News

Small and middle-size news items abound for the tidbits this week, around a wide variety of games. It all seems a bit haphazard, but, then, chaos does seem to be the new modus operandi of the sprawling Square Enix Eidos McDonald's Reebok empire these days, at least to us outsiders. Let's kick it off with the upcoming flagship releases.

This week, Famitsu spoke to Nomura and Hajime Tabata about Final Fantasy Type-0, and the biggest takeaway was more confirmation that the release date is slipping. Originally targeted for this summer in Japan, the Squenix bigwigs toed around the issue and implied that the release would be delayed from "short-sleeve" weather to "red leaves" weather. How poetic and not informative, yes? The implied reason is tied to the PSN outage and its impact on development of multiplayer play, which stings a bit since I don't think most western gamers have any interest in the multiplayer. If you do care, though, check out the recap of the interview, which goes into a little bit of detail regarding how the host/client mechanic works. Possibly coming next week in Famitsu, while we're on the topic, is more Final Fantasy Versus XIII information, of which there's been a significant drought for several months. This, too, comes from Nomura, so, one would hope that Famitsu will be playing ball and the update will be interesting and full of things that we didn't yet know.

If you read the forums, you might have already seen the thread about the Final Fantasy-themed rhythm game. Even if you read the forum thread, though, you probably didn't pick up that much. Part of that is that we simply don't know all that much about it, yet; it's got a TBA release date for the Nintendo 3DS, and there are some appearances from characters in Final Fantasy history, like Lightning, Cloud and the Onion Knight , and they're super-chibi-cute. Also, it's called Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy. That's a lot of name. Sadly, we don't know what the music will be yet: classic Final Fantasy tunes? New work? A mix of new, old, and remixes? We'll find out someday.

In Japan, the Mobage network is a free-to-play-plus-microtransaction mobile phone gaming platform. That's a mouthful, but you should get the point. Square Enix released this week a social RPG on the platform called "Gleipnora," which from its screenshots looks to be a text-heavy RPG with some level of static graphics to dress up the package. Depending on the level of the social interactivity required, I wouldn't expect to ever see this in the west.

In the PSN Game Archives series in Japan, the list of releases is ramping up again now that PSN is back even in that territory. Wednesday was the first new-release day since the outage, and as one would expect, a great number of titles were released that were probably ready to go a while back. Several of these are RPGs, such as Breath of Fire IV and Ys IV; one, though, is a polarizing Square Enix title - Chrono Cross. Might that make it as downloadable content for Europe and North America? I'd say it's not at all unlikely!

To finish up today, here's something completely random: eight minutes of stop-motion animation using Final Fantasy VII action figures. It's crazy good, especially when you consider that it's one guy doing it in his house.

Source: andriasang, Kotaku

As promised, here is the metric ton of FFXIII-2 news that has come up between now and E3!

First off, we have some new insights into event scenes. The player will be able to control the camera during plot event scenes. In addition, it appears that there will be cinematic action sequences during key battles.

A bit more character knowledge is available as well. We know that two of the central characters will be Serah, Lightning's sister, and Noel/Noal, whom we know essentially nothing about. There will also be a moogle named Mog. In keeping with the transformers theme of FFXIII, he will be capable of changing into Serah's swordbow. The characters from the original game will make appearances as well, though we cannot tell yet how significant their presence will be.

The battle system appears to be the same as its predecessor's at heart, but with a few tweaks. When approaching enemies, a small on-screen clock will appear. Depending on how quickly you attack (reflected by the color of the clock), you may either enter the battle with an advantage, an even playing field or a disadvantage. While the standard three-character limit in battles will once again be observed, FFXIII-2 will mix up the cards a bit; characters can more or less capture enemies and harness them to fight alongside the party in battle. Though there are still many unanswered questions relating to this new feature, it has been stated that over 100 enemies will be available for use by the game's heroes and that up to two monsters can be employed in battle at once.

Apparently, there will be considerably less story linearity, if not location linearity. Players will be able to choose their own tactics in certain situations which will alter how the events that follow play out. Furthermore, Square Enix has confirmed that there will be multiple endings, and that these endings hinge on certain choices available to the player throughout the game.

A few plot elements have been revealed as well, though these are characteristically vague. Isamu Kamikokuryo, art director for FFXIII-2, gave a recent interview in which he shared that the sequel will take a much darker direction. "[t]he civilization of Cocoon has met its end, and we're depicting the recovery process that follows. It's not a bright future, it's a time of hardship." Kamikokuryo said that the game's art style will reflect this mood. He also emphasized the importance of an afterlife-world in the entire Fabula Nova Crystallis universe. In FFXIII-2, this afterlife-world will be especially important to the plot, and the player will even be able to visit it. Lightning is somehow connected to this world in an important way (this is where her armor comes from as well). Perhaps this piece of information will help explain the dialogue at the end of the E3 trailer: "Get ahold of yourself! Lightning is dead!"

