How Falcom forged Trails through Daybreak in a crucible of change

From new engines to new philosophies

Nihon Falcom

20 years is a long time to tell a story, but that’s what developer Nihon Falcom has done with the Trails series, spinning out plot developments and narrative surprises over 12 games split into four distinct arcs. Trails through Daybreak, the first in a new subseries and the latest to release around the world, represented several important milestones for Falcom and their work on the Trails franchise – deeper storytelling, more dynamic characters and relationships, and some much-needed technical advancements, to name a few. 

Not that any of those victories came easily. I spoke with company president Toshihiro Kondo during Anime Expo 2024 about the challenges that helped Falcom forge a strong new identity for the series with Daybreak and what makes it an important departure from previous games in the series.

Kondo says Falcom reflected on the Trails’ weak points while planning Daybreak and acknowledged that the series often struggled technically in the past. The new narrative arc presented an opportunity to change that though, as hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes work finally came to fruition.

About to clean you up / NIS America

The studio worked with Sony’s Phyre Engine since the early 2010s and often struggled against its limitations before switching to a new, proprietary engine after 2020. Trails into Reverie featured a short post-credits scene that Falcom created in the new engine, but Daybreak was the first game built entirely in it. Despite the range of frustrations and difficulties that come with learning the quirks of a new engine, Kondo says he considers the struggle worthwhile.

For one thing, Falcom could finally make character models more detailed and expressive. Kondo tells me the studio often faced criticism over stiff animations and characters in previous games, after the switch to full 3D with Trails of Cold Steel.

“We don’t get those complaints anymore,” Kondo says with a laugh. “Well, we get some, but not as many as before.”

However, the biggest step forward is reducing load times. Trails of Cold Steel 1 and 2’s original releases on the PS3 and PS Vita suffered from load times lasting five seconds or longer every time players entered and exited a battle. The subseries’ last two games and Trails into Reverie reduced those times, but load screens still punctuated important moments and dragged the game’s pacing down.

Trails battles with no load times? It's more likely than you think / Nihon Falcom/NIS America

Kondo says Falcom’s new engine lets them remove load times entirely. Players enter and end battles seamlessly and can change from real-time to turn-based combat without pause, and he says he considers it one of Daybreak’s biggest accomplishments (a sentiment we agreed with in our Trails through Daybreak review).

Smoother pacing and expressive models matter little if the narrative falls short. Kondo says an even bigger challenge Falcom faced with Daybreak was deciding what kind of story they wanted to tell since, for the first time since the Trails series began, Falcom’s writers were staring at a blank page. 

Kondo tells me the team worked from an outline with the series’ previous narrative arcs, one with settings and major plot points established well before production began. There were some surprises along the way – including a third Trails in the Sky game that no one originally planned on making – but Kondo and his team had clear visions for their worlds, the people who lived in them, and what was going to happen there. Calvard gets mentioned several times in older Trails games, but in a vague sense and usually in reference to their social troubles, immigration, and tech manufacturing.

The times are indeed changing in Calvard / Nihon Falcom/NIS America

A set of three broad ideas is little for a narrative team to work with. However, Kondo says they viewed the challenge as an opportunity to experiment with a fresh storytelling style that they hoped would resonate with players on a deeper level.

“We wanted to incorporate in Calvard’s identity the changes we’ve seen in society around us in the last 20 years and create a setting that mirrored reality more closely instead of fantasy,” Kondo says. “I’m almost 50 now and have seen good things and bad things in life, unjust situations and unfair outcomes, and we wanted to create a game that speaks to those changes and challenges we experience.”

Japan’s social and cultural changes over the years only formed part of the source material for Calvard. Kondo tells me that conversations with the series’ growing fan base outside Japan also inspired the writers’ vision for Daybreak’s setting and the kinds of people and problems that make their homes there.

Into the narrative mix went an ambitious blend of topics. Discrimination, bigotry, the looming threat of an impending economic downturn, and the dangers of populist governments sit alongside parental neglect, grappling with loss and personal failure, and what happens when life doesn’t turn out the way you dream it will.

Van determines the outcome of certain narrative events based on your choices / Nihon Falcom/NIS America

“We wouldn’t have been able to write a story like this in our 20s, simply because we didn’t have the necessary life experience,” Kondo says.

He tells me the point he hopes players take away from all these ideas and themes is that the characters they meet in Calvard – whether they’re film stars or students, immigrants, gay, straight, or whatever their background may be – just want to get by and live fulfilling lives.

