Chris Kohler from Kotaku has published a new article titled How Panzer Dragoon Defined The Sega Saturn Era which looks at how the series and the Saturn hardware went hand-in-hand. Although repeating much information from the GDC talk, it’s still an interesting read for those of us who like to learn about the development of the Saturn Panzer Dragoon games. In particular, Yukio Futatsugi wanted to make a game that specifically didn’t use pre-rendered backgrounds (in contrast to Panzer Dragoon Saga’s competitor, Final Fantasy VII):
Futatsugi said that the design of Panzer Dragoon Saga wasn’t specifically a reaction to Final Fantasy VII, but rather, the realization of a challenge that he already had wanted to tackle: making a role-playing game using only 3D graphics, with no 2D sprites or pre-rendered backgrounds. “I really hate rendered graphics. It just doesn’t feel consistent,” he said. “But if you make everything in 3D, whether you’re looking at the movies or playing the game, everything fits together in a good way.”
In the GDC Q&A, Futatsugi hinted that the missing source code for Panzer Dragoon Saga may have been discovered somewhere, at some point. In this new Kotaku article, Futatsugi has expressed interest “something new” happening with the Panzer Dragoon series, particularly if the upcoming remakes of Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon II Zwei sell well. “I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me considering approaching Sega for the license to Panzer Dragoon.” Of course, if he does eventually get to make another Panzer Dragoon game - either a remake of Saga or a brand new adventure - it would likely be developed using a modern game engine.