Kamikokuryo also alluded to some type of gate that players could use to travel to new locations that were not seen in the previous title. Location seems to be one thing the team is interested in doing well this time around; old locations will be given new depth, and many new ones will be added. The main setting of the game will be Gran Pulse, according to Kamikokuryo, but there will also be high-tech cities, and the team is striving to make all areas complex and detailed both in layout and scenery. He mentioned that his greatest regret from FFXIII was that many locations had to be rushed through by the player; in this new title, one of the team's goals is to allow the player to "explore that reality, the lives of the people living there... the feeling of being able to touch another world."

The final bit of news concerning FFXIII-2 is that the release date, originally projected to fall during late 2011, has now been pushed back to early 2012. It's worth checking out the FFXIII-2 E3 trailer on the official webpage, where several of these new developments can be seen in action.

Source: IGN, IGN, Andriasang

There's a whole bunch of fun little news snippets for this past week-ish, so let's get at it!

First off, there's the fact that FFVI has been released on the virtual console, as already posted by Blitzsage in the forums (no such thing as a fanboy acting too quickly :D).

To celebrate the series' 25th anniversary, Dragon Quests I, II and III will be released as a package for the Wii. The set will also include Dragon Quest X bonus footage and will see a September 15th release date in Japan. Not sure yet for the North American or European audiences.

This year will also mark the 20th anniversary of the Mana series, meaning that, unsurprisingly, Square Enix will be celebrating once again with some type of promotion. In this case, it is a gigantic soundtrack that will be doing the honors: a 19-disc, 21,000-yen (that's about $260), spiffy lookin' soundtrack set that will be available for sale in Japan on September 14.

There's some notable staffer news as well; Square Enix's Yasumi Matsuno, the man behind Final Fantasy XII, Tactics Ogre and Vagrant Story (one of my personal favorites) has jumped ship in favor of Level-5. The move was made in order to achieve more creative freedom; he wants to be able to make whatever he wants. Matsuno has already begun work on a new project, one he hopes will be played by children.

In addition to these, there is quite a lot of new or recently-reviewed FFXIII-2 news to report, but I'll hold off on that until tomorrow. Toodle-oo!

Source: Andriasang, Andriasang, Kotaku

It's finally summer, and, in addition to love, a bit of post-E3 Square Enix news is in the air.

First off, the folks over at SE have hired artists to create original pieces based on Deus Ex: Human Revolution based on the game's futuristic setting and moral issues. These artists have each been asked to create one poster design relating in one aspect or another to body augmentation. Proceeds from the art, which will be displayed in New York City for two weeks starting on July 28th, will be donated to education in the arts.

There's been some speculation regarding whether Dragon Quest X will be announced for the Wii U. Series composer Koichi Sugiyama recently stated that he was working for a new DQ soundtrack to be completed by 2012. While this doesn't necessarily point to anything specific, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada, when questioned about DQX at Square Enix's last shareholder meeting, said that he hoped to be able to release the game for both the Wii and Wii U. Ideally, Wada said that he would like to see the tenth installment of the franchise released as a Wii U launch title.

Many other questions were fielded at the shareholder meeting. One of these was the PSN outage: how much the company had lost due to the situation and whether or not they would seek compensation. Wada also announced that Square Enix would be working on ports of the Mana series. He recognized that the newest Front Mission title got terrible reviews and said that he wished they would have spent more time working on the game. On the brighter side, he expressed optimism towards the company's various forays into the realm of social networking.

In somewhat more trivial news, it appears that Square Enix has quietly uploaded both Final Fantasy VII and VIII to Steam. Don't get too excited, though; these ports will likely never see the light of day. Or the light of your basement--whatever. The steam files are slightly improved copies of the Eidos-released PC versions, improvements which were meant to boost compatibility on modern systems. That said, the files haven't been edited in over a year, leading us to believe that, for whatever reason, Square Enix has given up on the project.

That's it for now, we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for more SE news over the summer months.

Source: Destructoid, Kotaku, Andriasang

I know you're here at the Caves of Narshe because you play RPGs, specifically Square Enix RPGs, specifically Final Fantasy games. Well, if you've not been following E3 this week, I've got news for you: there's precious little of that to be had here today. With E3 wrapped, here's what Square Enix hit heavy.

