most complex scene to animate. From storyboarding to the final product took six months to complete. A CGI opening was picked over real-time to keep with series tradition of having CGI openings. Story Compared to the desolate and post-apocalyptic setting of earlier games, Orta was set during a period where the world was rebuilding and life was returning. The narrative's dramatic style was inspired by unspecified American films. A theme in common with the earlier games was neither side being specifically good or evil, but defending their goals and mission, revealing the negative consequences of fighting. While previous Panzer Dragoon games had focused on male characters, Orta was given a female lead to represent the change in direction and new style. Orta was voiced by Yōko Honna, and Abadd by Shirō Saitō. Maaya Sakamoto reprised her role as Azel from Saga. The story was co-written by Shigeru Kurihara and Kenichiro Ishii. Kurihara was creating the draft and Masaykui Goto creating cutscene storyboards before the art design had been finalized and the Xbox's hardware limitations were known. Three months were dedicated to creating the story, communicated through the CGI cutscenes, with their storyboards influencing both artistic redesigns for Orta and the motion of characters in-game. Alongside the main story, several side stories were included as unlockables, with the team putting in as many as they could within the development time; Mukaiyama remembered one story about a prominent side character that had to be cut, saying he would like to incorporate it into a potential sequel. Mukaiyama attributed the inclusion of sub-stories told from other perspectives to Smilebit's experience making Hundred Swords (2001), which included a similar feature. Pre-release interviews and previews stated that Orta was a sequel to the other Panzer Dragoon games and set decades after the events of Saga, though several staff later admitted the continuation of the story from Saga left them uneasy or conflicted. An ambiguous point was Orta's possible origin as the daughter of Edge and Azel, with team members sharing differing opinions. Kusunoki felt that Orta could be an alternate timeline where Edge lived and fathered Orta, while in his opinion Edge would have died during the end of Saga. Mukaiyama attributed his mixed feelings about continuing the storyline to the ending of Saga, purposefully leaving Orta's origins ambiguous and noting that the North American localizers made the overall story even more ambiguous. He hinted