Panzer Dragoon Saga - What Happened?

we've covered many a game movie and etc here on what happened but we haven't tackled anything quite like the story that we'll be discussing today there's a distinct lack of last-minute engine switches a meddling publisher or particular someone at the fulcrum point of all the troubles instead we'll be talking about one of the greatest most innovative and most ambitious rpgs ever made that simply came out at the wrong time and at the wrong place or console this is the story of panzer dragoon saga a game that quite simply was too beautiful for this world it's 1995 and sega has just launched its first expedition into outer space ultimately targeting the planet saturn which many feel was a massive mistake in retrospect but its initial launch in 95 went reasonably well they had flashy ports of virtual fighter in daytona usa a novel platformer in clockwork knight and most importantly for this story panzer dragoon yes it was a rail shooter for all intents and purposes but was the brainchild of young up-and-coming designer yukio futatsugi who once had aspirations to be a filmmaker he and the team he led dubbed andromeda were able to squeeze a lot of impressive 3d performance out of the saturn as well as work in some clever effects that gave the game an unmistakable ethereal quality while rail shooters tend to provide basic fun dragoon had an elegant and even emotive tone to it with its synergistic marriage between action and music as well as hinting at a mysterious civilization you only ever got glimpses of this world as you flew by on dragon back so it definitely left a lot of things to the imagination of the player thankfully team andromeda had a hit on their hands and dragoon wound up being an early showpiece for the saturn but like many other games where shooting was done via rails it was all but too brief and didn't have many incentives for multiple playthroughs still though sega of japan was pleased with the game's reception and early sales and thus the team was set to expand with two titles being greenlit and worked on at the same time one a traditional sequel and the other an entirely different beast altogether panzer dragoon 2's way featured better graphics branching past customizable dragons and even had unlockables and secrets to entice fans to replay it the core team members were largely those that worked on the first game and since it was a straightforward sequel it let futatsugi concentrate on the much bigger project panzer dragoon saga or enzo panzer dragoon rpg in japan this might shock you given that title but sago was designed to be a full-blown rpg set in the dragoon universe a real-time 3d fully voice acted rpg filled with over an hour of cinematics on the sega saturn in the mid-90s this was just about the most technically an artistically ambitious thing they could have set out to make i mean for the time i suppose making a massive open world fps rts hybrid would have been a bit harder if not impossible given the technology this ambitious plan was because with squares massively hyped rpg final fantasy vii being massively hyped as a big exclusive for saturn rival the playstation the head of sega hayao nakayama felt firing back with their own big rpg was going to be critical in gaining ground so the project would need to be all the things final fantasy wasn't doing but of course with much less of a budget and with a team that had never made an rpg before now while all of this was certainly a noble goal it would lead to one of the most arduous development cycles of the 1990s so much so that in 2018 futetsugi was quoted sane even now when i run into problems i think well at least this isn't as hard as when we were developing panzer dragoon saga a lot of new info about the game's long road to completion comes from an article at the ringer written by ben lindbergh who spoke with former members of team andromeda who had swelled to over 40 plus and had worked almost around the clock for three years straight on the game this was not typical in the 90s as most development teams usually ranged in the average of about a dozen to two dozen for a big 3d project that was however what sega felt needed to happen in order to produce a dazzling game on their first 3d system and to hopefully push some consoles out the door their previous gambles the sega cd and 32x let's just say didn't pan out so they were desperate for a hit that would finally move some hardware this importance was also doubly so because many classic sega mascots and franchises made popular on the genesis mega drive wound up missing the trip to planet saturn for various reasons that usually always amount to sega being sega there was no sonic altered beasts streets of rage echo and of course no experts [Music] therefore they were very keen to foster new franchises instead although how successful they were remains pretty definitively not very the idea of expanding the universe futetsugi had created with an rpg specifically came from his producer and boss yoji ishi and while everyone was on board they all soon came to a realization no one had ever attempted something like this before while square were still dropping polygonal characters onto static 2d backgrounds and relying solely on text for their story team andromeda set out to create backgrounds props characters dragons just everything in full 3d which was nothing short of crazy on the saturn which was always designed to handle scaling sprites and 2d art a little more smoothly so everything they were attempting here was nothing short of trailblazing from a design point of view and then extended to the presentation as well saga would be entirely voiced in japanese and have a smattering of cutscenes that featured the constructed language panzerese dave and martin dragoon one and two featured it as well but the team felt its inclusion here was essential to keep things authentic and unique 90 minutes of pre-rendered cgi cutscenes would also be produced to flesh out the story which was again incredibly ambitious when compared to other games