Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, and its prequel Baten Kaitos Origins, are two JRPGs released for the GameCube and developed by none other than Monolith Soft (along with tri-Crescendo).
They’re turn-based RPGs, but instead of traditional combat, they make use of a card-based system in some pretty interesting ways.
We haven’t seen anything more from the series after that, but now it’s come into the spotlight once again thanks to fans discovering that Bandai Namco recently filed trademarks for both games in Europe.
I know, trademarks don’t necessarily mean anything. I used to get excited every time a game I wanted to see revived got its trademark or copyright renewed (like Eternal Darkness), until I finally understood that these renewals happen regularly just so that the company can hold it.
However, what makes this one stand out as potentially significant is that Baten Kaitos Origins never came out in Europe.
So despite never having been released in Europe, it’s now been trademarked there. That makes it feel like maybe, just maybe, they’re planning to do something with Baten Kaitos in the near future.
I enjoyed Baten Kaitos, but I still need to play Origins. Beyond hoping for Baten Kaitos ports or remasters just to make them easier for players to get, though, my thought is that any sort of re-release would make it easier to hope for a new game in the series.
The last time we talked about Baten Kaitos, it was in response to the news that a Baten Kaitos 3 was in development after Origins, but was cancelled. Fans were encouraged to show interest in the series if they’d like it to return, and nothing would show interest better than high sales of a Baten Kaitos re-release.
Monolith Soft has a lot going on right now. There’s good reason to believe they’ll make a new Xenoblade Chronicles game, they have that mysterious fantasy IP on their recruitment page, and they’ve also been contributing to The Legend of Zelda. But as much as I want to see a new Xenoblade and the unknown fantasy game, I can’t help but hope they’ll have Baten Kaitos news in store for us as well.
What do you think? Are these recent trademarks a sign that Baten Kaitos will return?
