The director of the Baten Kaitos series revealed that the game's publisher, Bandai Namco, was originally against using the game's title before being published. This past June, it was announced that these two classic GameCube RPGs will be hitting the Switch later this September, finally bringing the two cult classics onto Nintendo's current console in a single remastered package. It promises to have a number of quality-of-life improvements such as a cutscene skip function, auto-save, and other things that will make the games accessible for new players.The Baten Kaitos games were originally developed by Monolith Soft and tri-Crescendo, with Namco (before its merger with Bandai) publishing the duology as exclusives for the GameCube. While they were beloved critically, the series didn't receive much commercial success. This led to the games becoming a series of cult classics, though the re-release on the Switch will allow players to get another chance to play these overlooked JRPGs. With the remasters only a few months away, the director of the games has revealed that Namco was originally against using the "Baten Kaitos" name.Baten Kaitos director Yasuyuki Honne shared this tidbit over Twitter, where he commented on how the game's name received a bit of opposition from Namco. In a translation of his tweets (courtesy of Nintendo Everything), he stated that he was the one who originally came up with the game's title, but he got pushback from Namco higher-ups to change it. Despite the backlash over the name, it stuck around for the duology.
Honne also went into some details about Baten Kaitos' development, including how the game's name came to be. According to the director, the name originally came from when they were first naming the airship. From there, the game's terminology and in-universe aspects grew from the name of that airship, which was expanded further through the story's writer. He also noted that using the names of constellations also allowed for an easier localization process.
Despite the excitement for the Baten Kaitos port to Switch, there are also some fans that have concerns about its release. More specifically, some of the game's specifications, where it is locked to 30 FPS instead of being boosted to 60, or the omission of an English dub for the Baten Kaitos remasters. Another concern was raised about how Bandai Namco would be handling this release, as the Tales of Symphonia remaster came under a lot of fire for being generally unpolished, with some fans worried that this same lack of care may be seen with Baten Kaitos.
Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster launches September 19, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Nintendo Everything
