News

I didn't write this news post last night for a few reasons: one, I wasn't able to focus on it very well. Two, I had a baby to put to bed because of how late Sony started in my time zone. Three, and maybe this was just because I don't own any current Sony devices, but it just wasn't very exciting, continuing the trend set earlier by Microsoft.

After introducing Kaz Hirai, in the crowd this year as the new leader of all of Sony, the company led with Beyond, a game from the makers of Heavy Rain that looked and sounded very much like Heavy Rain, distinguishable mainly by the new game having Ellen Page drop the f-bomb in the trailer. The next big game shown in detail was PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, the Vita/PS3 cross-play game that looks like Smash Bros. with a sketchier roster of characters. After that came a break where Jack Tretton talked for a while about why Sony's online offering is the best.

It was then back to the sequels; Ubisoft came in to show a new Vita game taking place around colonial New Orleans, with a new female Assassin, and the new ship-based battles available in the full AC3. Then there was FarCry 3 with four-player co-op, and after a long segment showing a J.K. Rowling-penned Move game, right back into the sequels with yet another God of War. The last new game wrapped up the keynote, with a gameplay demo of The Last of Us, which, good as it looked, still seems a lot like a "Nathan Drake in Zombie Apocalypse."

Did Sony have a better showing than Microsoft? It's hard to say. I tend to think that they both kind of just followed the same template as last year, and that's understandable given that this is probably the last E3 where their current consoles are the big news. Nintendo's going to be asking everyone to buy the new hardware, so the counterpoint offered by the other two is to talk about how great their new software is. It makes sense, but it's not exactly compelling.

Oh, and continuing the theme again - no mention of anything from Square Enix in this keynote. Nintendo will almost surely show Theatrhythm and Kingdom Hearts 3D today, but we'll probably need to do some more digging on our own to get the best information, and we'll be doing that soon as well.

You're here at the Caves of Narshe. You're reading this hoping for some RPG news. You're not getting it. Microsoft came out and just like last year, they had very little to offer other than games for the "core" and the opportunity to shove Kinect down our throats.

Now, don't get me wrong. Obviously there is a huge market for both of these things, or else they wouldn't keep showing up over and over again at E3. However, virtually every game that Microsoft showed was a sequel to a juggernaut franchise - Call of Duty, Gears of War, Forza. Of course, too, Halo. The Kinect offerings included the typical casual games and some content elaborating on how this year's EA Sports offerings will be more Kinect-enabled.

The big push beyond that this year has nothing to do with gaming at all. It was all about media, and all of the new video and audio that Xbox will be able to send to you, working towards meeting Microsoft's stated goal of becoming more than a gaming console. There was also an extensive demo of Microsoft's Smart Glass technology, intended to make your mobile and console devices interact with each other quickly on the fly to enhance the consumption of a variety of different content, be it games, TV, or movies, and also to potentially emulate the tablet interaction of the WiiU controller. All of these things have been expected, but it just seems to this author more and more like unless you're into console FPS or over-the-shoulder shooters, Microsoft really just doesn't care if you want their console.

That said, this has to be considered a pretty successful E3 keynote for Microsoft. Their talking points are all going to be very, very good for business. What doesn't appeal to me or (I assume) a lot of our readers here still appeals to a ton of folks. I just wish there were a little more to be really excited about.

Oh, and for Square Enix fans? There was one thing to look at, from Eidos: a new gameplay trailer of the Tomb Raider reboot. It looked pretty much just like last year, just with new scenery in which Lara gets beaten up thoroughly.

Am I being too hard on Microsoft, who announced that they were the biggest console company in the world as of this year? You tell me.

Almost two years ago, Square Enix announced a mobile game for Japan called "Final Fantasy Legends: Warriors of Light and Darkness," which astute readers might have learned about from this very website. The original Japanese release was an episodic game that looked strikingly similar to Final Fantasy IV, and included a five-character party with a job change system.

The news now is that the game's coming out again this summer, and it will now be called "Final Fantasy Dimensions." All the episodes will be smushed into one lump and the package will be available in the Apple iOS App Store. An exact release date is not known, as it's hard to predict an exact date with Apple; additionally, price and supported Apple devices are up in the air as well. The official site for the game is on Squenix' Japanese site; however, I'm not aware of any iOS game that the company has released that hasn't been available in multiple languages for worldwide release, so it should be a foregone conclusion that we're all getting access to it.

Source: andriasang

Okay, yes, there's even more Final Fantasy XIII-2 DLC coming. You want to know part of the reason why it's so hard for me to write tidbits these days? Even as much as I like Final Fantasy XIII (and have -2 sitting on my desk, waiting to be played), when most of the news coming out is about DLC, it starts to be a bit soul-deadening. My scarred essence notwithstanding, there's a lot coming down the chute in the near future: Snow and Valfodr are coming to the Colosseum next month, to be followed closely thereafter by a massive update including Lightning's "Requiem of the Goddess," White Mage and Black Mage costumes for Serah and Noel respectively, and a pack of sixteen different costumes for your Moogle. Oh, yeah, and Snow got put in Prada too, and they forgot to tell us before. Almost missed out on that one!

Now that we have that out of the way, check out the new Square Enix streaming music site, which is almost like a Pandora for Squenix tracks. Once you fight your way around the interface a bit, you can listen to tracks streamed through your browser from a variety of Squenix properties. The selection appears to be a bit small at the moment, but it's still a potentially interesting new branding push for the gaming juggernaut, as the music produced by Square Enix remains well-received even as the games it produces sometimes are less so. Were the company to add more tracks and improve the interface, this could be a big winner down the line.

