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Massively Multiplayer: Gaming In The New Millennium
- Thread starter RySenkari
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Fall 2010 (Part 7) - Adventures In An Alternate World
(Authors' Note: The following idea was given to us by the reader HonestAbe1809!)
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Freedonia
Freedonia is an epic adventure game developed by Canticle Studios (an original TTL game studio staffed by many of the same programmers and creators of OTL's Mass Effect games, with the other half staying with Bioware and developing Necrocracy) and published by THQ. The gameplay has similarities with titles such as Bioshock and Dragon's Age, with a mix of action and RPG elements. The game takes place in an alternate universe America in which all the myths, legends, and stories from our world are real, a sort of Once Upon A Time meets American Gods sort of story, in which all technology is actually magic and the world is a sort of steampunk magitek hybrid plagued by the same social problems as our world. The format of the game is a sort of "road trip" format, almost OTL Final Fantasy X-esque in how it handles dungeons and towns (imagine a Legend Of Zelda game with all the dungeons outside on the highway), and follows a trip taken by the main protagonist (who can be male or female and one of five different races: human, elf, dwarf, fairy, and orc), across the country and back (the game begins in Baltimore, journeys all the way to the Pacific for a major halfway story climax there, and then the protagonist and their allies return to Boston and then Philadelphia, the country's capital). The protagonist can use firearms, melee weapons, or magic, or a combination of them, and their various stats depend on their race and equipment. Combat is somewhat slow paced and deliberate, with strategy taking precedence over mechanical skill (for the most part). The player can have up to two NPC companions out of a total of ten different possible characters, each of whom has their own strengths and weaknesses. The game is fairly epic (it has to be, since it follows the player across an entire country and back), with twelve total "chapters", a bevy of main quests and side quests, and many, many hours of cutscenes, both in-game and rendered. The game can take anywhere from 20-60 hours for a normal player to complete, and even for speedrunners it can usually take between 8-12 hours, with not a lot of glitches to exploit and skip areas. Towns are actually somewhat small, save for some of the larger cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco. Though each of those cities retains its original name, the country itself is named Freedonia rather than the United States, giving the game its name. Its implied that the butterflies of legends and magic being real acted in strange ways, totally changing some things while leaving others exactly the same. Though the game has a steampunk aesthetic and general technological level, some elements of the game, including "modern" tech in some instances, suggest that the game actually takes place in the 21st century, with a strange mix of design elements from all across the 20th and 21st Centuries.
The game features a wide variety of unique characters, most of them based off literature or myths. These include:
Morgaine Pendragon: A the daughter of the king of Albion (Great Britain), who is a descendant of King Arthur and a member of the Pendragon family. She has fled Briton and disguised herself because she believes her family to have been corrupted by the game's villains (as it turns out, they haven't, but this isn't revealed until much later in the story). Though it implies that she may turn on the protagonist, she is actually one of their closest allies.
Sparrow: A member of the Loxley Clan, the descendants of Robin Hood and rivals to the Pendragon Clan. He starts out as a noble thief and ally to the protagonist, but turns on him later.
Laughsy The Clown: A creepy clown character with elements of Freddy Krueger and Pennywise from Stephen King's "It", Laughsy starts out as a horrifying boss character, but his evil urges are redirected by the protagonist and he becomes a companion.
Fortunato: Directly based off the character from Edgar Allen Poe's Cask Of Amontillado, he died chained to a wall and buried alive, but since "death" isn't permanent in Freedonia, he returned as a zombie, and now seeks revenge.
Sakura: A ninja woman who once fought in the service of the Japanese Emperor (who actually has divine powers in the world of this game), Sakura came to Freedonia seeking an ancient relic to dull his divine powers and aid her beloved.
Tea: A living automaton woman who fell in love with her creator and served him for a hundred years before his death of old age. She has enhanced speed, strength, and knowledge, so despite her frail appearance, she can dish out a lot of punishment.
The game also contains references to works such as The Grapes Of Wrath, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the works of Isaac Asimov, and even has a vampire companion, with vampires actually being mostly peaceful and victims of persecution by vampire hunters. As mentioned earlier, dead people are typically buried in giant catacombs beneath cities, because they tend to resurrect quickly, roaming the catacombs as ghouls and zombies (one of the game's levels has the main character falling into one of these catacombs). Freedonia has some of THQ's highest production values yet, with excellent graphics and an orchestrated soundtrack. Most of the voice cast is relatively unknown, with actors being hired based mostly on talent rather than name recognition. However, there are some exceptions to this, including Robert Englund as the voice of Laughsy the Clown, and TTL Oscar nominee and OTL/TTL Broadway star Eden Espinosa as the voice of Morgaine. The game was also delayed several times, first from late 2009 to early 2010, and then to November 2010, as more graphical polish was added and gameplay glitches excised.
The main plotline of Freedonia concerns a conspiracy to bring back the High Chancellor, the central evil figure of a massive world war two generations prior that nearly destroyed the world. The High Chancellor, sort of a cross between Sauron and Hitler, took control of Freedonia and attempted to execute a genocide against all non-human races, but was brought down by a coalition of armies from across the world uniting with Freedonian rebels. The High Chancellor, however, had many minions and subordinates, who began infiltrating various governments around the world and who remain active in Freedonian politics, and the game's plot takes place just as these conspirators are setting events into motion to resurrect him (unlike most other dead people in the world, the High Chancellor's remains were burned in holy fire by an exorcist to prevent him from coming back, but a small part of his soul still lingers, and the conspiracy has managed to find it). The protagonist is just an average person living in the Baltimore slums when they save their friend from some guards, who are actually working with the conspiracy. The protagonist becomes a marked man/woman and must flee the city, while acquiring clues to the conspirators' activities and gathering allies to aid them in fighting the cult. The player will venture through many different cities, solving people's problems, battling cultists, and acquiring allies all along the way. As they do so, the player learns a vast amount of information about Freedonian history and culture, which guides the protagonist and their allies onward. While the conspiracy itself is acknowledged as universally evil, most other factions in the game have some shades of gray to them, and there are plenty of twists and turns as the protagonist and their allies venture across the country, with the first major goal being to reach San Francisco, said to be the seat of power of an influential political figure and the place where the High Chancellor's soul fragment is said to rest. San Francisco is a vast meeting place for all five races and many different cultures, and is the second biggest city in the game apart from Philadelphia (which is the first city visited after the protagonist leaves Baltimore and is sort of the "hub" for the first part of the game, and where the player will eventually return). In San Francisco, the player is led to believe that Morgaine has betrayed them, but in reality, Morgaine has been captured by a cultist that was initially believed to be an ally (the city's mayor, a seemingly friendly man who turns out to be a greedy, powerhungry monster). The team is helped by an expy of famous San Franciscan Emperor Norton to discover the truth behind the mayor and to rescue Morgaine, though in doing so, the protagonist and his allies attract some extremely powerful enemies as they plan to return to Philadelphia to defeat the conspiracy once and for all. The return trip is much more dangerous than the first half of the game, and at one point the heroes must track all the way to Mexico, where they encounter a still powerful Aztec Empire ruled by members of the elven race utilizing powerful magic. The heroes are detoured from Philadelphia, visiting the city of Boston which is being plagued by Lovecraftian horrors, and where they learn they are too late to stop the resurrection of the High Chancellor, who can now use powerful magic to subjugate the peoples of Freedonia. The heroes learn that Freedonia is being targeted by all the nations of the world with what are essentially magical nukes in order to kill the Chancellor before he can start another war, and the heroes are forced to fight one of these "nukes", a godlike beast capable of wiping out entire city blocks at a time. The Chancellor, however, destroys the rest of them, utilizing secret magic technology developed during the great war but never able to be used. Finally, the heroes return to Philadelphia, and infiltrate the conspirators' lair to discover the Chancellor's weakness. They eventually battle the High Chancellor himself, defeating him and saving the world from his genocidal rule. Morgaine returns to her family, ready to ascend to the throne as the rightful ruler of Albion, while the protagonist chooses a more peaceful life, returning to Baltimore.
