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XSEED E3 line up [Brandish, Senran, Story of Seasons, Akiba's, Corpse Party]

So in the middle of all the other madness goin' on here, wanted to give this a little bump (since the XSEED folks will be on the floor later today!) and chime in:

Some of the fault of the delay of SC in particular falls, unquestionably, on my head. Even setting aside handling All Dem Words, there have been... difficulties, shall we say, on my end unrelated to the project directly that have still slowed my workflow significantly, particularly over the past few months. We're still on target for a release this year - on a personal level, I really want Trails to land in the US and EU this year as part of the series' wider 10th anniversary celebration, to go along with Sen 2 in Japan - but things have been slower than anticipated and I'll be honest and admit that some of the blame for that has to be mine.

That said, as Tom as indicated in other threads, even if I could wave my hands and have an absolute, complete, edited-and-insertion-ready script done tomorrow, there have still been significant technical challenges surrounding the Trails games. No one was quite ready for just how badly the game would react to modification and modernization, and Sara's been having to bang a series of wrenches very hard on the code just to get the engine working, and this has been on top of other commitments like her work on Corpse Party PC. (Hint: you want to talk based, y'all should be talkin' 'bout Based Sara Leen and how she's been consistently facilitating awesome for the past two years and counting.)

The good news on that front is that there is a light at the end of that tunnel, and as a bit of teasing I actually got to see some of the fruits of all that labor the very day before E3 Day Zero. Which was another reason the Trails games didn't make E3 - things are still changing, and with what's now been accomplished on the technical side, the build a week or two from now would barely even resemble the current working build that would theoretically be brought to E3.

It is still coming, and at this point I can check a new build almost every week and see Trails get better. It just wasn't quite ready for E3 this time around. Which, ultimately, is fine, as XSEED has a ton of other stuff to show off on the show floor.
 

Hastati

Member
So in the middle of all the other madness goin' on here, wanted to give this a little bump (since the XSEED folks will be on the floor later today!) and chime in:

Some of the fault of the delay of SC in particular falls, unquestionably, on my head. Even setting aside handling All Dem Words, there have been... difficulties, shall we say, on my end unrelated to the project directly that have still slowed my workflow significantly, particularly over the past few months. We're still on target for a release this year - on a personal level, I really want Trails to land in the US and EU this year as part of the series' wider 10th anniversary celebration, to go along with Sen 2 in Japan - but things have been slower than anticipated and I'll be honest and admit that some of the blame for that has to be mine.

That said, as Tom as indicated in other threads, even if I could wave my hands and have an absolute, complete, edited-and-insertion-ready script done tomorrow, there have still been significant technical challenges surrounding the Trails games. No one was quite ready for just how badly the game would react to modification and modernization, and Sara's been having to bang a series of wrenches very hard on the code just to get the engine working, and this has been on top of other commitments like her work on Corpse Party PC. (Hint: you want to talk based, y'all should be talkin' 'bout Based Sara Leen and how she's been consistently facilitating awesome for the past two years and counting.)

The good news on that front is that there is a light at the end of that tunnel, and as a bit of teasing I actually got to see some of the fruits of all that labor the very day before E3 Day Zero. Which was another reason the Trails games didn't make E3 - things are still changing, and with what's now been accomplished on the technical side, the build a week or two from now would barely even resemble the current working build that would theoretically be brought to E3.

It is still coming, and at this point I can check a new build almost every week and see Trails get better. It just wasn't quite ready for E3 this time around. Which, ultimately, is fine, as XSEED has a ton of other stuff to show off on the show floor.

I'm still just happy that you guys are releasing it at all. No need to apologize, the games you have shown us for E3 all look pretty interesting, just keep up the good work!
 
Thanks for the update. Sucks that we'll have to wait a bit longer to play the game, but heck we've already been waiting quite some time so a bit more waiting won't kill us! Just excited to finally play the game one day.

Until then I guess we'll just wipe our tears in the bosom of the Senran Kagura games and XSeed's other offerings.
 