at the time which typically offered brief snippets intros endings stuff like that while team andromeda had produced some for the previous two games an hour and a half was a huge increase in the workload all of these aspects were things that final fantasy wouldn't even attempt until almost four years later and on a new generation of hardware it's no surprise that saga which was scheduled for 1997 was further delayed into 1998. unfortunately this decision was also something that would go on to be a death blow not just for the project but the team itself the idea of a big rpg being completed in just three years nowadays seems scoffable at best but in the 90s three plus years spent on only one title was an ice age and during said ice age sega upper management began to realize that the saturn's sales outlook wasn't getting any better but rather much much worse competition from nintendo and especially sony was fierce and the original high price point of sega's machine and lack of any true marquee titles sought vastly underperform when compared to the n64 and the mighty playstation single ballen for team andromeda though they just focused on making the best game they could and since no one had ever attempted to make an rpg in this style before everything needed to be made from scratch a fully 3d rpg with beautiful visuals that kind of game hardly existed anywhere in the world which meant that no matter what aspect of the game we worked on we had the challenge of making it entirely from whole cloth said futsugi in the ringer interview they couldn't use any technology or code elsewhere from within sega's libraries or from any other teams as they were figuring things out as they went along with no real templates to work off of and with the team having no experience working within rpg conventions they decided to cut out a lot of the superfluous mechanics and bloat there was certainly a cast of characters in panzer dragoon saga but you only ever controlled two mercenary edge and a wild dragon which befriends him while edge could attack enemies he could also call his dragon down to swoop overhead to doll out special attacks and they could do as many actions in whatever order they wanted as long as their gauge still had some panzer juice in it this led to a very free-form fighting system no no not that one that again did away with the turn-based nature seen in pretty much every other rpg on the market the main plot was basic but focused edge takes it upon himself to save a mysterious kidnapped girl by the name of enzyl who seemed to have origins dating back to ancient times since party management was not really a thing you only ever had to worry about the two characters and let team andromeda pay special attention to all those other aspects i outlined earlier so there was a less cluttered cast of characters very little in the way of menu navigation and completely cut out the slow starts which are indicative of a lot of rpgs instead of waking up in a forest and killing level 1 rats for a few hours until you get to the first town you're almost instantly taking on giant monsters and doing dungeon plunging with your dragon as soon as control is given to the player they also made the conscious decision to cut out things like fetch quests and pretty much eliminate the need to grind however this all leads back to those long hours i mentioned before and sega management and futsugi himself had no experience in leading the team as large as they had working on saga when the core team assigned to zwei had finished up they then joined the new employees that had started work on saga the year previous unfortunately since that new staff had no experience working on any dragoons it inevitably led to conflicts among the ranks sega upper management then put pressure on futsugi to continually rally the troops to keep them on track with deadlines even if it meant being a bit demanding i was exhausted the team was exhausted and since there were a lot of people on the team to deal with the massive volume of work and at the time there wasn't as much managerial know-how for handling large projects there was a lot of pressure to domineer over the staff i remember being pretty rough on them too as the months dragged on team andromeda had to face more personal tragedies in the lead up to launch two staff members one of them holding a senior position passed away suddenly one death via a motorcycle accident and another via suicide while these deaths obviously affected the game they left the lasting effect on the remaining staff and fututsugi even more the passing of our staff members produced a huge shock in all of us one of the persons who died had a close relationship with me so their loss affected me for a long time now over on the other side of the pacific sega of america had the added challenge of translating panzer dragoon for their side of the globe which wasn't exactly easy sega's overall decline in the late 1990s left this once prominent part of the company the american one completely gutted going from over 2 000 employees to just 200. this left many franchises which were popular in the west out in the cold which we've covered once or twice on this channel before that was up to just two people to localize the game and unfortunately the saturn was doing far far worse than the rest of the world when compared to japan final fantasy vii stellar success selling over 10 million copies worldwide was enough for sega to start already planning their next console to try to combat the rise of sony's dominance again something i've covered before chris lucic and matt underwood were those two sega of america employees and quickly became enraptured with the builds of saga that were coming in astounded at the work team andromeda were putting in therefore they tried their absolute best to adapt it for western audiences knowing full well that by the time the game actually released very few people would ever even play it we worked every night until 4 am to get it all done i actually had severe bronchitis on the last day it was in test