E3 - DonAithnen

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03 June 2009 @ 12:56 pm

Okay, i think that was the most disappointing Square-Enix press conference since i started paying attention to E3. Or possibly ever. As far as i can tell from the live blog, it was about FF14, FF14 and FF14. Oh, and FF11. As in "how is FF14 different from FF11?" and "how is FF14 the same as FF11?" and "how will FF11 be affected by the release of FF14."

For those who haven't heard, FF14 was just announced yesterday, and it's another MMO. Which i'm sure is very exciting to those into MMOs, but i'm not. I don't have the time for them, and i'm rather skeptical about the story potential in them in general.

And it's not like there wasn't other Square-Enix news released this week! They announced the general release date for FF13 as well as the newest Kingdom Hearts DS game, a FF7 port was surprise-released on PSN, FF Crystal Bearers is going to be using the new Wii Motion Plus, and there was at least one new game revealed ("Nier.") It's just that none of this was announced at their own press conference =P

In other news, it turns out that the new Metroid game is going to be a hybrid 2D/3D-third-person/first-person game. This makes me cautiously hopeful and also somewhat worried. These split mode games are always difficult to pull off. It's hard enough getting _one_ play style working and polished properly. Getting two working is more than twice as difficult, because not only does each need to be done properly in its own right, you have to make the process of switching between them seem natural to the user.

Also, Miyamoto announced that there's a new Zelda game in development, which was a bit of a shock since this was outside of Nintendo's press conference, but at least _they_ weren't short of other interesting news at their main event.

Tags: video games

Current Mood: geeky

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7 comments —

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jmpava on June 3rd, 2009 08:15 pm (UTC)

Well, it's not a big shock to me that they are talking all about 14, since wasn't that the big 'unleaked' item? Whether or not you think it's worth talking about, lets look at the other stuff you mentioned. 13, no news there really (although I'd be curious for ANY projection on versus, myself). The KH DS game has ALSO been known for (at least) a year and is already out in Japan. So they solidified the release date, so what. There isn't actually that much to say about 7 either - it's just a port. 14 was, as far as I can tell, THE thing that hadn't leaked or wasn't already a known property that has already been drawn out in any number of press releases and previews and rumors. I agree that the presentations were pretty limited this year... but that's presumably because of all the effort going into 13 ANYWAY. So, yeah, 14's annoying, I agree, but it also makes sense to me that if they were going to have anything to push, that'd be it.

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kirinn on June 3rd, 2009 08:25 pm (UTC)

KH358/2 is out in Japan? *looks it up* OH, came out last week, ok.

And FFXIII with English is new, but I suppose the one new trailer is probably about all there is to that so far. Originally they were saying they weren't going to even start on the localization (and the 360 port) until it was out in Japan but it looks like the timeline got bumped up quite a bit. I guess that's good?

But yeah, your point is taken.

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jmpava on June 3rd, 2009 08:30 pm (UTC)

Which is not to say that I don't wish there WAS something else besides 14 for them to make a deal about, of course. I'm just not, I dunno, too shocked seeing it play out this way ;->

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donaithnen on June 4th, 2009 11:49 am (UTC)

Perhaps i haven't really seen enough press conferences for comparison, but my general impression was that they usually go along the lines of "this is how our brand has done over the last year," (usually with a very positive spin of course) "here are the games you already know about that we want you to focus on for the upcoming months, and here is the totally new stuff that we hope you've been on the edge of your seat for."

Sony and Nintendo both spent a fair pit of time covering stuff that has been announced for ages, even to the extent of already having been presented at E3 last year (Wii Motion Plus and Wii Sports Resort in particular) as well as it least glossing over financials. If nothing else it helps build the suspense for the later announcements, and it definitely helps avoid the impression of being a one trick pony.

And it seems odd that Sony thought the PSN release of FF7 was worth including in their press conference and Squenix didn't think it was worth boasting about at least a little, even if Sony did steal their thunder.

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kirinn on June 3rd, 2009 08:21 pm (UTC)

For what it's worth, Jeremy Parish got to sit down with the two "Other M" leads (the guy who directed Super Metroid, Fusion, and Zero Mission, and the new head of Team Ninja after Itagaki left) and came away very optimistic. So hopefully it'll be awesome, though it's kind of academic for me since I haven't got a Wii.

As is FFIV, since I continue to not even pretend to have time for an MMO. Interesting that they apparently lured Uematsu back to work on it, though.

I suppose maybe I should make an E3 post, since it's totally keeping me from getting work done anyway. :P

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thegreatgonz on June 3rd, 2009 10:10 pm (UTC)

Haven't all the 3D Metroid games been technically hybrids? All of them go into a more-or-less 2D, third-person mode when Samus switches to ball form.

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donaithnen on June 4th, 2009 11:52 am (UTC)

I guess that's technically true. However i had the impression that was a gameplay concession, not a gameplay feature, so to speak. (It might have been amusing seeing how many people they could get to either throw up or throw their controller in frustration by forcing people to play as ball form Samus in first person mode ;)

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