The biggest coverage to come out of the conference had everything to do with Eidos. The Tomb Raider reboot, which really did look very nice, got a lot of press (including a long-form controlled demo early in Microsoft's keynote). That game is still scheduled to come out next year, but the progress so far looked pretty impressive for a game that far out. Later in E3, the Hitman series took center stage, with a big crowd for the debut trailer. Absolution, the new title, is also due out in 2012. Deus Ex was also everywhere - a third title that a couple years ago would have been part of Eidos' booth, but fortuitously has fallen under Square Enix' umbrella due to smart corporate buyouts.

For the core RPG/Final Fantasy output of E3 2011, you really can't look much further than Final Fantasy XIII-2. We reported earlier in the week that a new, longer trailer debuted during E3, and while I admit that I haven't watched it (as I'm afraid of spoilers, since I still have yet to beat the first one!), it seems to have at least generated buzz, though of course it's not universally positive. One thing that surprised me, though, is that the game was actually playable at E3, as evidenced by these videos posted by Kotaku earlier in the week. RPGSite managed to get an interview with the director and producer of the game, as well, during the tumult of E3.

There was no news about Type-0 or the new Kingdom Hearts that I've seen come from E3, which is very disappointing. I can't speak for whether they simply had no presence at E3, or if the presence they did have was merely news old enough that it wasn't worth reporting, but there was almost certainly nothing new at all to appear. However, the official Type-0 site updated as E3 was closing, with some new screenshots and character reveals, so all is not lost there.

In other happy news emerging from E3, Square Enix announced a big, round number from the Final Fantasy series, and you have to admit it's impressive: the Final Fantasy series as a whole has now shipped over one hundred million copies worldwide. That's more than four million copies of the games every single year - maybe that's not a huge feat given the many remakes over the years, but you have to think back to the eighties and early nineties, when there just weren't that many from which to choose. The company, wisely, didn't talk about whether that includes just the core numbered series or also sideline series like Tactics, the Final Fantasy VII Compilation, or games that were called "Final Fantasy" in some regions but not others.

Even knowing that milestone, you'd be forgiven for being generally disappointed in Square Enix at E3 this year. I would have expected a stronger showing myself, if I'm perfectly honest. But, if you're unhappy with the company's performance, you're not the only one. Even at least one Square Enix executive shares concern over the company's core game franchises, going so far as to call the lack of Japanese output from the company at E3 "humiliating." Is there a way to bounce back from this? Koji Taguchi, the aforementioned executive, is clearly worried about it. Got any advice for him that doesn't start and end with "remake Final Fantasy VII?"

That does it for E3 this year, as far as CoN is concerned. Hope you enjoyed our recaps and editorials, and we'll be back with more of the same when it's time for the Tokyo Game Show in a couple months, where one hopes Squenix will be back with more gusto. If I missed anything good, make sure to respond and set me straight!

Nintendo was the main event on Tuesday, and based on announcements from earlier this year coupled with their performance in E3 conferences from previous years, expectations were high. Nintendo did not disappoint.

Right away, it was obvious that Nintendo was here to make a statement as we were introduced to the 25th anniversary of the Zelda series via a live orchestra. Shigeru Miyamoto and Bill Trinen talked about the many high points of the series as a whole, interacting occasionally with the orchestra to play some sound effects, then announced a few small things. First off, some port of Link's Awakening is coming to 3DS virtual console, and everyone can get a free copy of Four Swords. They also announced a concert tour of Zelda music, promised to come to "every region" of the world, so you can expect to travel to Papua New Guinea or Albania to hear orchestras perform your favorite songs from the series.

The Zelda bit was a bit underwhelming, with a lot of flair but not much substance, but the next segment - introduced by Satoru Iwata - was an instant remedy to a very un-Nintendo lackluster launch to the 3DS handheld system. We were treated to an incredibly impressive array of 3DS games promised to be out by this year's holiday season. We were shown a brief view of five key Nintendo titles to come out, and then Reggie Fils-Aime came out to show them in detail.

He began with the announcement of a new Mario Kart title. Though not a lot of details were given, it was promised to be tricked-out and clearly featured some hovering and flying elements along with some underwater racing. The karts seemed to transform a bit - nothing huge and out-of-character for the series - to accomodate the environments in which they were placed. The karts seemed a lot more customizable, as spoken about in CoNChat: "Bowser in a Mini Cooper." -R51

Following Mario Kart was probably the most impressive of the 3DS titles - Star Fox. The first push of the presentation showed gameplay from the outside - actually looking at the console as the game was played. They really pushed the fact that you can use the built-in accelerometer and gyroscopes to play Star Fox by turning the system itself instead of using the traditional controls if you wished. The screen images were small, but it appeared to be a pretty archetypal Star Fox game...until they got to the multiplayer piece. It looked like a pretty fantastic game that utilizes the cameras in a way to show player reactions to kills, whether the victim or the perpetrator. We don't yet know whether or not the multiplayer is WiFi enabled, but given that the original Mario Kart DS was enabled in that regard, gamers should expect that Nintendo would follow suit here. Anything less would be a disappointment and a mistake.