For those waiting to try Dragon Quest X, the first MMO to be put in the hands of Enix' biggest property, you'll still be waiting a while. However, a release date has been announced for Japan, which naturally brings us in the West one hypothetical step closer to playing. The game will be out on 2 August in Japan for Wii; again, no information on whether it will appear as a WiiU launch title in any market. The game will cost 1000 yen per thirty days of play, with small discounts offered for paying instead in 60- or 90-day chunks. You'll be able to register 100 friends within the game, as well, and be able to see what servers they're on and potentially what they're up to. Additionally, the Japanese release will feature free play for children from time to time. There's no age limit, though - not that they'd be able to enforce it, really - and that makes it seem to me more like a creepy trap than anything else. The beta's going well, too, with it looking to expand to up to fifty thousand players in the near future, and 24-hour server uptime coming soon as well.

Source: Final Fantasy XIII Net, andriasang

People have been waiting for Versus XIII for a very long time, which certainly grated on those fans when they instead got Final Fantasy XIII-2 first. Personally, I find that a bit odd, given that it's hard for me to look down on a game in favor of a game that we've barely ever even seen, but to each their own and I digress anyway. The news here is that Squenix are now just flat-out trolling gamers by releasing some Versus XIII content not as a trailer video, or as a demo, but as a DLC track for Theatrhythm. The released track is nice enough, at least in its thirty-second snippet, a quiet piano track with a Japanese vocal. And, I'm sure that instead of actually being a troll, it's more of a "this is a way to show them that we're still going to release this game" sort of thing. Still hilarious if you think back to the fact that it's been over five years since news of the game started coming forth.

Speaking of Theatrhythm, that game was released on 4 April in Japan, and Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance released the week before in the same locale. Why is that again relevant? Because this week, both games got their North American release dates officially confirmed by Squenix. The launch order will be different over here; the music rhythm game will be out on 3 July and KH3D will drop on the last day of the month. Apparently there's a fairly critical bug in KH3D that can stop some players from continuing the game - I, unfortunately, have no idea what that is because it's only written up in Japanese. One would assume it would be fixed before the pending Western release.

If you thought the last bunch of Final Fantasy XIII-2 DLC was nuts, there's more this week, coming out in Japan on 10 April. This time, Noel can dress up as Ezio from Assassin's Creed, while Serah's new outfit is called "Exposure and Defense" and is based on one worn by a member of Japanese girlpop group AKB48. Also available at the same time will be Gilgamesh, who can be fought and added to your party as a Commando, and Final Fantasy VIII's PuPu (known as Koyo-Koyo in Japan), who can become a Medic. Only Serah's outfit will be free DLC, it seems. The costumes don't stop there, though; while they're not DLC, Final Fantasy XIII universe characters are going to appear in men's fashion magazine Arena Homme+ in the next issue. It appears that this magazine is British, though I've never seen one and therefore can't confirm firsthand; wherever it's published, it features new fashions for men from Prada draped on well-posed Final Fantasy characters, including Lightning. Sazh, in particular, is looking pretty suave.

We'll wrap this week with a bit of MMO news. First, Squenix have decided to do some public demos of Dragon Quest X this spring in Japan, starting at shopping malls in three cities. There won't be any new information coming from these, they're just a chance to get the game out in front of more people than the closed beta allows on its own.

Source: Kotaku, andriasang

Square-Enix's Seiken Densetsu or "Mana" series has hit hard times recently, with the unsuccessful dungeon crawler Children of Mana, real-time strategy RPG Heroes of Mana, and Havok physics-running Dawn of Mana. Yesterday evening series creator Koichi Ishii announced two upcoming titles in the storied series: Song of Mana for mobile devices and Shepherd of Mana for the PS3.

Song of Mana is a multiplayer rhythm game in which characters from earlier Mana games must save the Mana tree by occupying Mana Fields surrounding the Mana Tree in a circle, always numbering one fewer than the number of players; the players stand in a circle just outside of that. Tunes from throughout the Mana series are played - while the music is playing, the players in the circle walk in unison around the fields. When the music suddenly stops, everyone must race to enter one of the Mana Fields. The player who is left without a Field is eliminated from the game, and one Field is also removed to ensure that there will always be one fewer Field than there are players. The music resumes and the cycle repeats until there is only one player left in the game, who is the winner. The winner saves the world - winning a game of Song of Mana sends in-game currency and experience points to the characters in Shepherd of Mana.

Shepherd of Mana looks to be a big-budget extravaganza. Players design their own hero or heroine ("the Savior") and choose from a selection of job classes (Fighter and Mage are the only two revealed thus far) to determine their available weapons, skills, and spells. The player-character encounters a colorful cast of potential teammates throughout the adventure, and the characters he or she recruits and the decisions the Savior makes shapes Shepherd of Mana's plot, including endgame villains and the ending. All we know of the plot thus far is that the Mana spirits are being captured by a mysterious force known as The Sleepers and indoctrinated into performing acts of evil. The Savior and his or her allies must track down the spirits running amok and purify them with a Cane of Mana fashioned from a branch of the Mana Tree in order to harness their power and defeat the Sleepers.

Song of Mana and Shepherd of Mana will be released for iOS devices and the PS3 respectively in autumn of 2013. For heaven's sake, let's hope these turn out better than Dawn of Mana, which we all know was awful, bordering on sacrilege.

Source: Press release