Falcom is one of the most influential and long-standing Japanese developers out there. Pioneering the action RPG space with the Ys series, it’s recently become more well-known for its continent-spanning epic turn-based series, Trails.
On 15th January 2026, the series’ 13th entry, Trails Beyond the Horizon, will be launching on Switch and Switch 2 in the West. And, as a huge fan of the franchise, it’s probably the most excited I’ve been for a new game from Falcom in some time. Daybreak’s more-thoughtful and modern threads have really connected with me, and Van has become one of my favourite RPG protagonists in recent memory.
But, with Beyond the Horizon, we have another Cold Steel IV and Trails into Reverie situation on our hands — a huge gathering of characters across the franchise all impacted by one big event. It really feels like the culmination of this gigantic series, and with the end steadily approaching, I was eager to reflect and look back with Falcom President and series producer Toshihiro Kondo.
What starts off as a chat about the newest game turned into a peek behind 20 years of history, from technological advancements (both narratively and in the world), the influence of real-world politics, and the potential of the Switch 2 for the series going forward. It’s a long one, so grab a cup of coffee and settle in!
Note: There are a few spoilers about Trails into Reverie here, so if you haven’t played that game or don’t know the identity of a certain character yet, you might want to wait before diving in!
Nintendo Life (Alana Hagues): Let’s start with something very simple – can you set the scene for Trails Beyond the Horizon? How does it tie in with Van’s story and what can fans expect on a general level?
Toshihiro Kondo, President of Falcom: For Trails Beyond the Horizon, it’s essentially a sequel to Trails through Daybreak II, and takes place directly after it. While Daybreak 1 and 2 dealt with issues that were occurring within the Republic of Calvard, this time the scope broadens to not only include what’s happening in Calvard, but also to the continent itself. So the series finally opens up into these mysteries that have been at the core of what the continent is and what this world is overall.
One of our main characters is Van still. Van will continue his work as a Spriggan, handling the things that he’s done. And what he’s acting upon is due to a lot of the events and connections that he made throughout the course of Daybreak 1 and 2. Whether that be connections in the government or connections in the Ouroboros Society, all of these people Van met are now going to come into play here as he looks to see what’s going on with this event that’s going to be happening in the course of this game in Calvard.
This event is a space program, which has been built up as a national project, and pretty much all of the events of this game have to do with what’s going on with this space project. Without spoiling anything, we’ve been adding some teasers in there, that’s kind of what’s going on with this game.
One of the big focuses for the series is the technological advancements across the games — now seems like a good time to ask, why space travel now? What do you think the importance is in the canon at this point? It’s such a big leap from where we were 20 years ago to now.
That’s a great question! And the answer to that is precisely what Trails Beyond the Horizon is all about. Why has technology advanced so much?
As you mentioned, we’re 20 years out from the release of Trails in the Sky (in Japan, at least), but if you look at the actual in-game timeline from Sky and what’s happening now in Calvard, that’s less than 10 years. It’s a very short span of time. And so that’s a really good observation — how did we go from airships to space?
No. We’ve been planning this all along (laughs).
Another one of the big mysteries of this world is Orbment and the powers that Orbment bestows upon the inhabitants of the world and how the world operates itself. These are also things that you can expect to see touched upon and explored, and begun to be unraveled in Trails Beyond the Horizon. If you look even at Trails in the Sky into Trails from Zero, you’ll notice that technology gets a pretty big bump from those two games. For one thing, you’ve got what amounts to the internet in Crossbell, as well as what we could consider smartphones.
I’m sure a lot of the fans were probably thinking when these games originally were released, ‘oh, well, you’re just hopping on current trends. This is what’s happening in modern society, so this is what you’re using as topics within the game to colour your world.’ No. We’ve been planning this all along (laughs). There’s a lot here that we’ve been thinking about.
It’s been many years since those games originally came out, now we can finally show the fans this has been part of the plan all along, and all of this is a very detailed plan for why technology has progressed as fast as it has
Okay. Now I’m scared. (laughs) So, you touched on something in that this is the first game that’s really “global” – you’ve got Van from Calvard, Rean from Erebonia, and Kevin from the Septian Church, all characters from across Zemuria. Why is the story of the continent now important?
