Death of a Game Franchise

The second game in the series.

Source: http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/11/22/tales-studio-disbanded/

It's a sad day for gamers whenever a studio of a beloved game franchise gets disbanded. It's even sadder for fans of the Tales series.

Despite healthy sales, Tales Studio parent company, Namco Bandai, has decided to disband the studio. This doesn't mean the employees will be out of work. All employees will be absorbed into the parent company. Company-wise, it's a restructuring of their man power and doesn't really say anything about the future of the Tales series. Namco Bandai could still release these games. Nothing in the company's release statement says the team will be broken up. But it won't be the same.

Being absorbed into the parent company means they'll be doing other stuff besides work on a Tales game. Namco Bandai is a big company with other games at their disposal. Surely, they'll place any employee they need to any project that needs them. More than likely, it won't be a Tales game. If they can get the same creative writing team on board for a possible next game, good. But it's unlikely.

FF XIII. Heavily criticized for pretty graphics, lackluster story, and point A to B straight-line maps.

This is the same reason why recent Final Fantasy games, despite huge sales numbers, are reviewed poorly. When the creator of the Final Fantasy series (Hironobu Sakaguchi) and their music composer (Nobuo Uematsu) left Square-Enix, Final Fantasy games haven't been the same. You can't have a Final Fantasy game without these two. They're synonymous with Final Fantasy. Take Final Fantasy XII and XIII, for example. Both games were good, but they're Final Fantasy only in name. None of the music from these games were as memorable. Even the latest games outside of the series with music from Mr. Uematsu sound much better and I don't even play those games.

It was the same way when Sacnoth (later known as Nautilus) was disbanded. They made the Shadow Hearts series. The first game in the series is a very underrated game that came out at the same time as Final Fantasy X. Both games had very high scores. Shadow Hearts was heavily praised by game reviewers and was set to becoming a sleeper hit... which it did. The second game in the series was the biggest undertaking that the company had done.

Shadow Hearts 2: Covenant characters.

The company released their third game and announced that this would be their last game in the series. Their parent company disbanded Nautilus after that and absorbed the employees into theirs. Most of the creative team members have left since then. I cried when this happened. That's when I did some self-searching. I yelled at my boss and quit my job. I approached this former high school student I knew and proposed that we both start cooking meth. I also shaved my head.

How about a nice cup of granular-caffeinated beverage from an intravenous drip?

I'm done.