Official Crossbell Arc Western Release in the Works!
The end of last month was Nihon Falcom’s 40th anniversary, and as one of the oldest long running game developers, they hosted a huge concert celebration of their library’s history. The event mostly focused on songs from the popular Trails series, Falcom has other hits under its repertoire such as Ys and Tokyo Xanadu. While it was leaked early via the Epic Games Store, the middle of the concert had a surprise announcement for the Crossbell Arc western release!
After the late localizations of Trails in the Sky and its sequel, a decision was made by XSEED and Falcom to localize the ongoing Trails of Cold Steel arc before the Crossbell duology. The idea was that after finishing FC and SC, a fan could enter a new starting point in Cold Steel 1 as the series was an attempt to bring the Trails franchise to a broader audience. Through the localization of Trails in the Sky the 3rd in 2017, it was clear that Falcom did want to bring the untranslated entries to the west, but the Crossbell games fell to the wayside as XSEED and later, NIS America, focused on catching up to the current entries.
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A talented team at the Geofront aimed to make fan translations of the Crossbell duology which were on the level of the Trails in the Sky localizations. After years of hard work, the patches were released with not only a much better reading script than other fan translations, but even with notably quality of life tweaks made to the game. Some, however, chose to wait for an official Crossbell arc western release, and the wait will still be a good bit…
In a surprise collaboration between NIS America and the Geofront team, the scripts made for Trails From Zero and Trails to Azure will be based on the Geofront’s work, though admittedly combed through and likely tweaked a bit here and there. While the releases of Fall 2022 for Zero and 2023 for Azure are, well, a while to wait for games which have been given scripts, it seems NISA is working on translating the spinoff, Nahyuta no Kiseki, as well as the next main game, Hajimari no Kiseki. Both are slated for 2023 as well.
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The decision to localize the Crossbell arc now may be responsible for delays in Hajimari’s localization and the future Calvard games. However, it is undeniably a good thing for these two amazing entries to be available in an official capacity in the west. The icing on the cake is that it will use a loving fan work as the basis for this localization. The Trails franchise only seems to be getting bigger and bigger worldwide, so let’s hope for more success!