This answer is more from a game development perspective than from the more story-based thrust of your question…
That’s totally fair! (laughs)
In terms of Kevin specifically, he’s part of the church, and his going to Calvard and doing what he does in this game has been flagged ever since his first appearance, and particularly in Sky The 3rd. There’s a lot going on with [the church] and their relationship to the world itself. And so it makes sense that you would have someone there for that.
In terms of Rean, if you look at the end of his story from Cold Steel IV, and then look at one of the ending events in Trails into Reverie, his story also touches upon the heart of what’s going on in this world. Given that Rean’s been confronted with various issues, he’s not the type of person to just ignore things and stay home in Erebonia. He’s going to get involved.
They need to be able to have these different experiences and meet these different people
If the story were to take place solely through Van’s eyes and minutely carry out all of these things that the story is trying to tell, it would be a ridiculously long game. It would end up killing the realism because he’d have to go to so many different places and meet so many different people and meet so many different things.
Choosing the direction we did to be able to tell this story covers a lot of the complexities of the nation of Calvard but also the overarching world as well, it necessitated us to have different routes so we could show all of these things concurrently. And all the more so, it wouldn’t make sense for all the three of the characters to be similar to Van or to be in a situation to do what Van does. They need to be able to have these different experiences and meet these different people and these reasons for doing and going on the routes that they go on.
That’s why the system was chosen of having multiple main characters, to be able to cover as cleanly as possible all of the events in the story that need to be covered and to also offer fresh perspective on the events that are taking place as being seen through the eyes of each different main character as we go through their roots.
Right, and with Kevin in particular, this is the first time he’s been playable since Trails in the Sky the 3rd as you brought up — there are a lot of people who won’t even know who he is, which I feel really bad about because he’s my favourite character (laughs).
So, what is it like revisiting a character like that after so long and putting him in the spotlight in this way?
Good question (laughs) A hint for your answer lies in something that you pointed out, which is that Kevin is a member of the Septian Church. You can’t expect someone who is jumping into Beyond the Horizon (as their first game) to fully grasp this organisation and the world it exists in. But if you are someone who has been playing the series at least for a few entries, you have an understanding of what the Septian Church is, at least on a superficial level. By having at least a superficial level of knowledge, that automatically places Kevin at a certain position in the players mind and their expectations.
The thing about Kevin is that at first glance he seems like a happy-go-lucky priest out there to do good and change the world for the better, but he has this very dark side to him too. These are things which we as developers paid careful attention to to kind of introduce or reintroduce to people throughout the course of the game.
For example, the group that Kevin works with in his story path is with Rufus from Cold Steel (and Reverie). And even though Kevin is a very senior member of the church who has authority and dignity and all these other things, he kind of gets given the runaround a lot by the people that he’s dealt with. It’s a really interesting balance between this dignity that he should have as a high member of a priest and what these characters are saying to him or making him do.
These are things that we’re paying attention to when reviving this character
On the flip side, a lot of the interactions are written in a way, whether it be with Kevin and these characters or Kevin with other characters, that shows characters who this man is. Even though he has this very happy light side to him, there’s also times when certain scenes necessitate him to have more of that darkness that we know that he has, that really serious side that occasionally has to get into given his role. These are things that we’re paying attention to when reviving this character after he’s not really been present in the series for so long (since Azure).
So, to kind of re-encapsulate that into something simple is first,to have players understand who the character is because of his role within the organisation that has already been introduced. And then second, to show through the interactions that he has with the other characters that he deals with in the game, these two sides of him as a character.
There are so many characters at this point — how do you keep track of all of those personality changes and balance all of that together? Some we haven’t seen for a long time, others are very new so we’re still getting used to them. What’s it like threading all of that together?
It kind of comes down to the characters we want to show and the characters we want to introduce players to. How that works from a process standpoint is you create a character, particularly a main character, and then you think about that character in contrast to who they’re paired with in their story.
To use Rean as an example; you’ve got a young man of few words, he’s got this dark past about him, but he’s also very serious. And he very much wants to get this job done, whatever that might be. And so around him, what kind of characters would you expect to see? How can they play off him? Are they different from him? How can they show these aspects of him that we’ve discussed? When creating these characters, it’s about how they can play off one another and how they’re different from one another, that they get formed and created.
