chance, he offers to marry Bianca if he loses again. Though Miranda and Yuki are furious at Alfonso for his deception, they agree to help him counter Bianca's cheating in order to get Alfina's brooch back. Miranda flirts with Alfonso during the game, distracting Bianca so that he can jar the dice mid-throw and win the game. With Alfina's brooch and Alfonso's ship recovered, Alfonso sails them across the sea. En route, a flock of birds attacks them, and they are saved by a dragon rider named Ulf. Ulf mentions having met Sky Captain Schmidt, who lives in Randoto. Alfina consents to a stopover in Randoto so that Yuki can meet his idol and perhaps get him to build a plane for their journey. Alfina's fate becomes more twisted, as Alfina and her companions challenge Emelious and finally face Xorn. The epilogue shows everyone going on living their lives. Yuki and Alfina are married with a son who has the same ambition of flying as his father. Development Grandia III was first announced in a March 2005 issue of the Japanese Weekly Famitsu magazine, which revealed that Game Arts and Square Enix would be bringing the game to the PlayStation 2 console like the previous installment, Grandia Xtreme. The project was headed by director Hidenobu Takahashi, who previously served as art director for Grandia II, and stated that the game would follow the series' themes of "adventure, drama and dreams", and would continue in the direction of taking the series to a more "adult" sensibility while still retaining an overall optimistic tone. Character design for the game was provided by You Yoshinari with Takahiro Hasebe serving as scenario writer, both of whom had worked on the original Grandia. The CGI movie cutscenes were produced by Mikitaka Kurasawa, who had also worked with Capcom on Onimusha. According to a Square Enix representative, the amount of cutscenes in the game are roughly equal in length to three movies. Combat in Grandia III was designed to be a variation of the system seen in previous games in the series, and was described by Takahashi as being "very complex but very easy to learn", adding that "The combination of the story, fast-paced battle system and beautiful environment will prove to be an extremely enjoyable adventure." An official website was launched for the game in April 2005, which detailed the game's final release date the