Freedonia is released in October 2010. One of the year's most hyped games, it achieves some of the year's best reviews, with critics praising the game's mix of literary references, its beautiful graphics, and its innovative story. A few critics call the story "a bit of a mess", but the consensus is that it's a fun mess, and reviews average in the low to mid 9s. However, the sales and coverage from the general gaming press aren't quite as good as they're expected. It's still a very profitable game that sells well over a million copies combined between the Sapphire, iTwin, and Xbox 2 (eventually it reaches five million sales), but it's not initially a blockbuster, and while critics love the game, they don't talk about it as much as they do some of the year's other big hits. Still, it manages to win some Game of the Year awards, including some very notable ones, and is generally remembered as one of 2010's best games, though not one of the games people immediately think of when they think of 2010.
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Freedonia
Freedonia is an epic adventure game developed by Canticle Studios (an original TTL game studio staffed by many of the same programmers and creators of OTL's Mass Effect games, with the other half staying with Bioware and developing Necrocracy) and published by THQ. The gameplay has similarities with titles such as Bioshock and Dragon's Age, with a mix of action and RPG elements. The game takes place in an alternate universe America in which all the myths, legends, and stories from our world are real, a sort of Once Upon A Time meets American Gods sort of story, in which all technology is actually magic and the world is a sort of steampunk magitek hybrid plagued by the same social problems as our world. The format of the game is a sort of "road trip" format, almost OTL Final Fantasy X-esque in how it handles dungeons and towns (imagine a Legend Of Zelda game with all the dungeons outside on the highway), and follows a trip taken by the main protagonist (who can be male or female and one of five different races: human, elf, dwarf, fairy, and orc), across the country and back (the game begins in Baltimore, journeys all the way to the Pacific for a major halfway story climax there, and then the protagonist and their allies return to Boston and then Philadelphia, the country's capital). The protagonist can use firearms, melee weapons, or magic, or a combination of them, and their various stats depend on their race and equipment. Combat is somewhat slow paced and deliberate, with strategy taking precedence over mechanical skill (for the most part). The player can have up to two NPC companions out of a total of ten different possible characters, each of whom has their own strengths and weaknesses. The game is fairly epic (it has to be, since it follows the player across an entire country and back), with twelve total "chapters", a bevy of main quests and side quests, and many, many hours of cutscenes, both in-game and rendered. The game can take anywhere from 20-60 hours for a normal player to complete, and even for speedrunners it can usually take between 8-12 hours, with not a lot of glitches to exploit and skip areas. Towns are actually somewhat small, save for some of the larger cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco. Though each of those cities retains its original name, the country itself is named Freedonia rather than the United States, giving the game its name. Its implied that the butterflies of legends and magic being real acted in strange ways, totally changing some things while leaving others exactly the same. Though the game has a steampunk aesthetic and general technological level, some elements of the game, including "modern" tech in some instances, suggest that the game actually takes place in the 21st century, with a strange mix of design elements from all across the 20th and 21st Centuries.
The game features a wide variety of unique characters, most of them based off literature or myths. These include:
Morgaine Pendragon: A the daughter of the king of Albion (Great Britain), who is a descendant of King Arthur and a member of the Pendragon family. She has fled Briton and disguised herself because she believes her family to have been corrupted by the game's villains (as it turns out, they haven't, but this isn't revealed until much later in the story). Though it implies that she may turn on the protagonist, she is actually one of their closest allies.
Sparrow: A member of the Loxley Clan, the descendants of Robin Hood and rivals to the Pendragon Clan. He starts out as a noble thief and ally to the protagonist, but turns on him later.
Laughsy The Clown: A creepy clown character with elements of Freddy Krueger and Pennywise from Stephen King's "It", Laughsy starts out as a horrifying boss character, but his evil urges are redirected by the protagonist and he becomes a companion.
Fortunato: Directly based off the character from Edgar Allen Poe's Cask Of Amontillado, he died chained to a wall and buried alive, but since "death" isn't permanent in Freedonia, he returned as a zombie, and now seeks revenge.
Sakura: A ninja woman who once fought in the service of the Japanese Emperor (who actually has divine powers in the world of this game), Sakura came to Freedonia seeking an ancient relic to dull his divine powers and aid her beloved.
Tea: A living automaton woman who fell in love with her creator and served him for a hundred years before his death of old age. She has enhanced speed, strength, and knowledge, so despite her frail appearance, she can dish out a lot of punishment.
The game also contains references to works such as The Grapes Of Wrath, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the works of Isaac Asimov, and even has a vampire companion, with vampires actually being mostly peaceful and victims of persecution by vampire hunters. As mentioned earlier, dead people are typically buried in giant catacombs beneath cities, because they tend to resurrect quickly, roaming the catacombs as ghouls and zombies (one of the game's levels has the main character falling into one of these catacombs). Freedonia has some of THQ's highest production values yet, with excellent graphics and an orchestrated soundtrack. Most of the voice cast is relatively unknown, with actors being hired based mostly on talent rather than name recognition. However, there are some exceptions to this, including Robert Englund as the voice of Laughsy the Clown, and TTL Oscar nominee and OTL/TTL Broadway star Eden Espinosa as the voice of Morgaine. The game was also delayed several times, first from late 2009 to early 2010, and then to November 2010, as more graphical polish was added and gameplay glitches excised.