Beyond that, you have a larger role of who these characters are in this world. So, taking the three countries that we’re most familiar with being, Erebonia (Cold Steel), the Kingdom of Liberl (Sky), and then the Republic of Calvard (Daybreak), what kinds of people would exist within these countries. In Liberl, you’ve got this very kind queen who’s like a motherly figure to her people. How would the people in this country act? You’ve got Erebonia, which is a very strict class system with nobility and commoners. What kind of people would this give rise to?
Looking at what we have here now in the Republic of Calvard, it’s a country made up of immigrants, of people from many different places. and that’s how you’re able to get characters like Feri or Aaron who are not Calvardian necessarily in terms of their race or ethnicity, but they are in this place. They contribute to this story and then being characterized against someone like Van, who is from Calvard, but he does the dirty work, right? He’s got these sides to him which are very different than those around him and what came before. All of these things together are what creates the characters and how maybe not necessarily they keep track of them, but that’s how they end up where they end up in the grand scheme of things.
For the series as a whole, one of the goals and ideas was to portray these very human problems and societal experiences.
However, you do bring up a good point when you say there are a lot of characters (laughs). This is something we’ve talked about internally on how to keep it manageable and reasonable and how to tell the stories that we want to tell without having these gigantic ballooning casts. We will continue to think about these things going forward when it comes to cast selection and who appears in games.
To bounce off your point about Calvard, Trails feels extremely progressive and it feels like it’s very much rolling with modern times and how society and politics and events are taking place in the real world. Do political or any kind of real events ever influence the story at all?
For the series as a whole, one of the goals and ideas was to portray these very human problems and societal experiences. The thing is because many of the settings of the games veered more towards fantasy or something that felt divorced from reality, it probably didn’t hit as hard as you would expect.
Now, looking at Calvard, that allowed us to do something different because the setting is so close to what is happening or modern day, We knew from the beginning because it’s introduced in Sky that Calvard is a country that has lots of immigrants, a melting pot and made up of all these different people. However, that’s where we left it in our minds (laughs) and we didn’t really think about the details of Calvard at that point in time.
What really caused us to think about what Calvard was and who it’s comprised of and the issues that it has is when we started making Erebonia. Calvard stands in direct contrast to each other when it comes to the societies that Erebonia have and the worlds Erebonians inhabit. So a lot of the guiding principles that caused Erebonia to be developed with its ideas and goals and issues, all that is reflected in Calvard. And that just kind of necessarily made it more of a realistic thing.
To more directly answer your question, absolutely real life events are referenced throughout. I thought it would be interesting to cover these types of topics, because many the staff who created this series 20 years ago are still here, particularly the core writing team. Over the course of 20 years as we’ve gotten older, and as we’ve begun to look at the world differently, and we have different outlooks on things and different things to say about what’s happening in our world. And that gets reflected within the work itself on purpose.
Last but not least, particularly in regards to immigration and racism, as a country Japan is not really known for having a bunch of people who are not Japanese inhabiting it. However, due to some recent initiatives by the Japanese government, the country is becoming more open and welcoming to people who are not originally Japanese. And because more and more people are coming into Japan, that creates a new society for Japanese people as well, and new issues that we’ve never encountered before.
We thought this would be an interesting thing to also explore in the Calvard games, something that we as Japanese people ourselves might be facing in the not too distant future. So yeah, all of these things that you touched upon, the real world does absolutely impact the writing, and we do want to make specific commentary or at least explore what’s happening in the world through the events of the game and the societies and the people and the things that are depicted there.
So I guess going along with the core team evolving along with the games, how has it been continuing to watch the world that everyone wrote down and dreamt up and all these characters grow up over 20 years? How do you continue a 20-year process like that?
That’s a good question – I wonder how we do continue! (laughs)
So the interesting thing about the genesis of this whole world to begin with is one of practicality. At the time, if you look at the previous Legend of Heroes games (Dragon Slayer, the Gagharv trilogy) that were pixel art. All of them depict a world; there was one whole world per game.
