Konami Trying to Expand Suikoden Series #1 at Nintendo Cubed3

The Suikoden series is Konami's biggest RPG and it now looks like the company is attempting to expand the franchise in order to make it appeal to a wider audience. Speaking with 1UP, the Producer of Suikoden Tierkreis on DS, Masayuki Saruta, revealed that "Suikoden: Tierkreis is the dawn of the new Suikoden series, as it features a great new set of characters in a brand-new universe." But he also went on to say that it has not yet been decided whether or not "to keep Tierkreis' world as the permanent setting, as we'd love the future opportunity to revisit the previous games' wonderful settings."

When asked about the long-term future of the series, such as whether or not to make Suikoden VI soon or break from the same old routine to freshen things up, Saruta-san said,

While I can't comment directly on the future plans for Suikoden, I can say that I hope we continue to create Suikoden titles in the future. With this in mind, I think our goal will be to create new games that attract as many new players to the established franchise in order to grow the fan base.

As we've done with Tierkreis, we think there are ways to improve the existing gameplay as long as we're starting with a fun, interesting system. In addition, I think it's not always wise to force improvements on systems just for tradition's sake. We used this idea to challenge ourselves and make new gameplay systems that are as exciting as the ones in previous games.

Elsewhere it was also revealed that although the coding of Suikoden V was handled by Hudson, with the producers and directors being internal Konami employees, "Tierkreis is being developed internally at Konami, as was done with Suikodens I through IV. Of course, a part of V's staff is working on Tierkreis."

More details can be found in the full interview.