Category Archives: upcoming

upcoming

Nomura’s New Project

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With an amazing list of games on his record, developer Tetsuya Nomura of Square Enix has certainly come to be a driving force in their productions. Having started there in 1990, with so much history, the games he has produced have certainly changed. So we can only wonder: What will his next project be like?

Having finished his most recent work, Kingdom Hearts 2, Nomura’s new title Final Fantasy XIII Versus is not quite stealing the spotlight for most anticipated games. Perhaps due to it’s brethren being released under the simpler title Final Fantasy XIII, it hasn’t generated too much individualistic excitement. It so far is merely being considered as just another title in the subseries Fabula Nova Crystallis that Square Enix is so hard at work on. So what sets it apart to have been crowned as Versus?

Simply put, Nomura has finally gotten a chance to produce a game with the theme he has always wanted, namely darkness. The game is reputed to be much darker, much more serious, with an outlook attempting to elaborate more on the human aspects of the characters and the realism of the world that is supposedly only linked mythologically with Final Fantasy XIII’s world.

According to Nomura himself,

Nomura: “There’s been times when I’ve wanted to take FF in a completely different direction than the game’s producer has wanted. I’m not saying that his or mine opinions have been right or wrong, just different. One thing I’ve always wanted to explore deeper is human emotions. By going in that direction, you risk to make the target group for the game narrower, and FF is appreciated by a very large audience. But with Versus XIII, it feels like the right time to take that risk. Since the script isn’t done yet, I still don’t know exactly how far I dare to go, but I know I want to squeeze humanity out of these characters. I want Versus to feel in the entire body.”

It’s exciting to see a company willing to put faith in their developer enough to take a risk like Nomura describes it. Both exciting and refreshing.

Nomura has also said,

“When I produced Kingdom Hearts, I was in a world so bright that I almost got blinded. So now I want to do something completely different. Maybe it has something to do with my love for extremes. FFvXIII is about man in the real world. In that sense, the game will contain less fantasy than usual. We’ve created some dark environments and shown them in our trailers. But the entire game won’t look like that; we’ve only just begun.”

Even more evidence that the project will be very unique, and will incorporate very new ideas. For instance, Nomura has been quoted saying the game will even include more “real-world events”. His goal is to create a world the player truly believes in. This time around however, it will be integrated with the real world. Exactly how they will blend this together is a mystery, but an exciting one.

What this all means we have yet to see, but all together it seems Versus will surely stand apart as a next-gen RPG.

E3 Update: Fable 2!

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Being a big fan of the original Fable game for Xbox (as well as embittered by how short the entire game was), seeing an article at gamespot about the upcoming Fable 2 piqued my interest.

Though information on the game is sparse at this point, according to the Gamespot article, there are 2 very interesting things that they seem to be developing:

In the finished game combat will controlled using three buttons: one for melee weapons, one for ranged weapons, and one for magic. For the purposes of the E3 demo there were no guns or magic attacks, though, so all combat was controlled with just one button. […] Tapping the button does a melee attack, holding down the button blocks, and releasing the button after a block performs a special attack. How hard you push buttons and how long you hold them for will have an effect on the attacks that you perform, as will your weapon choice, and your proximity to other enemies or environmental objects.

I wonder how the pressure sensitivity will work out. It seems to me that most games in the last 5 years touting “pressure sensitive” controls usually end up sucking at it, not because the intention is bad, but because in the heat of the moment all I want to do is press that damn button. Hard.

When you “die” in Fable 2 you won’t actually die, and you certainly won’t have to return to a previous save or a checkpoint. Rather, you’ll collapse on the ground, where enemies will continue to attack you. When you eventually get up you’ll be scarred for life, and those scars will affect the way that some other characters treat you.

This is actually pretty sweet, but I thought I remember Molyneaux saying before the first Fable came out that there would be scars that your character would wear forever, and by which other characters would “judge” him. Maybe they left it for the second game to work out the bugs.

Does this mean that when you kill bandits, they just lie on the ground for a while, too?

One other thing I hope they add is the ability to woo women more easily. Spamming one button to make sexy noises like “ungh”, and “heeey” got pretty old, especially since I do that pretty much all day in real life.

Step into the Age of Conan (Hyborian Adventures)

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Funcom, the creater of the renowned Anarchy Online, is at the helm of one of the most anticipated games of the year (if not the most anticipated in the realm of massively-multiplayer online games). However, there is a veil of mist surrounding exactly what it is that Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures actually consists of. Is it an MMORPG? What makes it different from the big players in the field right now? Is it going to be full of little kids, or can we expect a more mature audience given the subject matter?

