Monolith Soft’s recruitment for new RPG raises questions about what happened to a previously teased action IP 

Xenosaga and Xenoblade Chronicles developer Monolith Soft have announced that they are hiring development staff for a new title. The announcement has been greeted with excitement, but it has also reminded fans of a past “upcoming title” that was teased in a similar fashion back in 2017, but not heard of afterwards.  

Monolith Soft’s latest recruitment campaign is for a brand-new RPG directed by one of the company’s executives Tetsuya Takahashi. Back in his Square days, Takahashi worked on titles such as Chrono Trigger and Xenogears. Then, at Monolith Soft, he went on to develop the Xenosaga and Xenoblade Chronicles franchises.  

Not much is known about his upcoming new RPG, but Takahashi’s message on the recruitment page suggests that it will be bolder in the challenges it takes compared to past Monolith Soft titles. The developer is looking to hire 2D and 3D artists, level designers, map development engineers and even an assistant director. 

However, back in August 2017, Monolith Soft had similarly advertised that they were recruiting for a new action game. The project had been described as “ambitious” and quite different from the typical games associated with Monolith Soft’s brand. At the time, the developer had even revealed a few pieces of concept art, depicting a female knight and fantasy environments. There were no updates on the project in the following years, and the original recruitment page has since been deleted. 

Now that Monolith Soft is hiring for a new game, fans are wondering what happened to this past announcement. While it’s not entirely impossible that the two are connected, the recently teased title does not use the previous visuals (or any visuals, at this moment). In addition, with the recruitment page from 2017 being removed from the developer’s website, some suggest that the project may have been cancelled before getting to see the light of day.