Reply With QuoteNo fair that wasn't in the RPG generator.
Not many details yet, but Level 5, those lovely people behind the much ballyhooed game Dark Cloud 2, as well as having a large hand in creating Dragon Quest 8, have unveiled the name, as well as some footage, of their newest game.
IGN URL
Scan from a magazine.
Gamespot Trailer of Game
I'd have to say, look at the trailer, that it seems like it is a bit of a departure from previous games. From what I have heard, it will still have the random dungeons, but looking at the combat, it seems to have a bit more fluid and faster pace than DC2.
No fair that wasn't in the RPG generator.
It looks pretty damn cool. Final Fantasy meets Treasure Planet.
Pass. You should have put a anime jrpg warning so then I wouldn't have bothered :x
What? How is this anime at all? It's just got cel-shaded visuals.Originally Posted by roguefrog
I'd say he did when he said "level 5" and mentioned their previous work.
Shut up, Ben. You're just cranky at things that kick ass (like Dark Chronicle), because you never can. :P :wink:
Yeah, I'd have to agree with James, it gets really annoying (especially you reviewer types, you know who you are) when people label something "Anime!" just because it happens to be animated and come from Japan. Granted the original use of the word denotes that very thing, but we all know the accepted English use is for certain subset of animation. To be even more of anal brouhaha, its not really anime that's the inspiration or influence for when it is present, its manga.
Seriously. Look at all kinds of animation. Disney animation. American cartoons. European cartoons. Hair tends to come in three styles in animation: 1) the chunky, poofy glob of hair (which was dominate in 80s anime, BTW) 2) the couple of individual strands of hair style and 3) the spiky style, indicating waves of how the hair sits. And big eyes are everywhere in animation: Spongebob, look at the Little Mermaid's huge eyeballs, Power Puff Girls, Asterix and Obelix, Moomin, Disney cartoons, the Simpsons, even Roald Dahl's illustrations, which certainly look animated. :wink: So if we're going by big eyes and spiky hair, well then I guess since Bart, Lisa and Maggie fit that, The Simpsons is anime.
Basically, the big eyes and spiky hair rubic has always been a shallow and stupid one to identify anime with it, so cut it out.
What really does typify are anime are certain body and proportion types, certain character archetypes, a certain style of camera movement and stop-go kind of movement frames, a certain style of voice-acting and tons of visual short-hands, like the tear-drops, nosebleeds, fall-downs, SD transformations and so forth. Most of all, anime more than any other type of animation tends to look like frames of a comic book animated. Note that I didn't say a comic book come to life in animation, as that's different. As ironic as it is, still frames are a huge part of anime that aren't replicated as much in other forms.
Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle has various anime influences, such as character design and body proportion, as well as their plot types and voice-acting. The coloration and environments, however, weren't so anime driven. Dragon Quest VIII is obviously very heavy with the language of manga (not at all anime, there's a big difference).
But from what I see here, Rogue Galaxy doesn't have much in common with manga or anime. The voice-acting is completely different from what you can find in anime. The scenes at the city are hard to pick up, but also from the dialogue in the ship which is easier to here, the subject matter and writing are very sci-fi novel or movie-esque. The character proportions aren't unheard of, but are very rarely used (except for the chibi characters of course, I'll give you that). Even the cityscapes don't much resemble the typical ones you find in manga. On top of that the facial expressions don't have any anime or manga expressions in them
(and also look really impressive, BTW). The shadowing and coloring would be odd in the extreme for anime or manga. Take a look at the scene at the city on that hovercraft or where Jester (main character) is dealing with that sand bug creature in the desert. The camera movement is something entirely removed from normal anime.
The point is not every colorful, animated game is of the style usually recognized in anime just because it comes from Japan (I've seen people make the same mistake with Shadows Hearts and Shin Megami Tensei). And if you can be sophisticated and make distinctions in gameplay in games, you ought to be able to do it with the art direction they have as well.
At any rate, that trailer was magnificent. I can't wait for this. Level 5 is wonderfully talented. The official unveiling date is August 5 (coincidentally one day after the release of the similarly hot looking Grandia III) and I will definitely be posting again and again in this thread with any information I can translate.
-Kitsune
That's right up there with arguing the difference between BSD and Linux.
Looks pretty anime to me, actually. But I like that. The screens look good. Hopefully the gameplay will match.
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