On June 30, 2022, Bandai Namco Entertainment America released a developer diary about the upcoming One Piece Odyssey game for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam on their YouTube channel. The game is scheduled to launch in 2022.
Tsuzuki, the producer of One Piece Odyssey, begins with saying how after the 1st trailer for the game was released the production team was bombarded with questions about the game.
The game will be an epic adventure made so players can experience the One Piece world. The game is meant to capture the drama, adventure, and battle elements that are unique to the world of One Piece.
What is the plot of the game?
A special tagline for the game, “Let’s travel to the heart of memories,” holds a clue to what the game is truly about.
The story begins when the Straw Hats, led by Monkey D. Luffy, are swallowed by a huge storm at sea. They end up on a mysterious tropical island filled with bizarre wildlife and are separated from their nakama (comrades). The crew sets out on a new adventure journey filled with wonders of natural disasters, powerful enemies (both human and beast), and have strange encounters with the natives.
Luffy decides to scout the island in order to meet up with his lost crewmates. They come across various mysterious ruins and brand-new monsters.
At first, the Straw Hats merely enjoy exploring the island together as they find their lost crewmates one by one, but things soon take an unexpected turn as they’re forced to defeat new enemies, and unravel mysteries behind the island.
Eiichiro Oda creates a brand-new story, monsters and characters
Game development began 5 years ago and 3 years ago original manga creator Eiichiro Oda was contacted to start working on the character designs and original story. Once Oda became more involved it was decided that two original characters would be created for the game. Those characters are Adio and Lim.
Oda also designed new animals/monsters for the game, such as: Leviathan and Dry Penguin.
The development team created a way to experience the adventures of One Piece working with game developer ILCA (Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl) and with Bandai Namco Entertainment producing it to create a 3D world and incorporate it into a JRPG. The game’s unique pirate-esque ambiance is further enhanced by its thrilling adventure music composed by Motoi Sakuraba (Dark Souls, Tales of series).
The main story takes place on the island of Waford. The development team made sure that the island is a very accurate depiction of a place that could be found in the world of One Piece. The characters in One Piece are known for their over-exaggerated facial expressions and the team made sure to include these signature expressions for the character’s 3D avatars.
Players will be able to switch between members of the Straw Hat crew and each member has a unique ability mirroring their devil fruit power or special talent. Waford Island has many mysterious ruins and dungeons that players will be able to explore. The battle system is unique and called a “classic turned base command battle”, which means players can switch to other Straw Hats when needed to overcome a certain obstacle using a specific ability. For example, they can switch to Zoro to cut through obstacles, turn into Chopper to sneak into a burrow and more.
The battles are based on an element called “scramble area battles”. In different areas on the game map the player will encounter various opponents and a certain Straw Hat is assigned per area.
Another fun feature is “dramatic scenes”, which are random battle challenges that popup during combat. For example, if Sanji is suddenly facing a female antagonist but can’t fight women how will he get out of this situation? That will be up to the player to decide!
