Bandai Namco and developer ILCA have announced One Piece Odyssey, a new JRPG set in (of course) the One Piece universe. It'll be a major core title as opposed to a mobile RPG and will be coming to PC and consoles sometime this year.
What do we know about this new One Piece RPG?
Unlike the musou beat-'em-up One Piece Pirate Warriors 4, One Piece Odyssey will be a fully-fledged console and PC RPG. Here's the setup: Luffy and the Straw Hats are swallowed by a massive storm while sailing, finding themselves subsequently washed up on a mysterious island. They must discover where they are and why they're there, all the while conversing with the locals and battling monsters. This'll be a totally original story, so it's not an adaptation of any specific manga or anime storyline. You can check out the official announcement trailer, which has more than a touch of Dragon Quest about it, right here.
In a promotional interview, One Piece Odyssey producer Katsuaki Tsuzuki says the goal is to deliver a game for both One Piece fans and JRPG enthusiasts. He says the motivation to work with ILCA came about because they're RPG veterans who know their way around a "full-blown RPG", as he puts it. He's not wrong; ILCA is the team that worked on the Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes, and they've also done support work on projects like Dragon Quest XI and Yakuza 0. Tsuzuki says that One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda assisted the team by creating artwork for the characters and monsters in the game, too.
What will the One Piece Odyssey gameplay be like?
While we don't know a lot about the game right now, we can reasonably assume it'll be a full-on JRPG as opposed to the mobile games that are often created as tie-ins for anime (looking at you, Seven Deadly Sins). Some snippets of gameplay in the producer interview with Tsuzuki show off the exploration, traversal, and puzzle mechanics, although we didn't get a look at the combat as such. However, the game's official website promises "quests and dungeons...with an authentic One Piece twist". It sounds like you'll be at home if you're a JRPG fan.
Naturally, we'll bring you more on One Piece Odyssey as we get it. In the meantime, be sure to stay tuned to the official website for more information, as well as the One Piece Twitter page. One Piece Odyssey is currently slated to launch for PC, PlayStation consoles, and Xbox Series X|S (it doesn't seem to be coming to Xbox One) sometime this year. There's no word yet on a Nintendo Switch release, but one thing's for sure: this one almost certainly isn't going to make its way to mobile devices anytime soon.
