Hiroya Hatsushiba, the president of Tri-Crescendo came up with the concept for Eternal Sonata because of his love for Frédéric Chopin’s music. Stephanie Fernandez, the localization producer of Eternal Sonata explains, “He’s a big fan of Chopin. He wanted to introduce gamers to his music.” Chopin’s music is integrated into Eternal Sonata. You can unlock songs by going through a side quests or if you’re lazy you can purchase a key to instantly gain access to the songs.
It was also Tri-Crescendo’s idea to make Eternal Sonata an Xbox 360 game. Considering the studio had experience working with the Gamecube on Baten Kaitos, the Wii should seem like a natural choice. Nope. Back at Tri-Crescendo they decided that the battle system and graphics best worked on the Xbox 360. Eternal Sonata does take advantage of multiple face buttons on the controller during combat. Perhaps that was another reason Tri-Crescendo jumped on the Xbox 360 train. Also Namco Bandai is “not aware” of a Playstation 3 version at the moment, which confirms the Xbox 360 exclusivity mentioned at the E3 Microsoft press conference.
When Eternal Sonata comes to North America on September 17, it is going to be identical to the Japanese release and, brace yourself, with the Japanese language track. The European version coming in November also includes the original language track.
What about other Xbox 360 RPGs? Namco Bandai didn’t confirm anything. It feels like they are testing the waters with Eternal Sonata. At least they have a great three player co-op RPG to start out with.
