Star Ocean Could Go Open World in the Future, Says Producer

The producer of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness hints at big plans for the franchise's future.

As more and more RPGs are starting to embrace open world gameplay (it's starting to feel like every major video game franchise is), the intergalactic Star Ocean series might make the jump as well. In an interview with Polygon, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness producer Shuichi Kobayashi mentions that Square Enix has some long term goals for the franchise and intends on expanding the series. While Star Ocean 5 isn't going to be open world, Tri-Ace and Square Enix are tossing around the idea of introducing it to a future title.

"With Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, I'd like to make something fundamental," Kobayashi said. "I'd like to make something that can work as a basis for future possibilities. We aren't just talking about this Star Ocean. We've got other plans as well. We want to produce Integrity and Faithlessness as a really clearly defined game, and then we can add on different elements to create more games in the future."

Kobayashi told Polygon that many fans are asking for more open world approaches and that he's definitely interested.

"Personally, we'd like to give that a go some time in the future," Kobayashi added. "At the moment, I'm quite happy to pursue a more scenario-driven concept. I'm looking for the best timing when we should make this evolution to an open world happen. But it's not now."

With the successes of recent sandbox games, MMORPGs, the Grand Theft Auto series, Fallout and Skyrim, we shouldn't be surprised that more and more franchises are trying to introduce open world mechanics to their future games. Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are two recent heavyweight RPGs that embraced an open world approach to gameplay. Final Fantasy XV should be a sign that JRPG developers are starting to do the same.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness will hit PS4 and PS3 sometime in 2016.