So in the middle of all the other madness goin' on here, wanted to give this a little bump (since the XSEED folks will be on the floor later today!) and chime in:

Some of the fault of the delay of SC in particular falls, unquestionably, on my head. Even setting aside handling All Dem Words, there have been... difficulties, shall we say, on my end unrelated to the project directly that have still slowed my workflow significantly, particularly over the past few months. We're still on target for a release this year - on a personal level, I really want Trails to land in the US and EU this year as part of the series' wider 10th anniversary celebration, to go along with Sen 2 in Japan - but things have been slower than anticipated and I'll be honest and admit that some of the blame for that has to be mine.

That said, as Tom as indicated in other threads, even if I could wave my hands and have an absolute, complete, edited-and-insertion-ready script done tomorrow, there have still been significant technical challenges surrounding the Trails games. No one was quite ready for just how badly the game would react to modification and modernization, and Sara's been having to bang a series of wrenches very hard on the code just to get the engine working, and this has been on top of other commitments like her work on Corpse Party PC. (Hint: you want to talk based, y'all should be talkin' 'bout Based Sara Leen and how she's been consistently facilitating awesome for the past two years and counting.)

The good news on that front is that there is a light at the end of that tunnel, and as a bit of teasing I actually got to see some of the fruits of all that labor the very day before E3 Day Zero. Which was another reason the Trails games didn't make E3 - things are still changing, and with what's now been accomplished on the technical side, the build a week or two from now would barely even resemble the current working build that would theoretically be brought to E3.

It is still coming, and at this point I can check a new build almost every week and see Trails get better. It just wasn't quite ready for E3 this time around. Which, ultimately, is fine, as XSEED has a ton of other stuff to show off on the show floor.
Thanks for the update.

I'm glad to hear that things are starting to turn a corner.
 

Knurek

Member
So in the middle of all the other madness goin' on here, wanted to give this a little bump (since the XSEED folks will be on the floor later today!) and chime in:

I'm looking forward to all Kiseki games being brought here, but the thing that's really important is whether Okkotos and Territoire will see Steam release/translation.
You see, I've been throwing money at the screen and still can't put them in the basket...
 

UberTag

Member
I just hope these games aren't so dated that they'll struggle to find an audience.
We're two weeks removed from Sora no Kiseki's 10-year anniversary.

That's a big reason why there's so much anxiety the longer these games stay in the oven. I almost wish Falcom had ported the HD edition of the games released on PS3 a year and a half ago over to both Vita and PC and taken a lot of the pain out of this localization process for XSEED. It's almost like Falcom doesn't even realize what they have on their hands with this franchise. Especially when titles like Ni no Kuni and Xenoblade are OUTSELLING their domestic releases by a handsome margin.
 
Even setting aside handling All Dem Words, there have been... difficulties, shall we say, on my end unrelated to the project directly that have still slowed my workflow significantly, particularly over the past few months.

Bummer. Hope everything clears up for you soon! And thanks for the update.

I just hope these games aren't so dated that they'll struggle to find an audience.

Honestly I think we've looped back around from the time when general-purpose JRPGs with 2D graphics were seen as generic and unnecessary, back to the point where they're seen as rare and special things again!
 

wyrdwad

XSEED Localization Specialist
Honestly I think we've looped back around from the time when general-purpose JRPGs with 2D graphics were seen as generic and unnecessary, back to the point where they're seen as rare and special things again!

Yeah, this. If anything, I think a lot of Falcom's PC titles have a "retro chic" thing going for them that wouldn't have really worked nearly as well in the U.S. market 10 years ago as it would today.

-Tom
 
Honestly I think we've looped back around from the time when general-purpose JRPGs with 2D graphics were seen as generic and unnecessary, back to the point where they're seen as rare and special things again!

Yeah, this. If anything, I think a lot of Falcom's PC titles have a "retro chic" thing going for them that wouldn't have really worked nearly as well in the U.S. market 10 years ago as it would today.