The main plotline of Freedonia concerns a conspiracy to bring back the High Chancellor, the central evil figure of a massive world war two generations prior that nearly destroyed the world. The High Chancellor, sort of a cross between Sauron and Hitler, took control of Freedonia and attempted to execute a genocide against all non-human races, but was brought down by a coalition of armies from across the world uniting with Freedonian rebels. The High Chancellor, however, had many minions and subordinates, who began infiltrating various governments around the world and who remain active in Freedonian politics, and the game's plot takes place just as these conspirators are setting events into motion to resurrect him (unlike most other dead people in the world, the High Chancellor's remains were burned in holy fire by an exorcist to prevent him from coming back, but a small part of his soul still lingers, and the conspiracy has managed to find it). The protagonist is just an average person living in the Baltimore slums when they save their friend from some guards, who are actually working with the conspiracy. The protagonist becomes a marked man/woman and must flee the city, while acquiring clues to the conspirators' activities and gathering allies to aid them in fighting the cult. The player will venture through many different cities, solving people's problems, battling cultists, and acquiring allies all along the way. As they do so, the player learns a vast amount of information about Freedonian history and culture, which guides the protagonist and their allies onward. While the conspiracy itself is acknowledged as universally evil, most other factions in the game have some shades of gray to them, and there are plenty of twists and turns as the protagonist and their allies venture across the country, with the first major goal being to reach San Francisco, said to be the seat of power of an influential political figure and the place where the High Chancellor's soul fragment is said to rest. San Francisco is a vast meeting place for all five races and many different cultures, and is the second biggest city in the game apart from Philadelphia (which is the first city visited after the protagonist leaves Baltimore and is sort of the "hub" for the first part of the game, and where the player will eventually return). In San Francisco, the player is led to believe that Morgaine has betrayed them, but in reality, Morgaine has been captured by a cultist that was initially believed to be an ally (the city's mayor, a seemingly friendly man who turns out to be a greedy, powerhungry monster). The team is helped by an expy of famous San Franciscan Emperor Norton to discover the truth behind the mayor and to rescue Morgaine, though in doing so, the protagonist and his allies attract some extremely powerful enemies as they plan to return to Philadelphia to defeat the conspiracy once and for all. The return trip is much more dangerous than the first half of the game, and at one point the heroes must track all the way to Mexico, where they encounter a still powerful Aztec Empire ruled by members of the elven race utilizing powerful magic. The heroes are detoured from Philadelphia, visiting the city of Boston which is being plagued by Lovecraftian horrors, and where they learn they are too late to stop the resurrection of the High Chancellor, who can now use powerful magic to subjugate the peoples of Freedonia. The heroes learn that Freedonia is being targeted by all the nations of the world with what are essentially magical nukes in order to kill the Chancellor before he can start another war, and the heroes are forced to fight one of these "nukes", a godlike beast capable of wiping out entire city blocks at a time. The Chancellor, however, destroys the rest of them, utilizing secret magic technology developed during the great war but never able to be used. Finally, the heroes return to Philadelphia, and infiltrate the conspirators' lair to discover the Chancellor's weakness. They eventually battle the High Chancellor himself, defeating him and saving the world from his genocidal rule. Morgaine returns to her family, ready to ascend to the throne as the rightful ruler of Albion, while the protagonist chooses a more peaceful life, returning to Baltimore.
Freedonia is released in October 2010. One of the year's most hyped games, it achieves some of the year's best reviews, with critics praising the game's mix of literary references, its beautiful graphics, and its innovative story. A few critics call the story "a bit of a mess", but the consensus is that it's a fun mess, and reviews average in the low to mid 9s. However, the sales and coverage from the general gaming press aren't quite as good as they're expected. It's still a very profitable game that sells well over a million copies combined between the Sapphire, iTwin, and Xbox 2 (eventually it reaches five million sales), but it's not initially a blockbuster, and while critics love the game, they don't talk about it as much as they do some of the year's other big hits. Still, it manages to win some Game of the Year awards, including some very notable ones, and is generally remembered as one of 2010's best games, though not one of the games people immediately think of when they think of 2010.
Honestly, out of every game from this TL, be it wholly original or an alternate version of a game, this is my favorite by far. Something about road trippin' across the country while you run into knights and killer clowns and ninjas just strikes a chord.
Hex's Official 100% Credible Rating Score: 11/10
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Oh crud this isn't Reddit, whoops
Oh dear.
But Freedonia looks pretty dang fun.
Pokemon: Gen 5
Pokemon Rise And Fall
Pokemon Rise And Fall is the fifth mainline Pokemon title, the second and final mainline Pokemon for the Game Boy Supernova, and the first in the series to take place in a region not based on Japan. Instead, like OTL's Gen 5, it takes place in an American-based region, the region of Dorad, based on Colorado, with a massive mountain range bisecting the region, rivers, valleys, and plains, making it the most geographically diverse region to date, but also the first landlocked one (though a large lake has been added to provide a sort of ocean-like area). The game features 140 new species of Pokemon, and for the first time, all of them are original TTL (though some are based on OTL Pokemon). In addition, though there is a focus on the new Pokemon, old Pokemon do show up before the postgame (unlike in OTL's Gen 5, where only new Pokemon show up until then). The game has a more "open world" feel to it, with shortcuts through the mountains that allow players to visit certain cities and areas before they'd normally be expected to do so, enabling them to acquire certain Pokemon and TMs and beat certain Gym Leaders early. All the enhancements from previous games return, with few truly new innovations, though there is the addition of the "terrain" system, with terrain bonuses for certain Pokemon. The different styles of terrain include Rugged, Alpine, Lake, Forest, Prairie, Urban, Suburban, Farm, and River, among up to 20 terrain types in all. There's also the Action system, in which a Pokemon might dodge a certain attack or repel it depending on battle circumstances. These changes make battles a bit more exciting and dynamic, and of course more strategic. There's probably less changed from Gen 4 to Gen 5 than any other generation gap, both gameplay-wise and presentation-wise. The graphics are still excellent, somewhere between OTL's 3DS Pokemon titles and OTL's Let's Go Pikachu, and voice acting also returns, with all the gym leaders and many other NPCs being voice acted. The game's soundtrack is based on rock music, with lots of electric guitar and blues rhythms, though there's also some folk and prog sounds as well. Character motifs, and even individual Pokemon motifs, are also introduced, with the game now having different songs for certain types of wild Pokemon and trainers, another innovation from previous titles.
The game's world, as mentioned before, is heavily based on Colorado. There's a central city, based on Denver, with a heavily suburbanized area to the north and south (the "metro area" contains three Pokemon Gyms). There's plains to the east and mountains to the west, and a big forest just west of the mountains, based on the forested areas in OTL Colorado. The game even has a mountain resort area and there's a small, almost hidden reference to South Park in the form of a small town up in the mountains full of rude children. The main cities of the game are:
Pebble Village: The game's starting area, in the southern part of Dorad, where the main character is from and where Professor Pine lives. Professor Pine is the first female professor in the series, and she gives you your starting Pokemon. She's not just a Pokemon professor, she's also a geologist, and likes to study mountains and rock formations.
