The Last Story has been making Western gamers jealous for a long time, as we are constantly teased by Mistwalker's latest RPG effort and have been given no confirmation of a release outside of Japan. Well, Nintendo of America has finally addressed the issue, and at first glance, the news is terrible.
“We have no plans at present,” said a Nintendo rep, when asked by VG247. Well, this is confirmation that the game is never coming to the West, right? According to overreacting bloggers, this is proof that the game will never get localized despite the fact that "at present" comments are about as insightful as a publisher not commenting at all.
Destructoid, however, was able to grab its own statement from the developer itself, Mistwalker. When I asked the studio if we were ever getting a Western confirmation, I was told: "Thank you for your concern. More info to come."
It's about as vague as NOA's statement, but one that's altogether far more hopeful. Mistwalker hasn't shot the idea down, which leads me to believe that the studio at least wants the game over here, and if Nintendo doesn't do it, I'm sure there's a Western publisher that can get the rights to do so.
I would advise gamers not to throw in the towel just yet. NOA's statement doesn't really mean anything, so the overreaction at this time strikes me as silly. After all, David Jaffe said he wasn't making Twisted Metal.
Contest:
8:00 AM on 01.13.2011 | 
...also, if I asked really nicely, would Destructoid be able to acquire similar news or even 'its own statement from the developer itself' from Monolith about Xenoblade? Pretty please?
Cause I'm actually kind of much more excited for that than Last Story, even though this seems great as well. Last Story just lacks such qualities as 'taking place on top of two giant gods' and 'developed by the guys who did the vastly underappreciated Baten Kaitos'
Maybe an unfair nod to my bias, but shafting the Western audience is a Nintendo signature move that goes back to my NES/SNES days. Again though, fairly there's no confirmation that the title isn't coming over yet.
Soma Bringer is Monolith Soft's game and they're an internal Nintendo team these days, so if that's finally coming over, then Xenoblade and something like The Last Story aren't out of the realm of possibility.
Right now, all eyes are on 3DS and DS it seems. I expect it to stay that way for a bit, though Nintendo probably has to come clean about Q2 and Q3 releases soon, latter half of Q3 and Q4 are always E3 material.
I REALLY HOPE THATS A GIRL
Anyway, release announcements don't happen over e-mail to dodgy outlets, hence VG247 received the same response any random fan email would, from an anonymus rep at that, which probably amounted to a customer support person or something...
Also, Mistwalker has been saying this "more to come" thing a while now and until very, very recently (around the time of the recent Japanese conference, via twitter, by Sakaguchi himself) so there was no need to contact them again.
Shame people don't discuss the game (hey, there was a new five minute trailer and a tv commercial released, how about posting that instead?) and just make every topic about it into "zomg no Western release" with nothing to base that on, as if it's not common for RPGs to take a year or so to be localised, and this game's not even out in Japan just yet.
please don't fuck this up like you did with Fatal Frame 4
Hope im wrong! i'd love a new decent budget, classic console jrpg.
I still have hope though, think about Fragile Dreams- that game didnt come out in US & Europe til over a year after the Japanese release. The point is, it eventually got released here as niche as it was.
Like, on one hand, it makes no sense for them not to translate, because the game would *easily* sell enough copies to make back the translation budget. But so would have Fatal Frame 4, and so would have Xenoblade. Why weren't those two published? No idea. Maybe NoA really wants to fight being a Japanese console.
I'll be happier than anyone if they announce a release date, but I'm not holding my breath.
Fucking hilarious that you condemn me for "not knowing" something, and then say something like that, even though I posted those videos yesterday AND linked to the post containing the videos in THIS article.
Methinks you need to watch what you criticize people on lest you get more egg on your face in future.
If an American publisher wants this game in place of NOA, they can most likely get it.
The reason Fatal Frame 4 never came over here is because of a dispute between Tecmo and Nintendo.
Essentially, FF4 had some major bugs in the final product and Nintendo wanted Tecmo to fix them. Tecmo was willing to do so, but they wanted to be paid for working on those fixes. Nintendo, on the other hand, wanted Tecmo to fix what should never have been broken in the first place, and thus they didn't want to pay any more to Tecmo than what they already had (Nintendo was the publisher).
The end result? A stalemate.
@Jim Sterling
Ideally, third-parties like Atlus or XSEED would be able to get their hands on content that companies like Nintendo don't want to risk localizing. In reality, it's verrrrrrrrry rare that a Nintendo-funded game gets released by somebody besides Nintendo. I believe the last time it happened was when Atlus published the Nintendo-published Cubivore back in 2002.
I could be wrong, but NOA is so very random with what it picks for publishing.
I remember one or 2 concept art pieces that had loads of colour and looked great. I wasn't expecting it on that scale but not the compete opposite either.
Though I could be completely wrong and that it's only of what we've seen so far. Hopefully.