When game development and graphic design shifted to 3D, that greatly limited what we could do asset-wise. We were no longer able to create an entire world for one specific game. So the idea became between me and my co-worker, “what if we can’t depict the whole world maybe we can depict a country instead”. So why don’t we have a story about a country and then why don’t we find out how this country connects to another country that would be in the same world but wouldn’t be depicted in one single game.
As I started planning this some of the older people in the company were like, “you guys are getting way ahead of yourselves here” (laughs) “Why don’t you try making one game first before you develop all these grand plans for things”. So this became a challenge to see what you could with what you essentially call limited resources to be able to work within this framework of telling the story of not a world now but a country, continuing that story in the next game in a different country within the world
Originally, this was only meant to be three parts, and by parts I mean games:
That has what’s become our motivation these last 20 years, to finish what we started. All of these games do take place in one world and they’re all connected to one another by virtue of this fact and by virtue of the fact there being an overarching story that does connect everything. That’s the real motivation now. That’s what keeps us going. And that’s how you keep a series going, is just this desire to finish what you started.
Did you ever think you would make it this far?
No, I’m surprised too! (laughs) Originally, this was only meant to be three parts, and by parts I mean games: Liberl, then Erebonia, and then Calvard. That was it.
However, in the midst of creating Trails in the Sky [after three years], the president came up to us and said, “okay, you guys have been working on this game for quite a while now. How close to completion are you here?” And we said, “we’re about halfway through.” He responded, “great, release what you have, I don’t care.” So that’s why Sky is divided into two parts.
The plan had started to fall apart because what was supposed to be one game is now two games. So what we had to do afterwards is create a game in a quicker span of time for the company to get it out there, which is obviously what became Sky the 3rd.
Logically, our next move would have been to make Erebonia. But I thought, “well, no, we can’t really go into this big area of Erebonia first. We need to think of something else first to lead into this a little bit better.” So that’s where Crossbell (Zero/Azure) came from.
But the thing about Crossbell is that it was only supposed to be one game as this bridge, which of course ended up being two games. Then we reach Erebonia and we start working on it. Only supposed to be two games. We figured at this point, it was gonna take at least two games to finish this part of the story. Yet that eventually turned into four games. And now here we are in Calvard and the story continues.
But no, never in my wildest dreams would I have expected this to be continuing and I never expected for things to turn out as they have in terms of how each location which was originally supposed to be one game is now multiple game-spanning arcs.
Okay, I’ll ask a sillier question in terms of evolution next. When you see character designs over the years, do you ever look at the new one and go “oh wow, I wish they’d looked this cool earlier!”?
Yeah! There’s definitely things that you look at and think “oh, this is really cool now”, but the truth is that whenever a game is released, we believe we’re releasing the best we can do at that time period. What you can see throughout the course of the history, not specifically for Trails but for all of our titles, is you can hopefully see us having improved and gotten better both in terms of art and then graphics as well. So things that were not able to have been done in the past have been able to do now
Within this also, you’ve got just visual trends, you know, what was cool 20 years ago is not necessarily cool or on trend for today. Sure there are things that you maybe think are cooler now compared to what you did before, but that doesn’t change the idea that what’s being released at the time is the best for that given time.
There’s also some things as cool as a change might be, there’s some lines that you can’t cross, specifically when it comes to certain aspects of character design or what he would call like a silhouette. The character needs to have a specific look. Again, using Rean as an example, kind of a slim man who always has his katana at his side. You know who this character is. These are things which are visual clues and signs for the players to know who this character is.
All of this together is just, it’s essentially just evolution. I’m pretty proud of what we’re releasing, whether it be in terms of character design itself or graphics as well.
So another thing that has evolved is the combat. Turn-based has always been like the core of Trails, and there’s been a lot of discussion recently about turn-based combat and RPGs. Are you always conscious to keep turn-based combat in the series, and how have you looked to progress that, even outside of the real-time additions?
The reason you have the turn-based combat battle system goes back to the very beginning, before the games even released in the West. This is a story-first series and these are story-first games. The general trend, at least in Japan at the time, was for story-based games to be turn-based. What that does is that essentially allows the players to take the game at their own pace and not have to feel pressure because of all this frantic action that they constantly have to worry about. Players can slowly go from place to place, enjoying the game and enjoying the world that’s been created.