Sandstone City: Based on OTL Pueblo, this is where the first Gym is located. The Gym Leader, Rocco, uses Ground type Pokemon.
Hornfels City: Based on OTL Grand Junction, this is where the second Gym is located, after passing through a massive forest. The Gym Leader, Alice, uses Bug type Pokemon.
Quartz Town: A suburban city based on OTL Aurora, this is where the third Gym is located. The Gym Leader, Mel, uses Ice type Pokemon.
Obsidian City: An urban city based on OTL Denver, this is where the fourth Gym is located. The Gym Leader, John, is the star quarterback of the local football team, and uses Fighting type Pokemon. He's based somewhat on John Elway.
Rhyolite City: Based on OTL Boulder, this suburban town has a massive Pokemon university, and you have to graduate to battle the Gym Leader, Chandra, who uses Fire type Pokemon.
Fort Basalt: Based on OTL Fort Collins, this northern Dorad city is home to General Charge, Lt. Surge's CO and an expert user of Electric type Pokemon.
Geode City: Based on OTL Greeley, this somewhat gloomy city is home to Darrell, who uses Poison type Pokemon.
Mariposite Springs: Based on OTL Colorado Springs and sitting on a big, beautiful lake, this city is home to Orchid, who uses Water type Pokemon.
Lapis Resort: Based on OTL Aspen, this resort town is where Dorad's Pokemon League sits, and where only the elite trainers may battle for a chance to fight the Champion on top of Dorad's highest peak.
There are other cities and towns in the game, and even a few exclusive to the postgame, but these are the ten most important in the game. There's also plenty of caves, abandoned factories, and even haunted houses to explore, and lots of mountains to climb. There's more outdoors exploration than any other game in the series, due to Colorado being known for its bevy of outdoor activity. The game features a total of 140 new Pokemon, some of whom are listed below:
Gosgro/Vinehorn/Groshika: The Grass starter line, a goat-like Pokemon that gradually evolves into a beautiful godlike Grass/Psychic deer, with a heavy focus on the Special Attack stat.
Ishdrop/Splatfish/Bubloupe: The Water starter line, a small guppy-like fish that evolves into a huge predatory fish much like OTL Wishiwashi.
Lolite/Ardole/Drilflagration: The Fire starter line, essentially Excadrill from OTL, but on fire, with Drilflagration being a Fire/Ground type with massive Attack and Speed.
Wisper/Dazzee/Fulbloom: A flower-based evolution line, sort of like a Jumpluff/Sunflora cross but with slightly better stats.
Kickolt/Kroncho: A Ground/Fighting horse Pokemon with similarities to OTL's Mudsdale line. The signature Pokemon of the Obsidian gym leader.
Snosty/Frostpal/Blistack: An Ice-type Pokemon, the TTL equivalent of the Vanilluxe line in terms of stats and moves, but taking the form of a snowman rather than an ice cream cone.
Choochoo/Chugatrane/Locomaker: A train-based Steel type Pokemon line, this is another line that's heavy on Speed but also on defense.
Stonecub/Rockroar: A Rock-based Pokemon line based on grizzly bears, heavy on attack and defense.
Hummibur/Wingnose/Flitterby: The generation's main Normal/Flying-type line, based on the hummingbird. Fairly weak.
Slith/Rattleback: A Poison-based rattlesnake line. Somewhat similar to Ekans/Arbok, but more heavy on speed.
Bebibis/Waterbuff: A Water/Ground line based on the buffalo. Somewhat bulky and similar to Wooper/Quagsire, but more heavy on Attack and Defense.
Fuzzder/Rantular: A Dark/Poison type line based on tarantulas, like Joltik and Galvantula but without the electricity.
Vivee/Regroth/Spredoubt: A Grass-type line based on a slowly growing field of vines, somewhat like OTL's Tangrowth line.
Baront/Gargantusaur: One of the two fossil Pokemon lines in this game, based on an apatosaurus/brachiosaur.
Armorr/Spikepred: One of the two fossil Pokemon lines in this game, based on the ankylosaurus/spikosaurus.
Slaice/Piepan/Panzone: Instead of an ice cream based Pokemon in this game, we get a pizza based Pokemon, with a Fire/Steel typing. Panzone, who looks like a giant calzone with a pizza cutter stuck in him, is actually decently powerful.
Crunky/Granatt/Rockcrawla: The three-stage Rock evolution line in this game, somewhat similar to Gigalith, but cooler looking, with Rockcrawla being a giant rock monster.
Cyphor/Rumalesk/Queatela: This game's pseudo legendary line, Cyphor is a small bird-like creature, but it eventually evolves into Queatela, a beautiful Dragon/Psychic dragon Pokemon with majestic, multicolored feathers.
Obelaske: The version mascot and legendary for Pokemon Rise, Obelaske is a living monolith and the source of spiritual power for the Dorad region, with a Rock/Psychic typing.
Voidestrudo: The version mascot for Pokemon Fall, Voidestrudo is a Dark/Ghost type shapeshifter, representing erosion and decay that threatens to crumble the mountains of Dorad.
Monteagle/Treagle/Praireagle/Springeagle: Four majestic eagle-like birds representing the mountains, the trees, the prairies, and the springs, these are four new legendary birds of Rock/Flying, Grass/Flying, Ground/Flying, and Water/Flying types respectively, and are four more Legendary Pokemon that can be caught in game.
Antabbit: An antelope/rabbit creature based on the jackalope, it can be hunted down and caught in-game (making it a Legendary, not a Mythical), but it's incredibly hard to do so, based on luck and quite frustrating. The creature is Normal/Fighting.
Snohuge: A Bigfoot-like Ice/Fighting creature and another Legendary Pokemon, this one is also hard to find but much less frustrating and luck based.
Hybridd: One of three Mythical Pokemon in the game, this Electric/Steel construct creature created by Team Plasma is only available through an event.
Lilisprite: Another Mythical Pokemon, a Bug/Psychic type similar to Celebi, it too is only available via event.
Agassoth: The game's final Mythical Pokemon, a Dark/Water creature of incredible power, based on a Lovecraftian horror and buried deep under the Dorad lake. Connected to a very dark special event that connects to the events of the Gen 6 game.
