It's difficult to please everyone, especially when you're releasing a new game in a long-running franchise. Do you appease the diehard fan, or reach out to new audiences? Is it even possible to translate and make a domestic phenomenon accessible while retaining the depth and breadth that made local fans fall in love with it in the first place?
This was the decade-long challenge facing Cygames when they sought to expand the world of their skyfaring mobile RPG Granblue Fantasy to consoles. At first entrusting the task to Platinum Games, the struggle to find this answer led the company to restart development in-house, subjecting the project to heavy delays in an effort to bring the baby that transformed their company into one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates in Japan to a wider audience. As the team plugged away in search for an answer, they loaned out the IP to fighting game veterans Arc System Works.