It also has to do with the DNA of the series itself, because the series itself does have a group of turn-based predecessors to it for the most part.
Also within Falcom’s catalogue, you have the Ys series, which is in direct contrast as an action series. There’s plenty of fans of the Ys series and plenty of fans of the Trails series, but people played what they wanted to play in terms of, “I like action,” okay, you play Ys. “I like story focused,” well, then you should play Trails. There was a little bit of overlap, but by and large, those groups were pretty separate from one another.
we wondered how we could incorporate elements that made things move a little quicker
However, over the course of developing the Trails series, we didn’t want things to become stale and as people became more used to the games, we wondered how we could incorporate elements that made things move a little quicker.
One of the issues that you encounter when it comes to command-based systems is that some think it’s slow. You’ll notice improvements come incrementally. In the two Crossbell games, you’ve got a little bit of field actions, where you can hit the enemy and then you’ll start the battle. That kind of makes it a little bit more engaging, a little bit more active.
Moving into the Cold Steel series, that actually gets quite a bit more advanced in terms of positioning behind the enemies and what you can do on the field outside of the combat itself, but leading into the combat. So it finally culminates in Trails Through Daybreak, which is of course a hybrid battle system containing both the action RPG and the turn-based RPGs.
However, we were really careful because of this trend of players who still preferred the more methodical approach of turn-based combat. We wanted to make the action combat simple and unobtrusive so far as if someone didn’t want to engage it, that they didn’t have to. So you’ll note that the combat system outside of the turn-based combat system is pretty simple for Daybreak 1. And even though there are some additions in Daybreak 2, it’s kind of a refinement; just a little bit is added, and the player can still choose to engage with it if they want.
Which brings us to the forthcoming Trails Beyond the Horizon; feeling that probably people have at least played Daybreak 1 and 2, we thought we could add a little bit more and so we’ve made the action system even more robust. There’s a system called Awakening — it makes the combat feel even more quick, even more responsive. You can now cast arts on the field like you could in Daybreak, but it’s also been refined so it makes this whole action system a really big part of what the game is and slowly acclimates people who might not be so familiar with it.
By the same token, the turn-based element is always going to be there being part of the DNA, but that doesn’t mean that because we wanted to have a more exciting action element that the turn-based side has been neglected. Rather, you’ll see that the turn-based system has been iterated upon too, particularly in the forthcoming Horizon, there’s many buffs that you can do, things that are unique and new that also further make the turn-based combat engaging and interesting as well. So it really is this nice balance of both of them.
Trails Beyond the Horizon will be the first Trails game on the Nintendo Switch 2; at what point did you decide to release a Switch 2-specific version, and why was it important to release it on the new console?
NIS America: We felt it was important to release the title on Nintendo Switch 2 as many fans have been following our releases on Nintendo Switch, and we believe that those who have bought a Nintendo Switch 2 will be eager to play this title on it.
What new opportunities does the Switch 2 bring for the Trails series?
Kondo: The biggest thing obviously is the specs; such a big element of [Horizon] is the action, the specs being as they were [on Switch 1] it was very difficult to, you know, provide a positive or really good experience with that. Working with NIS America to be able to create a Switch 2 version, you know, that gets ameliorated and that makes it better now for the players
You can expect to see the Trails series on the Switch 2 going forward.
Obviously, what this means for us going forward is that, yes, we do want to make sure that the games are on the Switch 2. And now, because we’re more understanding of the specs and the capabilities that it has, we don’t have to worry about that necessarily during development. And we can put it through its paces, as it were, to be able to release the types of games that we want that contain the elements that we want it to contain. You can expect to see the Trails series on the Switch 2 going forward.
Can you explain the decision to release the game as a Game-Key Card on the Switch 2 and not a full physical release?
NIS America: We decided to release this title as a Game-Key Card on the Nintendo Switch 2 as we believed it was the most beneficial option for our customers.
This interview has been edited for clarity and flow.
I want to thank Mr. Kondo-san for taking the time to speak to us and for NIS America’s Alan Costa for translating.
The next game in the long-running franchise, Trails Beyond the Horizon, launches on Switch 1 and Switch 2 on 15th January 2026. Let us know if you’re looking forward to the game in the comments.
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