to claymation. While his first pick was to use the usual cartoonlike style, he explained that development techniques for games kept on advancing to the point that another graphic style became possible.

Sakaguchi also said that Blue Dragon will use light bloom for realistic lighting when a character is near a light source, and real-time motion blur to give battles a natural feel. According to Famitsu, Blue Dragon's development is currently 40 percent complete.

For more on Sakaguchi's upcoming games, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon.