In this weeks Japan column, we look at Hironobu Sakaguchi's Lost Odyssey, the game that could steal the Tokyo Game Show and reverse Xbox 360s fortunes over there
At TGS, theres still plenty of hope that some game will emerge and shock the daylights out of us all the way Dead Rising did last year. Lost Odyssey could be that game.
Readers of this column will remember my being almost unreasonably excited about this game. It's developed by Mistwalker, a studio founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the man whose Final Fantasy series raised a tiny developed called Squaresoft to the status of a workhorse, a man whose Final Fantasy VII, ten years later, turned Squaresoft into an internationally acclaimed producer of world-class entertainment. The gamers' reaction to Final Fantasy VII, which used copious full-motion video to earn players' awe, was that it looked better than other videogames. It was huge. It spawned legions of fans.
When creator Hironobu Sakaguchi once again flexed his ambitions to engulf the world, it was in the form of a computer-generated movie with the Final Fantasy name on it, which was a colossal box-office failure. Square assigned Sakaguchi to the proverbial Desk in the Corner, and went about creating sequels that capitalized on Japanese animation trends, appealing solely to the consumers who had been most wowed by Final Fantasy VII.
Years later, Sakaguchi stood up and left his office. He started a developer called Mistwalker. Sakaguchi's idea was to craft "new" games. Games that didn't owe anything to the past. Games with big themes, telling moving tales. The first two announced were Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, both for the underdog Xbox 360 system, which Japan, even until now, has been rejecting like a bad kidney transplant.
Iconic comic artist
Both games are designed mainly by Sakaguchi, and have music by much-adored composer of the Final Fantasy soundtrack, Nobuo Uematsu. Blue Dragon will feature the art of iconic Japanese comic artist Akira Toriyama, and Lost Odyssey will feature characters and landscapes imagined by Takehiko Inoue, a manga artist who got pop-culture mass-fame for writing a long-running comic series about high school basketball, and now takes the breath away from readers once weekly with "Vagabond," the drop-dead amazing, literature-worth re-telling of the life of the legendary rival swordsmen Musashi Miyamoto and Kojiro Sasaki.
Furthermore, the story for Lost Odyssey would be written by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, a renowned novelist. That game's pedigree was astounding. But while it jumped into the Famitsu weekly magazine's "most wanted" polls here and there. It never stuck around too long. Well, I suppose now would be the time for it to start sticking around.
Sakaguchi was interviewed in this week's pre-TGS Famitsu, and he laid out a lot of details. He talks about how Takehiko Inoue was precisely the artist he imagined when the idea popped into his head. He talks about the importance of the scenario, and quality. He talks about how absolutely important it is that the game's visuals stay consistent -- the same character models used for cut-scenes, battles, and exploration phases (for this purpose, they used the Unreal Engine).
Reading this, I think how Sakaguchi has really come into his own. After the economical failure that resulted from his first foray into filmmaking, Sakaguchi seems to have really learned how and when to lean on people. He has indeed amassed a team of the "best people" -- his "favorite people," as he's said. This week's showing in Famitsu is splendid. Though only a few shots appear -- detailing a robot, a battle menu screen with heroes fighting a monster, and a long view of a city -- they combine with the words to create a very sure aura around the game.
The city suggests Final Fantasy VII grown-up 100%. Sakaguchi has explained how making Lost Odyssey is a delightful procedure for him because he's free to be create and encourage creativity without being tied up with too many expectations. For example, every Final Fantasy game needed to bring back popular characters or risk alienation from series fans. This is why furry characters like Moogles and Chocobos returned time after time, even when they were terribly out of place in some instances. (To spare myself emails begging an explanation, I will mention: "Final Fantasy VIII" and "Chocobos".) Lost Odyssey is a clean slate. There are no expectations other than that it's made by the man who created Final Fantasy.
Sakaguchi said his goals were, first and foremost, to tell a story, and second, to evoke an atmosphere. It was the atmosphere of Takehiko Inoue's samurai romance "Vagabond" that he wanted to evoke -- desolate, sweeping, gray vistas, long travels to and from decadent cities, and men of honor seeking fulfillment in a confused age. With these two goals in mind, Sakaguchi would create a videogame with the help of the "best people".
The systems, too, seem interesting. The battles are a near-direct translation of Final Fantasy, which is by no means a "rip-off", because it's Sakaguchi's system. He's merely using familiar tools. However, Sakaguchi guarantees multiple intriguing hooks all over the surface of the game. For example, the main character is somehow cursed with immortality, and can't die -- if his hit points are reduced to zero, he'll stand back up after a few rounds. However, all of the other characters can die, and die forever. Yet when they die, the hero absorbs their abilities.
Piece of work
From all that's been written on paper, this game is a Final-Fantasy-class piece of work, at least. The easiest way to determine this is to look at the credits, and note the overlap. Furthermore, the pedigree is, to say it again, astounding. Anyone who's disappointed that Final Fantasy character designers Tetsuya Nomura or Akihiko Yoshida aren't doing the character design probably plans to dress up as Sephiroth at their wedding, so they hardly count as general consumers. Besides, Takehiko Inoue is a world-class artist, whereas Tetsuya Nomura and/or Akihiko Yoshida are, to put it quite bluntly, guys who can draw real well and also design characters for videogames sometimes.
The question is, are people willing to buy an unpopular system to have a chance to own this game? Hironobu Sakaguchi's gall is legendary -- he is pitting this game and Blue Dragon, on Xbox 360, against Final Fantasy XIII on PlayStation 3. When Blue Dragon launches, Xbox 360 will only cost around the equivalent of $250 in Japan. What Microsoft needs at Tokyo Game Show is a game to stand against everything on the PlayStation 3, and swat each game down one at a time. They need something that people can look at, and say, "That looks really good."
Well, I have seen the demo of Lost Odyssey in action. The game is so very grown-up and pieced together with such seamless virtuousity that I really don't know what to say. I'm impressed as I've ever been with a videogame. It is beautiful. I'm about as excited about it now, as a fully functioning (really), independent adult, as I was excited about Final Fantasy VII as a college student, as I was about Final Fantasy IV as much younger man. I look forward to this game.
Seeing (and playing) is believing, and I am a believer in Lost Odyssey. My immediate judgment is a belief that it will sell this console to at least a million Japanese gamers. And Microsoft must think so too its going to make sure this game is everywhere. It will be featured most prominently at the companys booth at Tokyo Game Show, and, if its promise to host all show-floor demos on Xbox Live holds true, that should mean this game's demo will be available for download next Wednesday night.
In addition, Sakaguchi proudly announces in the interview that the demo will be packed in with the issue of Famitsu released on October 20th. Quite auspicious -- just two weeks before the Xbox 360 price drop and three weeks before the PlayStation 3 launch. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft announced at Tokyo Game Show that Blue Dragon was being released on the same day as PlayStation 3.
There are people all over the Japanese game industry who doubt Lost Odyssey will have an impact. These people mostly quote sad statistics about how sequels sell, and they're safer business bets. These statistics are called statistics for a reason, yes; still, it's inspiring to have someone like Hironobu Sakaguchi around to defy them. He wants to make new games. Some are skeptical that he's giving Microsoft "false hopes" and just "using" the money to throw together a game. I say this is not the case, because the creative people he has making his game, if the demo tells no lies, are getting paid very well to make a hell of a product. If it's positioned as well marketing-wise as it's starting to look like it is, Sakaguchi might just make a miracle, and might just strike a resounding blow against the syndrome that's been plauging the Japanese games industry for a decade, that being the syndrome that fols people into believing "People don't make games, NUMBERS make games."
Squares TGS Games
Also in this week's Famitsu is a detailed spread on Square-Enix's Tokyo Game Show titles.