Pokemon Rise and Fall begins with the player trainer, who can be either male or female, venturing outside of Pebble Village, getting attacked by a Pokemon, and being saved by their new friend/rival, a boy/girl (whichever one the player didn't pick) named either Jack or Stephanie. The rival takes the trainer to Professor Pine to get their first Pokemon, and the adventure begins. The first part of the game is fairly straightforward, as the player will venture first to Sandstone and then to Hornfels, meeting Team Plasma along the way. Like in OTL's game, Team Plasma seems somewhat innocent at first, and the player's rival will start to be swayed by their rhetoric, but won't give up on their journey. Once the player reaches the Obsidian metro area, things change a bit. The three gyms here can actually be visited in any order, or the player can even choose to explore in the Fort Basalt/Geode area, but won't be able to fight the two gym leaders there. As the player completes more events in this area, they'll gradually get to know their rival more and more. The rival in this game is sort of the equivalent of N in OTL's Gen 5, but much more knowledgeable about the world, having not been sheltered from a young age. The player will also get to know Rocky, a guru/mountain lover and expert Pokemon trainer. Rocky's appearance and soft-spoken mannerisms are an homage to OTL's John Denver, with an almost "Rocky Mountain High"-esque folk motif played during his appearances. Once the three gyms in the Obsidian area are completed, more of the Fort Basalt/Geode area will open up to the player, and those two gyms can be conquered in either order as well. Finally, the player is able to cross the lake to the Mariposite Springs area, but Team Plasma has taken over the city, with the player's rival now completely under the sway of Ghetsis, the Team Plasma leader and very similar in character and motive to his OTL self. He seeks to take all the Pokemon of the world away, and plans to have the player's rival ascend to the highest peak in Dorad and order every trainer to give up their Pokemon. To do this, he plans to use Voidestrudo (in Pokemon Rise) and Obelaske (in Pokemon Fall). Voidestrudo will crumble all the mountains of the world, showing Ghetsis' power and using fear to make people surrender their Pokemon, while Obelaske will use its psychic powers to convince everyone to do it psychically. The player must find a way to capture the other legendary Pokemon (Obelaske in Rise and Voidestrudo in Fall) to counteract this. After defeating Team Plasma and kicking them out of Mariposite Springs, the player is able to access Orchid's gym and defeat her, but Team Plasma is making their way to the mountains to enact their plan, and the player must storm their base and defeat them one last time. Unlike in OTL's game, this does not replace the Champion battle, but instead replaces the Victory Road sequence, with the player battling trainers all the way to Ghetsis and their rival. Once the two are defeated and the world saved, the player's rival is reformed and the player can battle the Elite Four and Champion proper. The champion turns out to be Rocky, who engages the player in a friendly and fierce battle for the title. After the player becomes the Pokemon League champion, the postgame opens up. The postgame is actually an exploration of eastern Dorad and an homage to Wild West legends, with the player able to visit some ghost towns and battle cowboy trainers, while also fighting unique Pokemon, trainers from other regions, and even catching some Legendaries. Gen 5 has the most robust postgame to date, keeping trainers busy for many hours after the main game.
Pokemon Rise And Fall is released on November 16, 2010, worldwide, exclusive to the Gameboy Supernova. Released amidst a wave of massive hype typical for the average Pokemon game, it receives excellent reviews for its unique variety of Pokemon and unique regional flavor, along with its strong musical score. It's the best reviewed mainline Pokemon game since Gen 2, and its sales would be the fastest yet for a Pokemon game, becoming the top selling overall title of 2010, even outselling Modern Warfare 5 in North America. Colorado fans in particular buy the game in massive droves, and the state would officially celebrate the release of the game with big ceremonies statewide. South Park would devote a three part episode to the game (which would also serve as a sequel to the Chinpokomon episode from way back in the day), and the game would even drive huge amounts of tourism to the state. It would represent somewhat of an end of an era for Pokemon, with the next generation's game having already entered production. It would take the series in a darker, more mature direction, bringing new fans to the series but also shocking some of the old ones. Whether or not it would continue in the success of its predecessors would determine whether or not the series would return to its roots or march forward in a way that the series never had IOTL...
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The Pokemon Rise And Fall anime, taking place between 2011-2013 (and still airing on Cartoon Network after all these years), would follow the storyline of the games fairly closely, while introducing a unique character dynamic that would make the series unlike any of its four predecessors. It would follow the adventures of Jack, Stephanie, and Rocco as they explored the Dorad region and battled Team Plasma. Jack was the protagonist, with Rocco being somewhat of a "big brother" character and Stephanie being the nominal love interest/companion. However, right from the beginning of the series, Stephanie was set up to betray Jack, and was given a detailed backstory to explain this betrayal. The other shoe would eventually drop midway through the second season, shortly after the team left Geode City, with Stephanie joining Team Plasma and becoming Ghetsis' right hand minion. Stephanie would remain one of the primary antagonists throughout the rest of the season, before eventually being defeated in a spectacular battle atop the tallest mountain in Dorad. She would escape while Ghetsis would be taken to jail, and the third season would be based on the Wild West postgame, with Jack training to battle Rocky for the title of Champion while teaming up with a new female companion, Katie. Katie, a more brash and bold character, was sort of a Calamity Jane expy, complete with a Wild West accent and cowboy brashness. Stephanie would return as the villain of the third season, heading up a still dangerous Team Plasma while hot in pursuit of Jack. Eventually, however, a new villain would emerge, a black-cloaked figure related to the mysterious lake monster Agassoth. Stephanie would eventually see the error of her ways, but Jack would never fully trust her again, and eventually Stephanie would leave Dorad at the end of the series to find her own way in the world. Jack would battle Rocky, but would lose to him. However, the battle would leave him yearning to continue on as a Pokemon trainer, and he decided to take up Rocky's life of wandering and enjoying nature. Rocco and Katie (who the series implied were now together) would head back to Sandstone to work at the gym together. In the end, the series implied that Jack and Stephanie might reunite, but left their ultimate fates a mystery for the viewers to decide.
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November 30, 2010
Naughty Dog North was a busy place at the end of 2010. Not only was the studio hard at work on the upcoming Pokemon: Legend Quest, a Sapphire game that would include Pokemon from all five generations and would present a simplified but full Pokemon adventure on the Nintendo Sapphire, but the studio was also working on the next Dog Dash game and a brand new IP that would be featured on the upcoming Nintendo console, whose dev kit had just come in during the past few weeks. All of those projects were taking up plenty of Neil Druckmann's time, but the project that had landed in his lap earlier that year was perhaps the most significant project he'd ever embarked on. So far, he had only a small team working on it, a team comprised of both Japanese and American developers, but more people would come onto the project as the weeks and months progressed.
It too required the use of a devkit for an unreleased, unannounced system: the Game Boy Supernova successor. Its tech was top secret, but from what Druckmann had learned from his development team, it was intentionally designed to have an unprecedented level of connectivity with the Sapphire and its successor, connectivity that would bridge the gap between the two consoles and enable this new handheld device to bring the worlds of Nintendo together like never before. It was also very, very powerful, about as powerful as an Apple iTwin, which made developing for it a difficult but intriguing challenge, and he knew that the game his team was developing for it would absolutely blow players away.
