The Story of the Cancelled Baten Kaitos III

World First, Story Later

In the early 2000s, Monolith Soft was associated above all with Xenosaga, a serious science-fiction RPG for PlayStation 2. Namco, however, wanted something completely different from the studio: a traditional adventure with swords and magic that would not resemble either Xenosaga or the other major role-playing series of the time.

Yasuyuki Honne was responsible for the new project's visual design. Before joining Monolith Soft, he had worked at Square on Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, and Chrono Cross, and had served as art director on Xenosaga. For Baten Kaitos, however, he would be directing an entire game for the first time rather than simply designing its world.

Developers usually write the script first, decide which towns and dungeons are needed, and only then ask the artists to design them. Baten Kaitos was made almost the other way around. Honne drew floating islands, streets, palaces, and forests, and screenwriter Masato Kato then decided why the characters would travel to those places.

At first glance, this order of work created unnecessary problems. A beautiful location could turn out to be completely useless to the plot, while the writer had to explain why, for example, a town made of sweets existed in the middle of the world. Yet this very approach was what made Baten Kaitos so unusual.

The town of Pherkad, for example, began with Honne looking at a cross-section of cauliflower. In its florets he saw levels, passages, and houses stacked one above another. An ordinary vegetable became the foundation for a settlement on the edge of a floating continent.

Pherkad clearly shows how Honne could turn an ordinary object into the design of an entire town.
Nintendo Dream / interview with Yasuyuki Honne and Hiroya Hatsushiba about the development of Baten Kaitos / Shmuplations

Honne deliberately avoided the realistic grey-brown look that was becoming increasingly common in 3D games. He wanted to use rich colours and create places that would make an immediate impression. The artist drew on Middle Eastern and Eastern European architecture, but did not copy specific buildings.

This gave the game a range of places that looked nothing alike: flowering islands, snow-covered towns, mechanical fortresses, and even Parnasse, a village made of sweets.

It was designed before its role in the story had been decided. The artists drew houses made of cake, cream, and jelly, and Masato Kato later explained why such a place existed in the world of Baten Kaitos. This is a good example of how the game was created: sometimes the script did not determine the appearance of a new location; instead, a finished illustration suggested what kind of story the writer could build around it.

Parnasse is a colourful village where the houses, streets, and decorative details resemble cake, cream, and other sweets.
Nintendo Dream / interview with Yasuyuki Honne and Hiroya Hatsushiba about the development of Baten Kaitos / Shmuplations

But beautiful scenery alone is not enough for a large RPG. The player needs to fight, develop the characters, and interact with the world in some way. This was where another company joined Monolith Soft.

Two Studios and a Thousand Cards

Baten Kaitos was developed by Monolith Soft and tri-Crescendo. Yasuyuki Honne was responsible for the visuals and overall direction on the Monolith Soft side, while Hiroya Hatsushiba handled programming, systems, and sound for tri-Crescendo. Officially, the game had two directors.

Such a division could have led to endless arguments, but the studios complemented each other. Monolith Soft handled the world and story, while tri-Crescendo was responsible for the game systems.

Honne was responsible for the art and the world, while Hatsushiba handled programming and the game systems.
Nintendo Dream / interview with the directors of Baten Kaitos / Shmuplations

The defining feature of Baten Kaitos was its Magnus cards. Almost anything could be sealed inside them: weapons, food, medicine, fire, ice, and ordinary household objects. In battle, the player did not choose commands from a traditional menu, but quickly built combinations from cards as they appeared on the screen.

Hatsushiba took inspiration from falling-block puzzle games. He liked the way they forced players to think and press buttons quickly at the same time. As a result, Baten Kaitos battles looked like a card system, but their rhythm sometimes resembled a puzzle game or a music game.

At first, the idea seemed fairly modest. Then the developers began adding new cards, combinations, and items that changed over time. The final number of Magnus cards exceeded one thousand. Hatsushiba later joked that if they had gone to Monolith Soft at the start and proposed making that many cards, the project would probably have been cancelled on the spot.

The player's role was unusual as well. The player controlled Kalas, but was not the hero himself. Instead, the player acted as his guardian spirit, hearing Kalas's thoughts and sometimes answering his questions. The player was not an outside observer, but a participant in the story.

Masato Kato proposed the idea of the spirit and the “wings of the heart.” He also prepared early character sketches. Some of the characters are already recognisable, while others look as if they belong to a completely different version of the game.

The early sketches show how long the creators experimented with the characters' appearances and the design of their wings before arriving at the familiar versions.
Nintendo Dream / early Baten Kaitos character concepts from an interview with the developers / Shmuplations

Baten Kaitos was released in Japan in December 2003, followed by launches in North America and Europe. It did not become the next Final Fantasy, but it found a devoted audience. Players especially remembered its painted backgrounds, Motoi Sakuraba's music, and a story that repeatedly and rather cruelly overturned their expectations.

