So I guess Wizardry: The Five Ordeals new Steam release is on hold indefinitely for the time being? Seems to be stuck in some legal dispute atm or something
Apparently there are like 3 different rights holders for Wizardry? Someone owns 1-5, someone owns 6-8, someone owns something else? And one of them is disputing the Five Ordeals release
This is why Xseed was having issues releasing labryth of lost souls but eventually they were able to.
I sort of feel bad for Wizardry because in a way. It has a very rich history but from a modern day perspective it's sort of fallen into obscurity. I can guarantee you that if you were to gather a bunch of people and talk to them about their favorite video games and stuff it would most likely be the usuals suspects (well I guess that also depends because if you were to ask some one that is 20 years old right now they would likely answer Minecraft and not Mega man or Final Fantasy like 30+ year olds would) but I highly doubt any of them would mention wizardry.
I also don't think that there are other series that have to deal with multiple "parties", I guess technically Falcom games would be something like that? But at the end of the day Falcom still owns the IP and they could just do "remasters" of them all and self publish those games.
It's like those "film greats" how in it's early years it was a trail blazers and set the standard but as years went buy it eventually started to flip burgers in order to get by. From my understanding this is what's happened in film where there is a really talented director and then something new comes out that outshines them (owww shiney...) And they are just never really able to recover and keep on making hits/influencial works. That's what happened to Georges Méliès and from my understanding it's what even happened to Akira Kurosawa (I don't think he is that well know in modern day Japan by an average person? But I could be wrong)
Poor Wizardry, well at least it still has a cult following. May games like SMT continue your legacy oh great one.
Also spoilers in the video nice song though