Specifically, how it relates to "The World Ends With You".
TWEWY was an original property developed by Square Enix. It was developed to help them understand DS programming for "Kingdom Hearts 358/2". Honestly, I think it's better then 358/2. We have complex characters, fantastic artistic design, an amazing story, changing relationships, and that's not even mentioning the gameplay.
But, moving on, what's more interesting right now is the revived interest in the project by Square Enix.
SE had casually brought up the game before, but no one new the severity until a recent Tokyo Game Show. Why? Because the KH3D demo had Neku in it. As time went on, Joshua, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme all appeared. Tetsuya Nomura (the director of the Kingdom Hearts series and character designer for TWEWY) was asked about this, and he implied that the voice casting was for a future project. (Shiki, Joshua, Beat, and Neku had a few lines in game, but most "speaking" was done through text)
Well, KH3D was released, the TWEWY fans were very happy, then yesterday the SE PR department twitter tweeted out a link to the above website.
We know very little, but between the "Calling" background music, the style of the timer, and the Shibuya style background, it appears we are going back to Shibuya for another game set in TWEWY universe. (If you want a sneak peak, adjust your date on your computer. The art and music assets up to day 2 have been preloaded onto the site).
So, what is next?
Well, nothing until that timer hits zero. Tokyo Game Show will finish in the next few days so the timing is rather odd. Why is the timer set to expire AFTER the game show? If something was to be announced, why not set the timer for earlier? Is it a set up for the Square Enix Production Department show? But they should be focusing on the Final Fantasy's 25th Anniversary party.
Sorry for the massive delay you guys! I'm apart of Operation:Rainfall (as in, I'm helping with the website, articles, etc.) And was very busy up to and during E3. I'll try to get some analyses up later this week. What was your favorite announcement during E3? In the mean time: Tomb Raider!
I have never played any Tomb Raider Games. I'll have to change that.
Etrian Odyssey is a 3D dungeon crawler created by Atlus.
While you listen, I just want to muse a bit about E3, or rather the prerelease.
E3 is in a few weeks. Every company is gearing up for the show. Some companies, such as Nintendo and Playstation, are going to have halls full of people. So, why are they announcing their products ahead of time?
One of the earliest official release of items was the Kingdom Hearts 3D English Trailer. With E3 only a short time away, people believed the trailer would be hid until then. However, the trailer was released last week.
PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale was announced before that, but that should have been held off until E3. It's a big deal. We still don't have a trailer for it. We have a partial characters list, we have video of battles, we have a rundown of how the released characters fight.... but we don't have a trailer.
Why didn't Sony wait until E3? Why didn't Square Enix wait for the KH3D trailer?
The KH3D trailer is 10 minutes long (No, I'm not kidding) so Square Enix may have released it early for that reason, but Nintendo could have shown it off at E3. Kingdom Hearts is a big property and the 3DS is still looking for games. And the time would be more manageable if they cut out the battle stuff in the middle.
But Sony has no excuse. The game is big. The game is a fanboy/girl's dream. Why not wait until E3 to surprise everyone? Where they afraid of being scooped? Is it not good?
Or do they have something bigger planned? Sony is announcing 20 games at E3, what are they? Where they afraid the game would get lost in the shuffle?
I'm just not sure. Why do you think they released it early?
I won't focus on the basic puzzle room. A white box with implements to open and close doors is scary, but not overtly interesting.
I'm talking about the bits and pieces that make up the room. I'm talking about walking into Chamber 16 and seeing the wall propped open by Cubes. I'm talking about entering the viewing chambers while escaping and finding them completely empty. I'm talking about the cheerful announcer over the destroyed and rusted rooms.
Specifically, I'm talking about the places in between tests in the middle of Portal 2. (Spoilers)
After Wheatley is corrupted by GLaDOS' harness, he sends Chell and POTaDOS (GLaDOS' mind in a potato battery) down into the sealed off sections of Aperture. Once they arrive down there, Chell begins to go through the tests in an attempt to get back up to Wheatley since it is very likely he is going to destroy the facility. As she goes through the old tests, she triggers radio messages. The messages, along with various "Set Decoration" help explain Aperture's history.
When we first arrive, Chell must make her way through unidentifiable ruins. Railways have fallen down with age, doors have been sealed off, fires burn, and as she makes her way through what appears to be a fallen silo she (and the player) see signs that say "Keep Out". Clearly, things have not gone well.