Heroes of Mana is a strategy-RPG based in the "Mana" world, for Nintendo DS. The "Mana" world is, yes, one of Square-Enix's franchises, which has a cult of devoted fans who believe "Mana" games are better than all other games -- people whose memories cannot EVER be betrayed, because their memories have no enemies. All Mana games look positively brilliant to a Mana fan. They're never disappointed. This is the kind of audience post-Final Fantasy VII Square has excelled in creating. My impression of the screenshots is that the enemies' life bars take up most of the damned screen. Also, the hero's name is Roger...
Also, there's Seiken Densetsu 4 for PlayStation 2 -- that's also a "Mana" game. It looks like it's going to play like Kingdom Hearts, except with no Disney, and no Final Fantasy.
Square is also releasing the first Seiken Densetsu for cellular phones! Be still my beating heart! I was starting to worry that the Game Boy Advance remake's price drop to a sub-floor 500 yen meant we'd never get to replay that game again!
Oh, I'm kidding -- kind of. I'm sure all of these will be games more well-made than, say, licensed anime fighting games, or whatever other sludge pours out of the pipes on a regular basis.
Same goes for Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, which is a Final Fantasy XII game set in a super-happy pre-war era, starring the main characters Vaan and Penelo as they hop around being delighted at air-piracy. All I can say now is that the art for the game looks cute, and that reusing characters from Final Fantasy games in their own new adventures is now, officially, something Square-Enix does professionally.
More zany news keeps flowing in -- Yasumi Matsuno, who left the Final Fantasy XII project after an illness incurred when large numbers of his key staff walked out to join Sakaguchi, showed up at the Nintendo Wii unveiling Wednesday in Tokyo, to preach about how much he loves the system. He loves the way the controller works, and how it can be used to express nuances deeper than, say, first-person-shooting. He announced that he is designing a game for the system. The developer is not announced, though it was clear from his attitude that he is, once again, a working man. And that the developer isn't Square-Enix, because Square-Enix does not let a developer speak in public without a Square-Enix logo visible somewhere nearby.
Rumors earlier this year pointed to Matsuno's involvement with Cavia, a little studio beloved for its workmanship by many quirky hardcore gamers. I have observed Cavia with great interest, lately, and have prescribed, above all else, that it hires someone with narrative and dramatic flair. I believe Matsuno to be a perfect fit.
Of note is that Cavia falls under the AQ Interactive umbrella of developers, which also includes Hironobu Sakaguchi's Mistwalker. This means, if Matsuno is working there, he's tangentially working with Sakaguchi again.
Sakaguchi had previously called Matsuno the most talented man in the Japanese games industry.
Wii Late to Japan
You know this already, probably. It's coming on December 2nd, and for 25,000 yen. Damn it.
It will, however, be region-free, so maybe I can purchase an American one?
It will not contain a pack-in game in Japan. Games will be sold between 4,800 yen and 6,800 yen. Wii Sports is one of the 4,800-yen games. Gameboy Advance games, for comparison, usually sold for around 6,000 yen. DS games sell for between 4,080 and 5,890.
None of the Wii launch games for Japan look too overly interesting. Taito and Hudson are releasing some real groaners, like FuriFuri, a throwaway party game where you use the Wiimote to spin wheels or throw darts. It has an unexplainable "puppies and kittens in feudal Japan" look from the screenshots. Games like THE DOG Island are pretty groan-worthy as well -- "THE DOG", in case you don't know, is a brand of stationery, featuring dogs photographed with fisheye lenses. How can you make a game out of a stationery mascot? I guess you just celebrate the dogs for being cute? You pet them with the Wiimote.
Certainly, as with the DS, this console will not explode sales-wise until it has that game that cracks it open. Brain Training cracked open the DS. I take it Super Mario Galaxy will crack open the Wii. I could be wrong -- Wii Sports could be immediately amusing enough to enough people to cause crazy sales. It's all up in the air.
Personally, though Wii Sports is a reasonable game, as clear about how the Wii works as a system as a frying pan is, visually, a lesson in frying hotcakes, at present, from where I'm standing, The Nintendo Wii Ain't Hotcakes. It's just a buttered frying pan.
Ahh, hell, I'll get one, anyway.
--you can email tim rogers at tim108(at)gmail(dot)com