But Druckmann himself wasn't working on programming the game. He and a small team were coming up with the game's story, and Sony had told him that despite the franchise's normal tone, he would have the freedom to do what he wanted, within reason.
He was currently on the phone with Amy Hennig, who was working down at Naughty Dog Mothership in Los Angeles, overseeing the finishing touches on Tales Of The Seven Seas: Horizon.
"This time around, we're not going to let players choose their main character's gender," said Druckmann. "It's going to be a girl. They can pick the name, though."
"Sony's already signed off on that?" asked Hennig, intrigued but skeptical.
"They have," said Druckmann. "Pokemon is such a big deal that we don't think boys will skip a generation because they have to be a girl."
"That's what I was thinking too. I'm still surprised Sony and Game Freak were okay with it though."
"Just this once," said Druckmann with a laugh. "Also, I've picked out her default name. We're going to give her more of a personality this time around, she'll be able to actually speak."
"Will she be the main character of the anime?"
"I've heard they'll be going a different direction with the anime tie-in, but that's way down the road, they haven't even started airing the Rise and Fall anime yet."
"This is seriously a big deal. They're letting a Western studio do a mainline Pokemon game."
"I know, it's all because of the hard work Mark and the rest of the people at the company have done these last 15 years. It's a big honor though, I'm still kind of nervous about all of it."
"Well, you're gonna do great," said Hennig. "I'm really looking forward to seeing the first design sheets for the game."
"Yeah, I think I'll even think up a few Pokemon, maybe," Druckmann replied, laughing again.
"I'll have to let you go, I've got a meeting starting up, but it was awesome to talk about the game. Don't work too hard."
"Can't guarantee that," said Druckmann, starting to move the phone away from his ear.
"Oh...! Before I forget, what's the main character's default name?" asked Hennig. Druckmann picked up a small piece of paper, on which was sketched a teenage girl with a brown ponytail and fairly plain looking clothes emblazoned with a Pokeball symbol.
"Ellie."
Pokemon Rise And Fall is the fifth mainline Pokemon title, the second and final mainline Pokemon for the Game Boy Supernova, and the first in the series to take place in a region not based on Japan. Instead, like OTL's Gen 5, it takes place in an American-based region, the region of Dorad, based on Colorado, with a massive mountain range bisecting the region, rivers, valleys, and plains, making it the most geographically diverse region to date, but also the first landlocked one (though a large lake has been added to provide a sort of ocean-like area). The game features 140 new species of Pokemon, and for the first time, all of them are original TTL (though some are based on OTL Pokemon). In addition, though there is a focus on the new Pokemon, old Pokemon do show up before the postgame (unlike in OTL's Gen 5, where only new Pokemon show up until then). The game has a more "open world" feel to it, with shortcuts through the mountains that allow players to visit certain cities and areas before they'd normally be expected to do so, enabling them to acquire certain Pokemon and TMs and beat certain Gym Leaders early. All the enhancements from previous games return, with few truly new innovations, though there is the addition of the "terrain" system, with terrain bonuses for certain Pokemon. The different styles of terrain include Rugged, Alpine, Lake, Forest, Prairie, Urban, Suburban, Farm, and River, among up to 20 terrain types in all. There's also the Action system, in which a Pokemon might dodge a certain attack or repel it depending on battle circumstances. These changes make battles a bit more exciting and dynamic, and of course more strategic. There's probably less changed from Gen 4 to Gen 5 than any other generation gap, both gameplay-wise and presentation-wise. The graphics are still excellent, somewhere between OTL's 3DS Pokemon titles and OTL's Let's Go Pikachu, and voice acting also returns, with all the gym leaders and many other NPCs being voice acted. The game's soundtrack is based on rock music, with lots of electric guitar and blues rhythms, though there's also some folk and prog sounds as well. Character motifs, and even individual Pokemon motifs, are also introduced, with the game now having different songs for certain types of wild Pokemon and trainers, another innovation from previous titles.
The game's world, as mentioned before, is heavily based on Colorado. There's a central city, based on Denver, with a heavily suburbanized area to the north and south (the "metro area" contains three Pokemon Gyms). There's plains to the east and mountains to the west, and a big forest just west of the mountains, based on the forested areas in OTL Colorado. The game even has a mountain resort area and there's a small, almost hidden reference to South Park in the form of a small town up in the mountains full of rude children. The main cities of the game are:
Pebble Village: The game's starting area, in the southern part of Dorad, where the main character is from and where Professor Pine lives. Professor Pine is the first female professor in the series, and she gives you your starting Pokemon. She's not just a Pokemon professor, she's also a geologist, and likes to study mountains and rock formations.
Sandstone City: Based on OTL Pueblo, this is where the first Gym is located. The Gym Leader, Rocco, uses Ground type Pokemon.
Hornfels City: Based on OTL Grand Junction, this is where the second Gym is located, after passing through a massive forest. The Gym Leader, Alice, uses Bug type Pokemon.
Quartz Town: A suburban city based on OTL Aurora, this is where the third Gym is located. The Gym Leader, Mel, uses Ice type Pokemon.
Obsidian City: An urban city based on OTL Denver, this is where the fourth Gym is located. The Gym Leader, John, is the star quarterback of the local football team, and uses Fighting type Pokemon. He's based somewhat on John Elway.
Rhyolite City: Based on OTL Boulder, this suburban town has a massive Pokemon university, and you have to graduate to battle the Gym Leader, Chandra, who uses Fire type Pokemon.
Fort Basalt: Based on OTL Fort Collins, this northern Dorad city is home to General Charge, Lt. Surge's CO and an expert user of Electric type Pokemon.
Geode City: Based on OTL Greeley, this somewhat gloomy city is home to Darrell, who uses Poison type Pokemon.
Mariposite Springs: Based on OTL Colorado Springs and sitting on a big, beautiful lake, this city is home to Orchid, who uses Water type Pokemon.
Lapis Resort: Based on OTL Aspen, this resort town is where Dorad's Pokemon League sits, and where only the elite trainers may battle for a chance to fight the Champion on top of Dorad's highest peak.
There are other cities and towns in the game, and even a few exclusive to the postgame, but these are the ten most important in the game. There's also plenty of caves, abandoned factories, and even haunted houses to explore, and lots of mountains to climb. There's more outdoors exploration than any other game in the series, due to Colorado being known for its bevy of outdoor activity. The game features a total of 140 new Pokemon, some of whom are listed below:
Gosgro/Vinehorn/Groshika: The Grass starter line, a goat-like Pokemon that gradually evolves into a beautiful godlike Grass/Psychic deer, with a heavy focus on the Special Attack stat.
Ishdrop/Splatfish/Bubloupe: The Water starter line, a small guppy-like fish that evolves into a huge predatory fish much like OTL Wishiwashi.
Lolite/Ardole/Drilflagration: The Fire starter line, essentially Excadrill from OTL, but on fire, with Drilflagration being a Fire/Ground type with massive Attack and Speed.
