First discussions surrounding "Lost Odyssey" began in 2003, with development beginning the following year as an internal Microsoft project. After running into difficulties, Feelplus was established as a dedicated studio to work on the game. The story was written by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Japanese author Kiyoshi Shigematsu: Sakaguchi wanted to create a story focusing on evoking human emotions, and kept the gameplay within genre traditions so he could experiment with the story. The game went through a difficult development, with problems stemming from the chosen engine technology and the arrangement of development teams. The music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, a veteran composer for the "Final Fantasy" series.