Vice President at Square, to appoint him as director. Takahashi also wrote the script with Tanaka. Following the release of Xenogears, Takahashi became dissatisfied with Square's business approach at the time, which prioritized their major intellectual properties including Final Fantasy. This left Takahashi with no funding or creative room to develop further independent projects or continue his planned Xenogears series. In 1999, Takahashi talked with Hirohide Sugiura, who had likewise worked at Square and was beginning to feel frustrated due to a lack of creative freedom. After discussing the matter, the two decided to create their own company and pursue projects they wanted to create. When planning their new company, Takahashi and Sugiura decided that they needed a publisher with substantial market presence to help them rather than being an independent studio. Takahashi and Sugiura approached multiple companies for support, but most of the companies they contacted outright rejected their offer as they believed that Monolith Soft should be an independent company. However, Namco were interested in investing into Monolith Soft as a dedicated subsidiary, whilst handling logistics and marketing so that the core staff could focus on game development. An important supporter of Monolith Soft was Namco's founder Masaya Nakamura, who shared many of Takahashi and Sugiura's goals and ideals. Monolith Soft is noted as being one of a group of video game companies—alongside Sacnoth, Love-de-Lic and Mistwalker—founded by Square staff who had worked on notable games produced during the 1990s. The company was officially founded on 1 October 1999 by Takahashi, Sugiura, and Yasuyuki Honne, who had worked at Square on both the Chrono series and with Takahashi on Xenogears. The company's offices were originally based in Yokohama. 2000s Namco era Monolith Soft's first project was Xenosaga Episode I, a role-playing game (RPG) for the PlayStation 2. Xenosaga was a spiritual successor to Xenogears; development began in 2000 when enough staff had been gathered, lasting approximately two years. As with Xenogears, the game was scripted by Takahashi and Tanaka, who planned out the Xenosaga series as a hexalogy. In 2001, Namco producer Shinji Noguchi and Monolith Soft's Tadashi Nomura conceived a new IP for the GameCube unconnected to Xenosaga. Titled Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, development began six months after the concept was formed, with Honne acting as director. The game development staff of the company was now divided between the Xenosaga series and Baten