and i was sent home i wanted to be there for the end but i was coughing up blood literally i was trying to tell people no i'm good such was the fervor the belief that panzer dragoon saga was something special something truly groundbreaking and worthy of praise but the problem was that sega was already moving on diverting resources and budget to the then upcoming dreamcast which as an overall move for the company was smart but it had the unfortunate side effect of leaving any remaining saturn projects by the wayside while disagreements and friction between the old and new staff members continued up until the japanese launch of the game and chris and matt burning the midnight oil to get the localized version done it fortunately wasn't all for naught upon its release panzer dragoon saga garnered some truly incredible reviews with many outlets saying it was among the best rpgs ever made with some magazines scoring it higher than final fantasy vii now as good as that must have felt to all the people who put their blood sweat and tears into the project it unfortunately didn't translate to sales while the saturn's waning popularity was certainly a factor the available shelf space in toy and electronics stores was a shadow of what it used to enjoy the massive switch in genre from rail shooter to rpg probably confused a number of gamers as well imagine if say a new virtua cop suddenly shifted to an rpg there would definitely need to be a period of acclimatization in japan enzel panzer dragoon rpg shifted somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand copies sales data from this time is notoriously hard to pin down but numbers in the rest of the world were far more dismal roughly 25 000 copies were ever even produced for north america as saturn game manufacturing was on its way out complicating matters was the fact that to fit in all that cgi and speech saga was a four-disc game so the decision to limit the amount of copies produced was probably also a financial one and if that doesn't depress you then this certainly will europe only ever received 1 000 copies making it one of the rarest games in that region while not expressly due to the low sales and certainly not due to the quality of the product sega still disbanded team andromeda soon after folding much of them into smile bit as more of a belt tightening measure sega did a lot of restructuring around this time in order to put as much money and resources into the dreamcast's upcoming debut as they could and andromeda was one of those teams sacrificed for that dream fortunately however the world of panzer dragoon didn't stop there a smile bit then produced the stellar and much more traditional sequel panzer dragoon order for the xbox in 2002 which can still be played on modern xbox consoles today it even includes a rock-solid port of the game that started at all but sadly nose way too and even more sadly no saga not long after order's release futsugi moved on to konami then microsoft where he helped shape the world of phantom dust until he founded grounding inc in 2007. while his first title the codenamed project draco was cancelled for the xbox 360 and moved over to the xbox one and was re-dubbed to crimson dragon which was clearly meant to invoke the panzer titles of old while an admirable attempt it didn't exactly win over many critics and i can't fathom why while futatsugi had hoped the game would be a big enough success to inspire sequels that obviously didn't pan out which was a shame because he had plans to spin it off into an rpg as well his most recent project is collaborating with sweary 65 on the good life which seems to be on track for release in 2021 as for the panzer dragoon remake well sega commissioned relatively unknown developer megapixel to head it up and while it was a switch exclusive for a time it's now releasing across a variety of formats futatsugi however was not involved with its creation unfortunately the takeaway from all of this is that while some panzer dragoon games have been preserved sega doesn't really acknowledge the saturn era games all that much digitally or otherwise nowadays factory sealed copies of saga retail for thousands of dollars and non-complete versions usually in the hundreds the saturn is also hard to emulate accurately so no matter how you slice it experiencing panzer dragoon's sublime and unique foray into the realm of the rpg is notoriously difficult in the hellscape of now while on that subject it's been rumored but never confirmed that sega simply lost the source code during the closure of team andromeda and its big 90s reshuffling now while this rumor certainly has some credence other assets and materials for other franchises were indeed lost and or discarded futetsugi himself has said he doesn't know the whole truth of it and who knows maybe someone will find the source code laying around on a cd somewhere this is one of those rare stories where the development while certainly tough and filled with moments of doubt and uncertainty still persevered and resulted in an incredible product but due to factors simply outside the developer's control never found a significant audience fututsugi recalls i wanted to create something with permanence something that would remain in the hearts of the group of people i made the game for something for those who were starving for a new experience something that could stay fresh and unique 10 years after its release something that doesn't look like any other game and in that he very much succeeded even if very few people ever got to experience it if you know of any other tragically tragic tales of developmental tragedy let me know in the comments below soar on over to my twitter and feel free to check out the new line of what happened focus merch i just launched link in the description below and if you want to nominate the subject of your choosing for me to hoist onto our stage become a big boss down at the flophouse vip patreon see you next time and thanks for [Music] watching you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 174,385