The developers soon had an opportunity to make another game. Instead of a direct sequel, however, they decided to show the events that had taken place twenty years before the first Baten Kaitos.

A Sequel at the End of the GameCube Era

Baten Kaitos II was released in Japan in 2006. In North America, it was renamed Baten Kaitos Origins to make it immediately clear that this was a prequel rather than a continuation of Kalas's story.

The developers kept the card-based battles, but significantly changed their rhythm. Instead of a separate deck for each character, there was now one shared deck, allowing the player to build combinations and continue attacking more quickly. The result was not simply a prequel with new characters, but a different version of the familiar battle system.

Few people had a chance to experience those changes. Baten Kaitos II was developed for GameCube and released in Japan in February 2006, when Nintendo was already preparing for a new console generation. It did not reach North America until September, less than two months before the launch of Wii.

GameCube was still on sale, but the attention of buyers, the press, and Nintendo itself had already shifted to its successor. A large role-playing game arrived on the older console just as the market was waiting for Wii. It was never released in Europe at all.

Even so, Monolith Soft did not consider the series finished. In a 2006 interview, company head Hirohide Sugiura said that the studio already had an idea for the next game and that development could begin under the right circumstances.

For years, this remark was treated as a general wish to return to a familiar series someday. It later became clear that the plans had been far more concrete.

After completing Baten Kaitos II, the developers really did begin preparing a third game.

Sea, Land, and Sky

In 2018, Yasuyuki Honne unexpectedly revealed that work on Baten Kaitos III had reached the pre-production stage. This meant that the developers were already defining the structure of the game, preparing documents, and drawing concepts, although full production had not yet begun.

The new project was intended for the next generation of home consoles. Honne did not name the system, but judging by the timing, Wii was the most likely platform.

The developers wanted to make the new adventure considerably larger. The player would travel not only across floating lands, but also over the surface of the world and along the seabed. Honne described the project in three words: sea, land, and sky.

This is an important detail. In the first game, humanity lived on islands above the planet's poisonous surface, while the vanished ocean belonged to ancient history. The third game could finally have shown places that the series had previously only talked about.

According to Honne, many pieces of concept art were created for the game and remain in Bandai Namco's archives. In other words, the project went far beyond a general idea: the developers already had a vision of the new world and where the series would go next.

Years later, it was Honne who revealed that Baten Kaitos III had reached pre-production and that many concepts had been created for it.
Monolith Soft / interview with Yasuyuki Honne about the work of the Tokyo and Kyoto studios / official Monolith Soft website

It might seem that after so much preparation, the game was bound to enter full production. But Baten Kaitos depended on several companies at once, and that arrangement proved to be its weak point.

Why the Game Was Cancelled

The third game was expected to retain the established partnership. Bandai Namco would finance the project, Monolith Soft would handle the story and art, and tri-Crescendo would be responsible for programming.

On paper, the arrangement made sense: the three companies had already made two games together. By 2006–2007, however, the position of each company had changed.

Bandai and Namco merged, after which the new publisher began restructuring and reviewing its budgets. tri-Crescendo, meanwhile, ran into serious financial difficulties. In 2023, Honne identified these events as the main reasons why Baten Kaitos III was cancelled. The project was shut down before full production began.

Monolith Soft's own position was changing at the same time. In 2007, Nintendo acquired 80 percent of the studio's shares and became its principal owner. Honne did not name this deal as a direct reason for the cancellation, but it made returning to the old partnership even more difficult: the rights to the series remained with Bandai Namco, tri-Crescendo handled programming, and Monolith Soft was now part of Nintendo.

Later, there was an idea for a separate Baten Kaitos game for Nintendo DS. It was not a portable version of the third game, but a different project. Neither Baten Kaitos III for a home console nor the DS game ever entered full production.

That should have been the end of the story. The third game had been cancelled, Monolith Soft had come under Nintendo's control, and the studio had moved on to other projects. Yet for a long time the company did not explain what Honne was actually working on. Several years later, fans began searching for Baten Kaitos again and found a set of remarkably convincing false leads.

Honne's Secret Work

In May 2010, Monolith Soft published a feature on the development of computer graphics. In it, Honne listed his previous projects: Xenosaga, the two Baten Kaitos games, and concept art for Xenoblade Chronicles. He then added that he was currently engaged in secret work.

For Baten Kaitos fans, that was enough. Honne was not directing Xenoblade Chronicles, and his best-known series of his own had not received a new game in years. The secret project, therefore, might have been the third instalment.