Wisper/Dazzee/Fulbloom: A flower-based evolution line, sort of like a Jumpluff/Sunflora cross but with slightly better stats.
Kickolt/Kroncho: A Ground/Fighting horse Pokemon with similarities to OTL's Mudsdale line. The signature Pokemon of the Obsidian gym leader.
Snosty/Frostpal/Blistack: An Ice-type Pokemon, the TTL equivalent of the Vanilluxe line in terms of stats and moves, but taking the form of a snowman rather than an ice cream cone.
Choochoo/Chugatrane/Locomaker: A train-based Steel type Pokemon line, this is another line that's heavy on Speed but also on defense.
Stonecub/Rockroar: A Rock-based Pokemon line based on grizzly bears, heavy on attack and defense.
Hummibur/Wingnose/Flitterby: The generation's main Normal/Flying-type line, based on the hummingbird. Fairly weak.
Slith/Rattleback: A Poison-based rattlesnake line. Somewhat similar to Ekans/Arbok, but more heavy on speed.
Bebibis/Waterbuff: A Water/Ground line based on the buffalo. Somewhat bulky and similar to Wooper/Quagsire, but more heavy on Attack and Defense.
Fuzzder/Rantular: A Dark/Poison type line based on tarantulas, like Joltik and Galvantula but without the electricity.
Vivee/Regroth/Spredoubt: A Grass-type line based on a slowly growing field of vines, somewhat like OTL's Tangrowth line.
Baront/Gargantusaur: One of the two fossil Pokemon lines in this game, based on an apatosaurus/brachiosaur.
Armorr/Spikepred: One of the two fossil Pokemon lines in this game, based on the ankylosaurus/spikosaurus.
Slaice/Piepan/Panzone: Instead of an ice cream based Pokemon in this game, we get a pizza based Pokemon, with a Fire/Steel typing. Panzone, who looks like a giant calzone with a pizza cutter stuck in him, is actually decently powerful.
Crunky/Granatt/Rockcrawla: The three-stage Rock evolution line in this game, somewhat similar to Gigalith, but cooler looking, with Rockcrawla being a giant rock monster.
Cyphor/Rumalesk/Queatela: This game's pseudo legendary line, Cyphor is a small bird-like creature, but it eventually evolves into Queatela, a beautiful Dragon/Psychic dragon Pokemon with majestic, multicolored feathers.
Obelaske: The version mascot and legendary for Pokemon Rise, Obelaske is a living monolith and the source of spiritual power for the Dorad region, with a Rock/Psychic typing.
Voidestrudo: The version mascot for Pokemon Fall, Voidestrudo is a Dark/Ghost type shapeshifter, representing erosion and decay that threatens to crumble the mountains of Dorad.
Monteagle/Treagle/Praireagle/Springeagle: Four majestic eagle-like birds representing the mountains, the trees, the prairies, and the springs, these are four new legendary birds of Rock/Flying, Grass/Flying, Ground/Flying, and Water/Flying types respectively, and are four more Legendary Pokemon that can be caught in game.
Antabbit: An antelope/rabbit creature based on the jackalope, it can be hunted down and caught in-game (making it a Legendary, not a Mythical), but it's incredibly hard to do so, based on luck and quite frustrating. The creature is Normal/Fighting.
Snohuge: A Bigfoot-like Ice/Fighting creature and another Legendary Pokemon, this one is also hard to find but much less frustrating and luck based.
Hybridd: One of three Mythical Pokemon in the game, this Electric/Steel construct creature created by Team Plasma is only available through an event.
Lilisprite: Another Mythical Pokemon, a Bug/Psychic type similar to Celebi, it too is only available via event.
Agassoth: The game's final Mythical Pokemon, a Dark/Water creature of incredible power, based on a Lovecraftian horror and buried deep under the Dorad lake. Connected to a very dark special event that connects to the events of the Gen 6 game.
Pokemon Rise and Fall begins with the player trainer, who can be either male or female, venturing outside of Pebble Village, getting attacked by a Pokemon, and being saved by their new friend/rival, a boy/girl (whichever one the player didn't pick) named either Jack or Stephanie. The rival takes the trainer to Professor Pine to get their first Pokemon, and the adventure begins. The first part of the game is fairly straightforward, as the player will venture first to Sandstone and then to Hornfels, meeting Team Plasma along the way. Like in OTL's game, Team Plasma seems somewhat innocent at first, and the player's rival will start to be swayed by their rhetoric, but won't give up on their journey. Once the player reaches the Obsidian metro area, things change a bit. The three gyms here can actually be visited in any order, or the player can even choose to explore in the Fort Basalt/Geode area, but won't be able to fight the two gym leaders there. As the player completes more events in this area, they'll gradually get to know their rival more and more. The rival in this game is sort of the equivalent of N in OTL's Gen 5, but much more knowledgeable about the world, having not been sheltered from a young age. The player will also get to know Rocky, a guru/mountain lover and expert Pokemon trainer. Rocky's appearance and soft-spoken mannerisms are an homage to OTL's John Denver, with an almost "Rocky Mountain High"-esque folk motif played during his appearances. Once the three gyms in the Obsidian area are completed, more of the Fort Basalt/Geode area will open up to the player, and those two gyms can be conquered in either order as well. Finally, the player is able to cross the lake to the Mariposite Springs area, but Team Plasma has taken over the city, with the player's rival now completely under the sway of Ghetsis, the Team Plasma leader and very similar in character and motive to his OTL self. He seeks to take all the Pokemon of the world away, and plans to have the player's rival ascend to the highest peak in Dorad and order every trainer to give up their Pokemon. To do this, he plans to use Voidestrudo (in Pokemon Rise) and Obelaske (in Pokemon Fall). Voidestrudo will crumble all the mountains of the world, showing Ghetsis' power and using fear to make people surrender their Pokemon, while Obelaske will use its psychic powers to convince everyone to do it psychically. The player must find a way to capture the other legendary Pokemon (Obelaske in Rise and Voidestrudo in Fall) to counteract this. After defeating Team Plasma and kicking them out of Mariposite Springs, the player is able to access Orchid's gym and defeat her, but Team Plasma is making their way to the mountains to enact their plan, and the player must storm their base and defeat them one last time. Unlike in OTL's game, this does not replace the Champion battle, but instead replaces the Victory Road sequence, with the player battling trainers all the way to Ghetsis and their rival. Once the two are defeated and the world saved, the player's rival is reformed and the player can battle the Elite Four and Champion proper. The champion turns out to be Rocky, who engages the player in a friendly and fierce battle for the title. After the player becomes the Pokemon League champion, the postgame opens up. The postgame is actually an exploration of eastern Dorad and an homage to Wild West legends, with the player able to visit some ghost towns and battle cowboy trainers, while also fighting unique Pokemon, trainers from other regions, and even catching some Legendaries. Gen 5 has the most robust postgame to date, keeping trainers busy for many hours after the main game.
