Nintendo Announces The Last Story

Well, Mistwalker promised their new big RPG would finally be announced this year, and here it is, much sooner than I anticipated.

The revolutionary action-RPG that Sakaguchi has been talking about on his blog consistently for the last year or so has finally been revealed to be a project for Nintendo. Titled The Last Story, the game is currently planned for an unspecific release on the Wii sometime this year in Japan.

Like Xenoblade, The Last Story has no real media or details worth speaking of at the moment, other than a teaser site up on the official Nintendo site. And, like Xenoblade, the game's site features little beyond a logo and some background music - though both are admittedly very nice.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this announcement. On one hand, I couldn't be more pleased to see that the game is a console title instead of a handheld one. On the other, I bought my 360 partially to play Mistwalker's first two games, and still prefer to play my 360. I also don't particularly love motion controls (which every Wii game has the possibility of possessing). Further, I am actually quite surprised to see Nintendo funding a Mistwalker game after the dreadfully disappointing sales of Archaic Sealed Heat.

But, hey, I'm still excited to see what it's all about, and I'm quite impressed with Nintendo of Japan's efforts to put more RPGs on their console.

As a bit of bad news, however, Nintendo's most recent finacial report only lists The Last Story for Japanese release, and is completely absent on North America and Europe's release forecast. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it would have been more reassuring to know The Last Story won't meet the same Japan-only fate that ASH met.

Thoughts?

[The Last Story Official Japanese Site]