A year later, Monolith Soft opened a studio in Kyoto. Its location alone encouraged more speculation: the office stood near Nintendo, which by then controlled the company. Colourful illustrations by Honne began appearing alongside recruitment notices.

Then, in early 2013, came the very notice with the illustration that opened this story.

The suspicions seemed entirely reasonable. The drawing had been created by the director of Baten Kaitos, the company was expanding, Nintendo was preparing Wii U and 3DS, and Honne himself had spoken about a secret project.

These facts formed an almost complete theory. If Honne was working on a secret game, the new studio was recruiting artists, and the promotional drawing resembled Baten Kaitos, then the sequel might be in development in Kyoto. The only question was the platform: the handheld 3DS or the home console Wii U.

This theory was not absurd. In 2013, almost all the available information really did point in that direction.

Before long, however, the true purpose of the Kyoto studio became known.

The Kyoto Trap

In the summer of 2013, CGWORLD visited Monolith Soft's Kyoto office and published a detailed report on its staff. The studio had opened in 2011, employed around twenty people, and planned to hire roughly ten more artists.

But these people were not making a secret Baten Kaitos. The Kyoto division helped Nintendo with graphics. Its staff had worked on some of the assets for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Animal Crossing: New Leaf, while the new hires were expected to join the development of major Nintendo series.

The Kyoto division was created primarily to help Nintendo produce graphical assets, not to develop a separate Baten Kaitos game.
CGWORLD / report on the work and recruitment of Monolith Soft's Kyoto Studio / cgworld.jp

Honne later explained the company's structure more precisely. The Tokyo studio worked on both its own games and Nintendo projects. At that time, the Kyoto studio worked only on Nintendo games and mainly handled art tasks and fine detail.

Honne genuinely hoped that the Kyoto division might one day create a game of its own. But he was describing a future ambition, not an existing secret project.

The convincing theory gradually fell apart. The Kyoto studio had not been opened for a new Baten Kaitos: its staff assisted Nintendo, while Honne's illustrations demonstrated Monolith Soft's artistic standards and attracted new designers.

Honne himself gradually stepped away from directing games of his own. He began supervising work on Nintendo projects and supporting artists within Monolith Soft. What exactly Honne meant by “secret work” remains unknown. There is no reliable evidence connecting it to Baten Kaitos.

This is the central paradox of the entire story. When Baten Kaitos III really existed, the public knew nothing about it. By the time fans began looking for traces of it, the project had already been sitting in the archives for years.

Even a cancelled project, however, did not mean that the series itself had disappeared forever.

A Return Without a Third Game

After Baten Kaitos II, Monolith Soft moved on to Disaster: Day of Crisis, Soma Bringer, and Xenoblade Chronicles. tri-Crescendo continued working on both its own and collaborative projects. For many years, Bandai Namco barely mentioned the series.

Baten Kaitos characters or music occasionally appeared in other games, and Honne said that he would like to return to this world. A new instalment, however, would require several parties to reach an agreement once again. Monolith Soft's interest alone was not enough: the rights and old materials remained with Bandai Namco.

The situation changed in 2023 with the release of Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster for Nintendo Switch. For the first time, both games were collected in a single edition, and Baten Kaitos Origins officially reached Europe. The collection was also released for PC in 2024.

The developers increased the resolution of the characters and interface, added speed-up options, automatic battles, and the ability to disable random encounters. The painted backgrounds, however, had aged particularly well over the course of twenty years. Honne admitted that he would like to see a full remake himself, while Kojima noted that the two-dimensional scenery still looked beautiful.

Thanks to their two-dimensional foundation, scenes like this retained the character of the original even after the resolution was increased.
Bandai Namco Entertainment / Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster / official game website

The remaster brought Baten Kaitos back to the market, but it was not the first step towards a sequel. Before release, remaster producer Koji Nakajima said directly that there were currently no plans for a new game.

All that remains of Baten Kaitos III, therefore, is the material prepared during pre-production. It should include drawings of the seabed, the planet's surface, and other places the developers intended to show in the new game.

Epilogue

The public learned about Baten Kaitos III in reverse order. Fans first mistook Monolith Soft's job listings, the opening of the Kyoto studio, and Honne's new illustrations for signs of a sequel. Only many years later did it become clear that work on the real third game had begun soon after the release of Baten Kaitos II.

The developers planned to expand the world of the series and send the player not only to the floating islands, but also to the planet's surface and the seabed. The project was cancelled during pre-production, however, before it could even be announced.

The remaster of the first two games brought Baten Kaitos to modern players, but the sequel remains an unrealised idea. Perhaps Bandai Namco will one day at least reveal the surviving concepts and let people see the world the developers never had a chance to build.