The most influential games in the role-playing genre are tied to Square Enix. Whether it’s “Final Fantasy,” “Dragon Quest” or “Kingdom Hearts,” the publisher/developer has a stable of franchises with legions of loyal fans. Even so, it isn’t enough to lean entirely on established series. That’s where “The Last Remnant” comes in: It represents Square Enix’s attempt to create a new property to stand alongside the established names.

In order to ensure this new adventure finds its audience, a handful of unconventional steps are being taken with the development of “The Last Remnant.” It will release simultaneously in the United States and Japan, be multiplatform from Day One, and utilize Epic’s “Unreal Engine 3″ - all of which are deviations from standard practice for RPGs. Then again, a different kind of game necessitates a different approach.

Instead of using a traditional, individual-based battle system, “The Last Remnant” will have conflicts that occur on a larger scale. Players will issue commands to groups rather than individual characters as armies clash on battlefields with up to 70 units. “The player needs to have a grasp of how each union will function in such a large-scale battle,” the development team tells us. “For that reason, the battle commands are simple enough for the player to get a hang of immediately.”

When one union engages another, you will enter commands in a turn-based format, but the kinds of orders vary depending on the context. According to the team: “The abilities of a union are comprised of the abilities of each individual unit in that union, making a unit’s abilities a very important factor in battle.”

Fighting isn’t limited to passively inputting commands, though. Once you’ve given orders, special situations can arise that require you to respond to onscreen prompts. These sequences keep the player involved in combat on the unit level while still allowing them to keep the big picture in focus.

One of the important factors that influence the battle on both sides is morale. Your choices and those of your foes will affect which side has the most morale, which will in turn affect other available actions. As morale increases, units become more useful during battle. As morale decreases, certain units can even become a burden.

While it’s great to know more about how the game will play, most of the plot is still being closely guarded. What exactly are the Remnants, and what makes them so powerful? When asked why people are willing to go to war to control the Remnants, one member of the dev team laughed, “You will have to wait and play the game to find out!” It looks like we won’t have the answers we want until late 2008.