You may remember Phantom Dust as one of Xbox’s more unique exclusives, or as an obscure announcement during E3 2014. Whatever the case, a new Phantom Dust is confirmed to be coming to Xbox One, but little is known about it.
More information was shed on what Phantom Dust is all about during Inner Circle’s latest podcast, where it had a chance to speak to Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios Ken Lobb. Based on what he shared, Phantom Dust sounds equally as one-of-a-kind as its predecessor. It also fills a vital role in the Xbox One’s exclusive library by hitting a flavor that its core line-up is missing.
Among Lobb’s explanations of what Phantom Dust actually is, he made clear what genre it falls under by saying “it’s a JRPG”. Made better, its single-player journey will be over 30 hours in length.
A lot of time was spent emphasizing that the original Phantom Dust and its Xbox One successor are based heavily in strategy, with Lobb saying it’s similar to a “very deep Power Stone”. Cards can be collected during the lengthy single-player journey, and then used to compete with others online in PvP battles. Multiplayer is intended to keep players interested in the long-term, while single-player aims to be compelling to ensure that the laws of the game are learned, and the interest of players is earned.
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Lobb shared that the original Phantom Dust had several shortcomings that resulted from conflicts within the development team’s leadership. These issues are being directly addressed in the upcoming game, which he preferred to call a “re-imagining” rather than a reboot.
Lobb was hesitant to commit to a release window due to how Microsoft plans release strategies further along in development, and Phantom Dust still has a lot of work to be done. Nonetheless, he said that “Phantom Dust may or may not be in 2015″. If not, it could hit early 2016.
Below you can see the Phantom Dust Xbox One announcement trailer.
