role. However, unable to directly continue Xenogears due to Squaresoft still owning the rights to 'it, the company's main focus became to create Takahashi's spiritual successor, the Xenosaga series. Once the company was fully established and staffed, the company decided to start up a secondary project, driven primarily by their younger staff. The game's initial concept was created in 2001, with development beginning six months later. Monolith Soft, at the time only really known for the Xenosaga games, clarified after its announcement that while they would be utilizing their development experience from creating said games, the game would not have any actual connection to the Xenosaga series. The Nintendo GameCube was chosen as the game's platform due to the general lack of JRPGs in its game library; the team wanted to offer a "true RPG" for the userbase, and eventually establish it as a franchise for the system. It was named Baten Kaitos after the star of the same name in the Cetus constellation; the name was chosen to be symbolic of rich nature and the grand world view the team aimed to depict with the game, and as a "anti-Xenosaga" game, which instead a space opera. The game was co-developed by Tri-Crescendo, and was the company's first venture into full-fledged video game development, previously only dealing with music and sound in video games. Both Monolith Soft and Tri-Crescendo had recently sent similar game pitches to Namco, leading Namco to suggest the two companies work together. Tri-Crescendo was primarily responsible for the game's battle system and sound design. Game development approximately consisted of a staff of about 50 people over the course of an 18-month time period, leading to a cumulative 2 years process from inception to finish. The game's story was written by Masato Kato, a prior Squaresoft staff member who had left the company around the same time many of other people had left to form Monolith Soft. He was selected because he having experience working with many team members, such as artist and game design director Yasuyuki Honne, on past projects like Chrono Cross and Xenogears, and for his ability to "write passionate dialogue that doesn't sound weird or embarrassing". Many aspects of the game were set very early on in developments, such as the game's setting of the floating islands and having an action theme to the battle. Smaller details of the game were vastly changed