It was just announced earlier today that Mistwalker (Terra Battle, The Last Story) is planning to team up with Silicon Studio (Bravely Default, 3D Dot Game Heroes) for an upcoming game. As of yet, there is no further information available other than this…

…besides, of course, this image that we first saw back in 2009:

According to Siliconera and Kotaku, this image was originally drawn and posted by illustrator Fujisaka Kimihiko in early 2009, but it has no official attachment to any previously planned or completed game. For the sake of clarity in this post, I will refer to this image as the “Death Dragon Hero” illustration.

“My illustrations and designs keep piling up without seeing the light of day. It happens a lot, but I think of it like medals of honour from battle,” Fujisaka writes on his official Mistwalker page. The artist gives some indication that the piece may have been related to the canceled role-playing game Cry On.

“The project I had been working on never made it through to completion, and the one thing that I really realised was that I was very disappointed in my lack of skill”, Fujisaka adds. “I’m also very sorry for the people who were hoping the project would get done.”–Fujisaka Kimihiko, from his defunct page on Mistwalker, previously covered by Kotaku.

If you take Fujisaka’s statement above, it seems very likely that this was initially going to be used in the cancelled “Cry-on” game by Mistwalker.

Any sort of artist will accumulate a plethora of material through the process of doodling, sketching, and designing characters whether they will ultimately be used or not. The Death Dragon Hero appears to be one such example of a design that was never fully developed and/or later ripped apart to be used in various other designs in the future.

If you are familiar with Mistwalker’s latest game for the iOS and Android phones, Terra Battle, the Death Dragon Hero illustration shares many interesting points with Olber and Czekras from Terra Battle. First let’s take a look at Olber:

Not much besides his face and hair resemble the Death Dragon Hero, but then let’s take a look at the design for Czekras:

Here we can clearly see that this character shares the same armor and weapon designs as the Death Dragon Hero above with some slight adjustments. This particular version of the sword, however, lacks the black cross on the side of the blade.

So, it’s interesting that the Death Dragon Hero, with an unstated, possible connection to the cancelled project for Cry-on in 2009, would show up in two separate character designs for a game some six years later.

That’s all to say nothing of the sword’s appearance in Drakengard 3 as Two’s weapon. Here’s a closer look at how similar the designs are from the original Death Dragon Hero illustration to Two’s design.

So, what do you think Mistwalker’s got up their sleeve for this new title? Could it actually be a revision of their previously cancelled game “Cry-on” or maybe it’s something entirely new! Very exciting! 😀

Also, lets not forget about the Terra Battle Download Starter system. With every download milestone achieved, Mistwalker will work on producing extra goodies and events. One particular milestone that was reached not too long ago at 2 million downloads was for the console version of Terra Battle.

Then, could this actually be what Mistwalker’s got in mind…?