Seemingly out of nowhere, Sega and Wildman Inc. have revealed that an official Panzer Dragoon VR game is now in development with a tentative release time frame for early next year. The game, titled Panzer Dragoon Voyage Record, will be comprised of levels from three of the previous entries from the franchise. It will also come with new visuals, as well as full VR controller support.
As of this writing, all we have to go on is this press release and the above image that was given in the same release. For those unfamiliar with the Panzer Dragoon series, it was one of the flagship franchises for the ill-fated Sega Saturn in the mid to late 1990s. The first two games, Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon II Zwie, were on-rails flight games that had you riding Dragoons in the sky while you shot at enemies appearing in front of you.
However, things took a drastic change in 1998 when the third title Panzer Dragoon Saga was released. Instead of the on-rail flight gameplay, Saga was instead a mix of a traditional RPG and free open-world roaming. It was critically acclaimed upon its release and is now considered to be one of the greatest RPG titles of the 1990s. Unfortunately, it had a limited release in the United States, making physical copies very rare and extremely expensive in today’s market.
When Sega bowed out of the console market, they licensed the game to a different studio, which then became an exclusive for Microsoft’s Xbox. Releasing as Panzer Dragoon Orta in 2002, the gameplay returned to the on-rails flight mechanics with some new features and was highly acclaimed at the time. This would be the last entry in the franchise until Sega announced remakes of the first two games, which was shown at E3 2019.
Sega and Wildman Inc. have stated that the levels to be used in Voyage Record will be revealed at a later date, as well as which platforms the game will be released for. Since this is a VR title, PC should be a given, but we’ll have to wait and see what else Sega and Wildman Inc have in store for this one. Panzer Dragoon Voyage Record (VR) will tentatively release early 2021.