-Tom

This is actually pretty in line with my thinking as well; the only worry I have is that some people will be a little turned off by the fact that the actual textures and sprites aren't pixel perfect at true high-definition resolutions, and that the textures generally lack significant normal-mapping. The actual gameplay is going to charm the pants off of people, though, and on a personal level I think they work better as PC games than they do as PSP games, from the perspective of a gameplay experience.
 

Eusis

Member
Yeah, this. If anything, I think a lot of Falcom's PC titles have a "retro chic" thing going for them that wouldn't have really worked nearly as well in the U.S. market 10 years ago as it would today.

-Tom
Well, I do wonder. The reception on PS2 would've been lukewarm, but there really might have been a novelty thing going on with them on PC because holy crap Japanese PC RPGs actually got brought over!

Still, novelty's just half of the equation. Digital distribution was the other that really smoothed things over, and even though Steam EXISTED a decade ago (it had to, we're also nearing the 10 year anniversary of HL2) it wasn't as if you could've just gotten the games there then like you could now, though I do wonder if that could've made things work even better or not.

... Well, I think with the next generation there was at least some temporary backlash towards JRPGs, personally I was kinda disappointed with where they were but before very long I better appreciated what they brought that WRPGs were neglecting, but that's reaching into another topic.
 
This is actually pretty in line with my thinking as well; the only worry I have is that some people will be a little turned off by the fact that the actual textures and sprites aren't pixel perfect at true high-definition resolutions, and that the textures generally lack significant normal-mapping.

Well, it's also going to help for perception that people aren't paying $60 apiece for these. :p
 

creid

Member
You do have to skip through the text leading up to it, but if you hold the O button in the PSP version, it goes by in like, 20-30 seconds tops.

-Tom
I was starting to doubt my memory so I went and checked a FAQ. I think this is the sequence I'm thinking of. It's longer than that:
There is a candle in the lower right corner. Saving your game before doing
anything else is the best idea. Afterwards, inspect the stool-looking thing
nearby to find a [Box of Matches]. Head over to the beds to trigger a long
scene
.

When you have control again, try to leave. The door is locked. Head towards
the top-right corner for a few scenes. Try the door again. Step away from
it again to trigger another event. Approach the desk to be knocked away from
it. Step towards the door again to see a red shadow appear.

This thing WILL kill you if it touches you. You can be touched a few times
but too many will result in a Wrong End. Avoid the shadow and go back to the
door. Try to burn the hair from the door with a match. It doesn't work. Now,
go to the top right corner of the room and inspect the white cabinet to find
[Rubbing Alcohol]. Return to the door while avoiding the shadow and use the
matches and alcohol to leave.
 

wyrdwad

XSEED Localization Specialist
I was starting to doubt my memory so I went and checked a FAQ. I think this is the sequence I'm thinking of. It's longer than that:

I know that scene well, and... it's really not that long! The "scenes" it's describing are really short. Your first time through, sure, you're not going to know where to go to trigger what -- but after you've done it once, you just have to spend maybe a minute TOPS skipping through some text and walking around to each of the trigger spots.

The worst offenders in the PSP version are the times where you have to progress through multiple cutscenes between save-game points and you have the potential to die during any of them -- but everything described in that part you quoted is from one single closed-room puzzle. It's basically all part of the same cutscene, in other words, and it's a pretty short one by Corpse Party standards.

-Tom
 

wyrdwad

XSEED Localization Specialist
So Gameblogs collected all of our E3 trailers into one handy-dandy page for your viewing pleasure, if anyone is interested:

http://www.gameblogs.net/2014/06/13...-trip-senran-kagura-story-of-seasons-and-more

The Akiba's Trip trailer might be of special interest to some of you, since it uses voice samples from the English dub in lieu of text callouts, making it the first opportunity you'll have to hear the game's dub in action. The voices you're hearing, in order of appearance, belong to the characters Shion, Yuto, Kaito, Shizuku and Rin, and I honestly think our dub for the game is quite possibly our best to date, so I'm curious to hear what you guys think of it too.

-Tom
 
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