As time goes on, we enter into the first segment of the game. Cave and Caroline (The CEO and his assistant) starts talking, and the areas look very nice... for the fifties. Awards are displayed (notably, Aperture continually gets second place. It's hinted they lost to Black Mesa) the floor is marble, there are some prototypes for computers and the subjects are all heroes who are volunteering for a charity. It looks great! Until you actually get into testing. While it is still maintained reasonably well, Cave is clearly being haphazard with the science... like how he gives his test subjects tumors in order to see what would happen to the tumors. He also flagrantly ignores normal science procedure by talking about the control group and laughing over how someone got hurt. It's a good way to set up the dichotomy that is Aperture.
When we're traveling between the areas we notice some signs. The sign I wish to bring your attention to is this one.
Apparently, they put anti matter in with Allergens. They were advanced enough to get antimatter without destroying everything but... they apparently created people who were allergic to it. Or they could have considered their blowing up to be an allergy. Either way, some science issues there.
When we go on, Cave Johnson has gotten older, and the company's monetary value has significantly dropped. Instead of having war heroes do it for charity, they are taking hobos from the street and paying them 60 dollars. Cave is very obviously dismissive of them. Most importantly, the chairs have been downgraded to plastic. They do not have the money to keep it going anymore. They simply wish to test and go on. To emphasize, here is a sign seen in the entry and exit rooms:
Finally, we reach the latest testing area. It looks modern, functional, and Cave Johnson is dying. He's more then dying, the company is broke, employees must "Volunteer" for testing, and he seriously campaigns for his and Caroline's brains to be put onto a computer. The test chambers are purely functional now, and they are blank. The chambers are so empty it is actually creepy. When we finish, Cave rants about lemons and we move on. This is the sign of the era:
We see the fall of Aperture in the fate of Caroline (forcibly turned into GLaDOS), the finances, and the quality of the subjects. It may have experienced a brief resurgence later - they obviously had the money to make GLaDOS and perfect other items- but then GLaDOS was activated and she killed almost every scientist. The one who did survive- Doug Rattmann- has been hallucinating inside Aperture ever since.
None of this is ever stated in game. We can simply tell. Cave explains a lot of it, but signs about robot bosses contrast heavily with the plush chairs and thanking war heroes for participating in the test.
Valve excels in the subtext. And that is all that is needed to show how a once great company fell.
One of the interesting things about this song is that it's US only. It has also appeared in Super Smash Brothers Brawl as one of the songs that can play during the "Green Zone" stage.
Also: you now have this song stuck in your head all day.
I've stated before Mewtwo is my favorite character. Mewtwo was also in Super Smash Brother Melee. Since I have never played Melee, I usually main Lucario in Brawl despite being better at Samus.
But Mewtwo was almost in Brawl.
After the game was released, hackers started going through the code. In it they found a few very interesting things. Mewtwo had some sound files and a winning screen. Well, that wouldn't be unusual, they could have imported it for some reason during development.
But Mewtwo also had a Final Smash yell. Proof that he had actually had some programming done before he was cut from the playlist.
(The model appears to be a reskinned Lucario, ignore that. The second voice clip is from Mewtwo)
He doesn't have a model (that I can find. The Smash wiki states he does have a working model but I can't find a video of it) , so the trophy model is from another game (I can't find the title at the moment, but it was something like Pokemon Colosseum) but it is interesting to see how much they actually got done.
Maybe he can come back in a future release... if his stats got tweaked. From what I understand, he didn't live up to his legendary status at all.
I was trying to figure out what to analyze, but then I realized that today was my 100 post! Wow... I know I may be slow right now, but I do really enjoy this blog. I just get busy and forget to do it.
So, in honor of the 100th post, I will
I'll come up with something good tomorrow since I have some duties I need to do today. Again.
I'm going to talk about why I love video games.
My earliest memory of them consists of me in the basement with one of my mom's cousins. He has a Sonic game on. The next memory I have is of my entire block gathered around a TV in our basement. We were playing Banjo Tooie. We just sat around and talked to eachother. One one person got stuck, he passed it to the next person.
This is what gaming is for me. It's playing with family and friends around. It's talking about all sorts of things (gaming related or not) it's theorizing with your brother only to find out your perfect theory was wrong.
It may include shipping, fangirl/boying, and yelling in rage when you don't have the money. But, most of all, it is fun.
