Hello everyone,
It’s with a heavy heart and deep sadness we must inform you
that the scenario writer and head of Rabbit& Bear Studios,
Yoshitaka Murayama, has passed away on February 6th
due to complications with an ongoing illness.

Murayama first began this journey of the creation of
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes in 2020
through the support of his very loving fans on Kickstarter.
Throughout the three-plus-year-development of the game,
it was always the passion from his fans that continued to
drive his creative vision and motivate him to put his all into the project.

His hard work on Eiyuden Chronicle as scenario writer was finished
but as his co-workers and friends, it saddens us to know that
he won’t get to see the reactions from his fans.

However, even with those feelings we need to accept
the reality that he is no longer with us and continue to push
his dream forward by releasing Eiyuden Chronicle to the world.

We want to maintain his legacy and vision with this game and
know that he would have wanted the rich world he has created
with Eiyuden Chronicle to live on.

His family sincerely appreciates your prayers and support
but asks for privacy and that no flowers, mail, or other offerings be sent.

We will have more information on organizational changes to
Rabbit & Bear as well as changes to some of the Kickstarter rewards
in the near future.

For now, we appreciate your continued support.

Rabbit & Bear Studios,
Junko Kawano
JunichiMurakami
Osamu Komuta

皆様へ大切なお知らせ ｜ 【公式】Rabbit & Bear Studios 株式会社 (rabbitandbearstudios.com)

These things will happen over time, but this is the first one that hit me hard personally.
Considering real life impact, The Suikoden series is the most influential/important piece of work of my life.

And this happened just a few months before the launch of its spiritual successor, Eiyuden Chronicle, which broke records for a Japanese Kickstarter game.

At least he knew how much his games meant to people.
It sounds like the passion of the fans was something that helped him push through his ongoing illness. But it's still very sad that he won't get to see the reaction of those fans when they finally get to play it.
And that whatever he may have envisioned for the potential future of the series won't come to fruition.

Now I wish I had at least tried to ask him some questions I've had for many years, when he occasionally popped in to chat with fans on the Discord server.

I've been meaning to play through the Suikoden series again before Eiyuden comes out, but with the delay of the remasters of 1 & 2, I didn't get around to it yet.

This song hits different now...

RIP

Didnt seem like a very old guy. Sad news.

Horrible news to sleep to after a long and exhausting day at work. Between what's going on in Palestine and Murayama's passing, I broke in tears last night.

RIP legend, thanks for the memories, and I can't wait for your last gift.

As the next decade goes by, I'm kind of all expecting news of some legacy creators passing away since life n all goes on but it'll always heart knowing some of these were still working with passion towards their next project.

Hopefully, his parting gift will prolly be a magnificent one

RIP

Really sad news, dude created some of the most iconic games of my childhood and Eiyuden Chronicles is just around the corner. The guy was very young also.

Yeah, it's going to be a lot more common as time goes on.

I was thinking about why this one hit harder for me. Besides what Suikoden means to me, it's also the fact that he never got to tell the full story before leaving Konami. If let's say a beloved composer passes away, I probablty won't get the same sense of unfulfilled ambition or regret from their body of work.

It reminds me a bit of Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga going from Xenogears (which was Episode 5 in a planned 6 game series), to Xenosaga (which was 3 games in a planned 6 game series) to Xenoblade.

In the new games you can see them bringing back some of their original concepts, but re-telling the stories in a different way. (For example, the character Abel in Xenogears and Xenosaga.)

I imagine we will see more than a few Suikoden nods in Eiyuden, as a way to continue parts of the original story in some capacity. But while the Xeno series got many attempts, this will only ever be one game now. At least from Murayama.

He will be missed. Now it's time to replay the games made by this great man.