Phantasy Star Nova is being made by more than 70 people, controls based on PSO2.

tri-Ace have a team more than 70 strong working on the upcoming single player focused game, designed for "the many gamers who are turned off" by the "idea of online games". tri-Ace's Hiroyuki Tamura said the team was looking to make a game that "not only is worth the Phantasy Star name" but also "stands on its own as a brand-new RPG title".

Expanding on tri-Ace's effort to built the game, Tamura revealed "overall there are over 200 people involved with the creation of PS Nova" although only ~70 are on the core development staff. Naturally they're all having "lots of fun" because if there's anything we hear from developers, it's that the last year of a game's development is "lots of fun".

Phantasy Star's Sega producer told Famitsu that while Phantasy Star Online 2 would remain the "flagship title of the Phantasy Star series," Phantasy Star Nova would be "a new Phantasy Star series, one centered around multiplayer and an offline story mode. In that way, it's close to Phantasy Star Portable. PSO2 is enjoyed by a lot of people, but there are still many gamers who are turned off by the idea of online games."

However, he pledged to "continue the current pace of PSO2 updates" while they launched the news series. Nova's producer Yasuyuki Tsuzuki then spoke to the game's story and it's focus on scavenged weapons and surviving, which I'll copy verbatim for you.

"The player is assigned to the starship Delta Variant, which discovers a new planet called Makia and then crash-lands on it after being attacked by unknown foes. You don't have access to Photon energy on this planet, one of the big differences from PSO2, so you have to obtain all the weapons and equipment you need to survive from the planet itself. Enemies usually drop weapons and equipment in this series, but not in this game. We'll explain how this works later, but for now I hope gamers can use their imagination."

Phantasy Star Nova is due out for the Vita sometime next year. Look forward to videos and screenshots at TGS.

Thanks for the translation, Polygon.