We won’t know about the playerbase until the game actually hits, but we can at least try to tackle those first two questions.

Nomura’s New Project

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With an amazing list of games on his record, developer Tetsuya Nomura of Square Enix has certainly come to be a driving force in their productions. Having started there in 1990, with so much history, the games he has produced have certainly changed. So we can only wonder: What will his next project be like?

Having finished his most recent work, Kingdom Hearts 2, Nomura’s new title Final Fantasy XIII Versus is not quite stealing the spotlight for most anticipated games. Perhaps due to it’s brethren being released under the simpler title Final Fantasy XIII, it hasn’t generated too much individualistic excitement. It so far is merely being considered as just another title in the subseries Fabula Nova Crystallis that Square Enix is so hard at work on. So what sets it apart to have been crowned as Versus?

Simply put, Nomura has finally gotten a chance to produce a game with the theme he has always wanted, namely darkness. The game is reputed to be much darker, much more serious, with an outlook attempting to elaborate more on the human aspects of the characters and the realism of the world that is supposedly only linked mythologically with Final Fantasy XIII’s world.

According to Nomura himself,

Nomura: “There’s been times when I’ve wanted to take FF in a completely different direction than the game’s producer has wanted. I’m not saying that his or mine opinions have been right or wrong, just different. One thing I’ve always wanted to explore deeper is human emotions. By going in that direction, you risk to make the target group for the game narrower, and FF is appreciated by a very large audience. But with Versus XIII, it feels like the right time to take that risk. Since the script isn’t done yet, I still don’t know exactly how far I dare to go, but I know I want to squeeze humanity out of these characters. I want Versus to feel in the entire body.”

It’s exciting to see a company willing to put faith in their developer enough to take a risk like Nomura describes it. Both exciting and refreshing.

Nomura has also said,

“When I produced Kingdom Hearts, I was in a world so bright that I almost got blinded. So now I want to do something completely different. Maybe it has something to do with my love for extremes. FFvXIII is about man in the real world. In that sense, the game will contain less fantasy than usual. We’ve created some dark environments and shown them in our trailers. But the entire game won’t look like that; we’ve only just begun.”

Even more evidence that the project will be very unique, and will incorporate very new ideas. For instance, Nomura has been quoted saying the game will even include more “real-world events”. His goal is to create a world the player truly believes in. This time around however, it will be integrated with the real world. Exactly how they will blend this together is a mystery, but an exciting one.

What this all means we have yet to see, but all together it seems Versus will surely stand apart as a next-gen RPG.

Famitsu loves Phantom Hourglass, and so should you

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Japan’s premier source for insider gaming information and reviews, Famitsu, has reportedly given the upcoming Zelda game for the Nintendo DS, The Phantom Hourglass, nearly perfect scores. The score is out of 40 points, judged by 4 reviews who each have 10 points to allocate. Three of the judges reportedly gave the game 10/10, while the fourth judge awarded 9/10, resulting in a composite score of 39. According to wikipedia, only 15 other games in the history of the publication have received such a score. More importantly, though, only 7 games have ever gotten 40, and one of them in Ocarina of Time. Everyone knows that Ocarina of Time is the yardstick to which every new Zelda game is measured, but Famitsu’s attempt is still relatively cute.

According to 1up.com:

Famitsu seemed fairly satisfied with the stylus controls. “It is so easy to pick up! There have been many games using the stylus, but this one didn’t feel frustrating for the most part,” said one. However, another was concerned about “parts where you may mistakenly perform a different move.”

The dungeons and puzzles are getting praises, though: “The way it allows players to use the unique features of the DS is quite natural. Particularly puzzles where you draw directly on the map are brilliant. It feels like you really are physically solving the puzzles.”

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass is set to release this weekend in Japan (Saturday, June 23), and is further schedule for a worldwide release during the holiday season 2007 (some sources say mid- to late-november). Personally, I will crushing small children under my bootheel to get this game as soon as it releases, and then playing it continuously until I pass out from sleep deprivation. I fully expect to fail college during the 2007 holday season.

The game is reportedly using near-3D quality graphics, utilizing cel-shading technology, since the DS is capable of supporting it more easily than a true 3D system. It’s also heavily utilizing the DS’s extensive stylus features, making it the first game since the game that came out just before it to do so.