News

The Star Ocean and Dragon Quest franchises both have updates coming soon in the form of new games; as both enter 2016, January's been a good month for updates on the progress them all. This week in particular had a new livestream broadcast for Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, and with it came new gameplay footage and discussion of gameplay tweaks, a new trailer to introduce more background on Fidel, the main protagonist, and new screenshots and background information on how the game's skillsets will work.

In the Dragon Quest universe, there's always a lot more going on. The Dragon Quest franchise turns thirty years old this year, and as such, there's a new website for the franchise in Japan. A demo for Builders, the Minecraft-esque building RPG set in the Dragon Quest universe, will be out next week in Japan for Playstation 4 and Vita. The 3DS game Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 (name just rolls off the tongue, by the by) will be coming out on March 24 in Japan, but the company is also aiming for a demo to come out a few weeks earlier. Another sideline franchise in the DQ universe, Heroes, will see its sequel released for all three living Sony platforms right on the 30th anniversary in Japan. That date is May 27th of this year.

Finally, the biggest game in the franchise, Dragon Quest XI, was announced as having a release date sometime during the anniversary year. That means that it won't be out before the start of the anniversary year, and possibly not out until next May 27th, should they hit the window at all. This news was met with great disdain by the anniversary event's followers, who expected something more concrete.

Source: Siliconera, Gematsu

There hasn't been a ton of Final Fantasy XV news lately, but what has been coming out has been small and positive.

Last week, Director Hajime Tabata took to Famitsu to announce that the 2016 release date for the game would be announced at an event in March, and that the team was shifting into the debugging phase.

Just yesterday, a few of the game's developers participated in a Q&A on the game's official forums. They once again emphasized the visit-ability of the game's cities, and discussed the warp ability, which will constitute a significant part of combat -- particularly against large-scale and aerial enemies. The main takeaway from this Q&A, however, was the announcement that FFXV will have two different battle modes, one that is more "action-oriented" and another that is more "relaxed." It's hard to tell exactly what this means -- is this a distinction between fast-paced as opposed to strategic, or is it a distinction between hard vs. easy? -- but we'll have to wait (perhaps for the March event?) to learn more.

Source: Siliconera

We're behind on news again, but I didn't want to miss the chance to reuse a headline: Final Fantasy IX, the Final Fantasy packed to the gills with homage and protagonists resembling monkeys, is headed to both Windows and mobile in 2016. This version is going to be similar to the PC and mobile release of Final Fantasy VII insomuch as it is the original PlayStation release with control tweaks added for touch devices and some ease-of-play functions like autosave and optional random encounters. There's no official release window set forth as yet, and very little media.

This release of IX differs from that of VII, though, given that there is an announcement at all; the Final Fantasy VII release on iOS came as a surprise, so there's no way to extrapolate any further details regarding a potential release window based on what we know now.

Source: Famitsu

Shonen Jump, each December, puts on the Jump Festa expo for anime, manga and games. Japan, being fully futuristic as shown in most anime documentaries, naturally calls this year's iteration "Jump Festa 2016." This year, Square Enix will take the stage on December 19 and 20 for several presentations to be broadcast on YouTube. Here's the schedule, with all times listed as UTC and EST.

Day 1:

• December 19, 1:30AM UTC / December 18, 8:30PM EST: Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness Stage interview with voice talent
• December 19, 3:30AM UTC / December 18, 10:30PM EST: Dragon Quest Builders Stage interview with the producers
• December 19, 5:30AM UTC / 12:30AM EST: Dragon Quest of the Stars Stage interview with the producers

Day 2:

• December 20, 4:00AM UTC / December 19, 11:00PM EST: Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Scanner Stage introduction to a new Dragon Quest arcade game with the producers and voice talent
• December 20, 5:20AM UTC / 12:20AM EST: World of Final Fantasy Stage interview with the director and voice talent

The full list of games to be represented off the stage at Jump Festa are as follows:

• Dragon Quest Builders (Trailer, Playable Demo)
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Scanner (Trailer)
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 (Trailer, Playable Demo)
• Dragon Quest of the Stars (Stage Only)
• Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius (Trailer)
• The Sorrow of Sacrifice and Snow (Trailer)
• Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue (Trailer)
• Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness (Trailer)
• World of Final Fantasy (Trailer)

In related news, it was also announced today that the release date for the new Star Ocean has been pushed back to March 31 in Japan from its original date of February 25 to "increase the game's quality." Looking back on previous news here at CoN, one might imagine that graphics quality might be on that list.


Source: Gematsu

Following the pattern of the Active Time Event series for Final Fantasy XV, the producers of the Star Ocean series aired on Thursday. For those of us spoiled by the subtitled XV events, it's worth noting that Star Ocean did not follow suit and was fully in Japanese. That said, there might not be a lot of information that we can pull out for you directly, but here are some highlights:

• While the fifth game in the series, Integrity and Faithlessness is the fourth game in the Star Ocean universe timeline, falling about halfway between "The Second Story" and "Till the End of Time."
• The entire party, up to seven, travels together during exploration.
• Each piece of equipment has custom illustrations representing it in menus. It appears that some of these items may be purchasable via Japanese storefronts in the real world.
• With so many party members, the battles are frenetic to say the least. The player controls just one at a time in an action-RPG system, while the others work on autopilot.
• A special edition has already been announced for Japan with at least some of the standard pack-ins, like an art book with content from the entire series and figurines.
• The music comes from the same source as Valkyrie Profile, and the Ultimate Box includes also a five-disc set of music from the Star Ocean and Valkyrie games.
• The game still doesn't look nearly as visually impressive as I would expect a PS4 RPG to at this point in the console's lifecycle. It's possible that the company is showing mostly the PS3 version so that the upgraded version dazzles at launch.

The game releases on February 25 in Japan, and in the west later in 2016. Gematsu has the full broadcast.

Source: Gematsu

We had news just the other day about how - O! If only we mortals could try! - we could be seeing Moogles in Final Fantasy XV. And, now, just a few days later, it seems that the cries of humanity have seen response, and the darling little mascots will indeed appear in the final game. Apparently, as per Tabata, there won't be much of a role for them due to the late stage of the process, but in the game they shall be.

Why, one might think that this was their plan all along, and perhaps the call to action was merely an attempt to get a brief bump in social media virality for the upcoming flagship game. One might think that, indeed, or instead, one might simply decide that there is a higher power out there looking out for the enjoyment of all Final Fantasy gamers. Blessed deity, hear the pleas of we sinners who all too often overlooked thy blessings of Final Fantasy XIII, and deliver unto us our furry, antennae'd batcats.

Man. That was one strange newspost.


Source: Siliconera