Rating: 4.9620457 out of 5

Keywords: What Happened, Wha happun, Video Game Documentaries, Matt McMuscles, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Sega

Id: -eKP5t1KGeM

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/bxbomber]

I remember buying Saga when I was in hs, rushing home to play it only to realize they gave two disc three in the I'm the copy I bought.

Ended up returning it for shining force 3.

Wish Sega would remaster both those games.

[u/Psohl14]

Panzer Dragoon was my first video game ever, and the series will always hold a very special place in my heart. Which is to say my perspective is biased.

My parents bought me Zwei (which rhymes with eye, not way, ffs. Zwei is the German word for 2) when I was second grade, but I didn’t beg them to get my a copy of Saga until I was almost in high school.

Even to this day it remains the crown jewel of my game collection. Absolutely one of my favorite games of all time, and everyone who hasn’t played it but enjoys RPGs from the late 90’s / early 2000s should try it (assuming they can find a way to do so).

Really hope this series gets revived one day. I thought the remake was seriously disappointing but I still bought it on Switch and Steam just to show whoever at Sega is watching that there’s still some demand for the series.

Also the female lead’s name pronounced Ah-zel, not An-sel

[u/ghost_406]

I’ve always loved panzer dragoon. I bought it on my sets Saturn back in the day. Haven’t played the remake yet.

[u/onex7805]

I searched this game on YouTube and most videos related to this game hovers around mere 500 to thousand views. There is barely any emulation video of this game. It is shame since it looks interesting.

[u/shinbreaker]

So I got my hands on PDS in a very unconventional way. I bought my Saturn back around 2002. I had always known there were some great RPGs on it, but it wasn't until I went to a local game store and saw they had a copy of Shining Force 3 that I realized I needed to get one since that is my favorite series.

I then started looking up at what were the great Saturn games and of course PDS kept coming up over and over again. I then went to another local game store and checked out their Saturn game section and it was the typical meh games every other store still had. I asked the guy behind the counter about PDDS and he just laughed it off and said no one is going to have that on the shelves. He then explained to me how few they were and how he scored multiple copies at a Toys 'r' Us across the street. I was a bit deflated and he asked if I wanted to buy one off of him. I asked how much and he said $80.

Now mind you, this was a time where once a game is used, you're not going to get more than the sticker price for it. So I said let me think about it and I had to really mull it over. I said fuck it because of how rare it was and I really wanted to see what the hell this game was all about. So I bought it off him.

Took the game home, played it, loved it and sadly had to sell it a year later when I needed some cash. But I was able to get $200 for it. I even remember the guy on eBay kind of laughing about how much money I made off him but he really wanted that game so who knows how much he flipped the game for.

[u/PuyoDead]

This game is my "when I won the lottery" story. First, for those that don't know about Funcoland, here's a quick summary: It was a used video game buy/sell/trade shop that specialized in dealing with everything, from Atari 2600 to anything modern. When they first started opening up, they were a goldmine for classic game stuff, since people just treated it like a pawn shop and dumped their kid's stuff there for quick cash.

They also did this cool thing where they had just about every system possible hooked up to TVs all over the store to play whatever game the employees tossed in them that day, or just whatever someone wanted to try first. I just happened to walk in and find Panzer Dragoon Saga playing on the Saturn. I asked if they were even selling something that rare, and they said yeah, for $75. Bought that shit instantly. I still have my copy, and it honestly is one of the best games I've ever played. I really wish more people could experience it.

[u/valgalder]

Still have my original copy I was so lucky to get a month after the game came out. By that time the game was already nearly impossible to find in stores and I one day I happen to be shopping at Electronics Boutique and this guy in the store was trading in a bunch of games. They only were offering him like 12 dollars to trade the game in and I could tell he was unhappy about that. I immediately pulled him aside and told him I was interested and to have him name a price. (Looking back, this alone was just about unheard of for me to do as I was extremely shy and introverted 16 year old) then To my surprise he offered the game to me for $20. It felt like I hit the lottery. He already finished the game and told me he never hangs on to games after he completes them and was happy to pass it on to someone else that would appreciate it. Even back then when the game was still very new, I had a weird feeling this game would be hard to get ahold of.. I definitely never expected how the game would impact me still so many years later. Although the game is short, I loved the pacing, atmosphere, music, and especially the battle system and it never dragged on like so many other RPG's of the time. After I finished the game I proclaimed it to be my favorite RPG of all time. I don't know if I can still really say that, but it is definitely something very special and unique and can't wait to replay it again after many years, like I have been doing with quite a few games from those years that meant a lot to me.