Trails In the Sky Remake’s devs are being told the game looks “unlike Falcom in a good way” and they don’t know how they’re supposed to feel about that 

Nihon Falcom is currently developing The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st, a full 3D remake of the first ever title in the long-running Trails series. Commemorating the franchise’s 20-year-anniversary, the revamped RPG is scheduled to launch worldwide in 2025 for the Nintendo Switch.   

Not long after the remake and its beautiful trailer were made public, Nihon Falcom’s CEO Toshihiro Kondo made a public comment assuring fans that the game is being developed 100% in-house. This was apparently prompted by people speculating that the bright and bubbly anime-style graphics might have been outsourced to another company. 

Commenting further on the topic in a recent interview with Dengeki Online, Kondo mentioned that, “We’ve received a large number of comments along the lines of, “The graphics are unlike Falcom in a good way,” and we’re not really sure if we should take it as a good thing or a bad thing (laughs).” 

Kondo also gave some insight into why the graphical style looks so different in The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st. “During the development process, we did away with our usual method of direction, and gave each of our designers a single instruction – to design things in a way that would make Estelle’s energy and the scenic beauty of Liberl Kingdom pop right through the screen. As I watched them work, I noticed how vibrant the colors and images looked even when viewed from a distance. The trailer we put out was the result of doing things this way.”

Nihon Falcom’s president says that the team purposely went for an atmosphere that feels a bit different from the usual Trails series look. He hopes that The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st will become an attractive and easy-to-pick up entry into both the series and the RPG genre as a whole. 

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1^st is scheduled to launch in 2025 for the Nintendo Switch. Other platforms and Western publishers are TBD, according to Gematsu.