Smack dab in the middle of the 3DS announcements came a new Super Mario Bros game, SMB3D. Though Reggie seemed to be pretty excited about it, nothing that was shown in the trailer looked really innovative for the franchise. It looked very much like a Mario 64 universe, with improved graphics and some relics from the past thrown in, such as the raccoon suit from Super Mario Bros 3. Though it was one of the weaker titles shown, it simply wouldn't be a Nintendo console without a Mario platformer on it...it just seems like it would've been much better suited as a launch title.

Next up came the continued revival of #welovepit in the form of Kid Icarus: Uprising. A heck of a lot of gameplay was shown for this, including a character who looked suspiciously like Jecht from Final Fantasy X. It was very action-packed, with some platforming sequences and some flying through the air. It also featured a nice-looking multiplayer mode that almost felt like Kid Icarus meets Dissidia from how the action appeared to work. Finally, there was an augmented reality card game along with the actual game, but not a whole lot details were given there. A nice and simple summary quote came in CoNChat: "I wasn't at all excited for this game but this looks good." - FallingHeart

Finally, an unexpected series came back to the forefront as Reggie announced Luigi's Mansion 2. Having never played the original game, I can't comment on whether or not this was vastly different from the original, but the gameplay looked fun with more mansion exploration, and Reggie promised that there would be multiple mansions to explore, which made me wonder if there were complaints with the length of the original game.

Following these five came a look at what some 3rd party developers were creating for the 3DS, including but not limited to Cave Story 3D, Pacman, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D, Eggman Badminton, and Tetris. There was also a less-than-exciting Pokemon 3D announcement that only seemed to be about the Pokedex. I described it as "like Pokemon but not fun".

Amazingly, Nintendo wasn't even at their most impressive following this pile of must-own 3DS titles. After months of speculation, the official announcement of Nintendo's next console arrived. It is called the WiiU, which was explained in a somewhat confusing manner about putting You back into the We so when We play the Wii, wii are incorporating You into the equation, so that You are never forgotten when We are playing Wii with U.

The first announcement with the WiiU came via the controller. It almost looks like an Amazon Kindle, with a 6.2" touchscreen placed right on the front of the controller itself, surrounded by two joysticks, a D-pad, and the regular buttons that you've come to expect from a Nintendo console. The controller is highly interactive with the system, as you can play entire games on that screen if the television isn't available. It was shown being used as a drawing tablet, being used as an Othello board, being used as a targeting scope to assassinate Miyamoto in some bizarre peeping tom game. The controller also had a camera and showed a couple of people using it to videochat.

More importantly, the touchscreen on the controller can act as a second screen for the video games themselves - similar to the touch-enabled bottom screen of a DS - if you have access to the actual screen. It is highly interactive with the original Wiimote as well, as we were shown a golf game in which your lie was shown on the new controller, you used the Wiimote as a club, and the television showed the course and your surroundings. They showed a potential Zelda game in which the touchscreen was the item-select menu so gameplay on the main screen would never have to be interrupted.

Even though the new controller is much different than the Wiimote, they are still going to incorporate most of the same hardware within the Wiimote to improve upon gameplay. For example, there was a game where you slide across the top of the touchscreen the fling shurikens, and one where you have to hold the new controller in a specific position to shield yourself from incoming arrows. Additionally, there was a pretty neat-looking game called Mii Chase where only one person has the new controller - giving them an advantage with an additional view - and everyone else is forced to control themselves with the Wiimote.

Once we were all introduced to the WiiU, Iwata came back out and dropped yet another bomb - a new Smash Bros game would be developed that would somehow be cross-platform between the 3DS and WiiU. Legitimately no details outside of this were given, but it was met with rousing applause at both the conference and within CoNChat.

Following Nintendo's own personal announcements came some testimonials from the heads of third-party developers talking about their own reactions to the WiiU and how they could possibly make use of it. The first third party game looked like some bizarre Lego Grand Theft Auto game, and it was followed by titles such as Darksiders 2, Tekken, Batman: Arkham City, Assassin's Creed, Ghost Recon, Ninja Gaiden, and Madden - many of which offer interesting changes for Nintendo as they are first-time appearances on their consoles and are much more violent than most offerings on the original Wii.