“Everybody’s just trying to make their own way in this world, no matter how difficult it is,” he says. “Everyone has their own way of living and their own lives, and we should just try to make our way through the world as best we can, given what circumstances we have to deal with.”

That new style of storytelling required a new kind of protagonist, one with a different relationship to society compared to the RPG series’ previous heroes. Kondo says he and Falcom’s writers leaned toward young lead characters in earlier games, optimistic do-gooders who tried hard to overcome their challenges, nearly always succeeded, and made the world a better place in the process. 

“Where there is light, there must also be darkness and shadow,” Kondo says. “This time, we wanted to create a character who experiences the bad side of life as well, who encounters situations that are unfair and unjust and can’t always find a way to make them right for himself or others.”

Someone like this guy almost ended up being Van / Nihon Falcom/NIS America

At the start of development, Daybreak’s scenario writer toyed with the idea of making their new protagonist an Enforcer, a member of the criminal organization called the Society of Ouroboros that turns up each of the series’ narrative arcs.

However, Daybreak needed a character who could move freely between locations and have access to different groups of people, something an international criminal couldn’t exactly accomplish with ease. The team landed on the idea of a fixer, someone outside most social groups and with no attachment to any particular philosophy aside from their own. Kondo says he also drew on City Hunter, a classic anime about a detective working in the seedy underside of a metropolis, and other hard-boiled detective stories for inspiration about the tone and style they wanted for their fixer and his life. 

That person ended up being Van Arkride, a 24-year-old private investigator who’s happy defying the law if it means a satisfactory outcome for one of his clients. His life on society’s fringe, past mistakes, and keen understanding of people make fertile ground for deep character development, and it’s no exaggeration to say he’s one of the subseries’ strongest driving forces.

Take me to the moon, Kevin / Nihon Falcom

Van’s journey is already drawing to a close in Japan, as Falcom is gearing up to release the third entry in the Daybreak saga, Kai no Kiseki: Farewell, O Zemuria, in September 2024. Kai no Kiseki will see Calvard launch its space program and send more than one recognizable face from the series’ past venture beyond the atmosphere. 

It’ll be a while before the rest of the world gets to experience that trip, though, as NIS America is wrapping up localization work on Trails through Daybreak 2 first. Everyone remains planetside in that sequel, but it’s another departure for the series in a different way. Characters in the series typically end up in pairs or small groups, with little interaction or development with other people outside that group. Falcom aimed to change that in Daybreak’s sequel.

“In Daybreak, Van acted as a sort of mentor to the younger party members, but now that they have more life experience and confidence, they can take care of themselves and even help Van and each other,” Kondo says. “We’re looking forward to showing how these relationships we established in the first game grow and become deeper.”

Kondo briefly interjects as he recalls an anecdote about how, early in Daybreak 2’s production, one of the game’s designers found inspiration in an unlikely source: A Venom movie poster. Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s key art features a red Venom and a black Venom in opposition, and the idea of putting two similar, otherworldly forces in opposition stuck. Daybreak 2 begins as a red Grendel – a supernatural creature with inhuman powers – commits a series of murders across Calvard’s capital and seems determined to draw Van, who can also transform into a Grendel, into conflict as he delves into the dark secrets of Calvard’s past.

Kondo quickly assures me that Daybreak 2 isn’t like the Venom films or inspired by them in other ways. The team just built on the idea of the red Grendel as a way to frame one of the game’s major themes and a vehicle for unraveling Calvard’s bigger mysteries.

Venom, is that you? / Nihon Falcom/NIS America

Daybreak 2’s international release happens sometime in early 2025, less than a year after the first Daybreak. The Trails series is gradually reaching global audiences – and at a faster pace – while attracting more attention from fans and critics than ever, but Kondo tells me there’s no plan to keep the series going far into the future. 

“We’ve started turning our thoughts to how we can create a neat and satisfying conclusion and bring together the narrative threads we’ve been spinning for two decades,” he says.

That hurdle is a steep one. Most modern media struggles to land a good ending even in a single game or television series. Falcom wove mysteries and left dozens of unanswered questions across 12 games, and the series is roughly 90 percent complete by the end of the Daybreak saga, at Kondo’s estimation. 

The team has little room to bring about a strong resolution that meets or exceeds the series’ narrative standards and avoids inelegant, Xenogears-style exposition. If Trails through Daybreak is any indication, though, Falcom’s strongest work happens when the studio faces a stiff challenge.