Pokemon Rise And Fall is released on November 16, 2010, worldwide, exclusive to the Gameboy Supernova. Released amidst a wave of massive hype typical for the average Pokemon game, it receives excellent reviews for its unique variety of Pokemon and unique regional flavor, along with its strong musical score. It's the best reviewed mainline Pokemon game since Gen 2, and its sales would be the fastest yet for a Pokemon game, becoming the top selling overall title of 2010, even outselling Modern Warfare 5 in North America. Colorado fans in particular buy the game in massive droves, and the state would officially celebrate the release of the game with big ceremonies statewide. South Park would devote a three part episode to the game (which would also serve as a sequel to the Chinpokomon episode from way back in the day), and the game would even drive huge amounts of tourism to the state. It would represent somewhat of an end of an era for Pokemon, with the next generation's game having already entered production. It would take the series in a darker, more mature direction, bringing new fans to the series but also shocking some of the old ones. Whether or not it would continue in the success of its predecessors would determine whether or not the series would return to its roots or march forward in a way that the series never had IOTL...
-
The Pokemon Rise And Fall anime, taking place between 2011-2013 (and still airing on Cartoon Network after all these years), would follow the storyline of the games fairly closely, while introducing a unique character dynamic that would make the series unlike any of its four predecessors. It would follow the adventures of Jack, Stephanie, and Rocco as they explored the Dorad region and battled Team Plasma. Jack was the protagonist, with Rocco being somewhat of a "big brother" character and Stephanie being the nominal love interest/companion. However, right from the beginning of the series, Stephanie was set up to betray Jack, and was given a detailed backstory to explain this betrayal. The other shoe would eventually drop midway through the second season, shortly after the team left Geode City, with Stephanie joining Team Plasma and becoming Ghetsis' right hand minion. Stephanie would remain one of the primary antagonists throughout the rest of the season, before eventually being defeated in a spectacular battle atop the tallest mountain in Dorad. She would escape while Ghetsis would be taken to jail, and the third season would be based on the Wild West postgame, with Jack training to battle Rocky for the title of Champion while teaming up with a new female companion, Katie. Katie, a more brash and bold character, was sort of a Calamity Jane expy, complete with a Wild West accent and cowboy brashness. Stephanie would return as the villain of the third season, heading up a still dangerous Team Plasma while hot in pursuit of Jack. Eventually, however, a new villain would emerge, a black-cloaked figure related to the mysterious lake monster Agassoth. Stephanie would eventually see the error of her ways, but Jack would never fully trust her again, and eventually Stephanie would leave Dorad at the end of the series to find her own way in the world. Jack would battle Rocky, but would lose to him. However, the battle would leave him yearning to continue on as a Pokemon trainer, and he decided to take up Rocky's life of wandering and enjoying nature. Rocco and Katie (who the series implied were now together) would head back to Sandstone to work at the gym together. In the end, the series implied that Jack and Stephanie might reunite, but left their ultimate fates a mystery for the viewers to decide.
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November 30, 2010
Naughty Dog North was a busy place at the end of 2010. Not only was the studio hard at work on the upcoming Pokemon: Legend Quest, a Sapphire game that would include Pokemon from all five generations and would present a simplified but full Pokemon adventure on the Nintendo Sapphire, but the studio was also working on the next Dog Dash game and a brand new IP that would be featured on the upcoming Nintendo console, whose dev kit had just come in during the past few weeks. All of those projects were taking up plenty of Neil Druckmann's time, but the project that had landed in his lap earlier that year was perhaps the most significant project he'd ever embarked on. So far, he had only a small team working on it, a team comprised of both Japanese and American developers, but more people would come onto the project as the weeks and months progressed.
It too required the use of a devkit for an unreleased, unannounced system: the Game Boy Supernova successor. Its tech was top secret, but from what Druckmann had learned from his development team, it was intentionally designed to have an unprecedented level of connectivity with the Sapphire and its successor, connectivity that would bridge the gap between the two consoles and enable this new handheld device to bring the worlds of Nintendo together like never before. It was also very, very powerful, about as powerful as an Apple iTwin, which made developing for it a difficult but intriguing challenge, and he knew that the game his team was developing for it would absolutely blow players away.
But Druckmann himself wasn't working on programming the game. He and a small team were coming up with the game's story, and Sony had told him that despite the franchise's normal tone, he would have the freedom to do what he wanted, within reason.
He was currently on the phone with Amy Hennig, who was working down at Naughty Dog Mothership in Los Angeles, overseeing the finishing touches on Tales Of The Seven Seas: Horizon.
"This time around, we're not going to let players choose their main character's gender," said Druckmann. "It's going to be a girl. They can pick the name, though."
"Sony's already signed off on that?" asked Hennig, intrigued but skeptical.
"They have," said Druckmann. "Pokemon is such a big deal that we don't think boys will skip a generation because they have to be a girl."
"That's what I was thinking too. I'm still surprised Sony and Game Freak were okay with it though."
"Just this once," said Druckmann with a laugh. "Also, I've picked out her default name. We're going to give her more of a personality this time around, she'll be able to actually speak."
"Will she be the main character of the anime?"
"I've heard they'll be going a different direction with the anime tie-in, but that's way down the road, they haven't even started airing the Rise and Fall anime yet."
"This is seriously a big deal. They're letting a Western studio do a mainline Pokemon game."
"I know, it's all because of the hard work Mark and the rest of the people at the company have done these last 15 years. It's a big honor though, I'm still kind of nervous about all of it."
"Well, you're gonna do great," said Hennig. "I'm really looking forward to seeing the first design sheets for the game."
"Yeah, I think I'll even think up a few Pokemon, maybe," Druckmann replied, laughing again.
"I'll have to let you go, I've got a meeting starting up, but it was awesome to talk about the game. Don't work too hard."
"Can't guarantee that," said Druckmann, starting to move the phone away from his ear.
"Oh...! Before I forget, what's the main character's default name?" asked Hennig. Druckmann picked up a small piece of paper, on which was sketched a teenage girl with a brown ponytail and fairly plain looking clothes emblazoned with a Pokeball symbol.
"Ellie."
John Elway as a Pokemon Gym Leader? Sign me up!
And a Pokemon game where the main character is locked as female? That’s really cool!
Fall 2010 (Part 8) - The Activision Colossus Grows
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the eighth game in the Call Of Duty series and the third in the Modern Warfare series, depicting a fictional World War III between the United States and China. Like previous titles in the series, it's a military-based first person shooter with an emphasis on realism and squad-based gameplay, though this game more than any other in the series has a focus on dramatic, cinematic setpieces that wouldn't be out of place in a modern action movie. It features both an extensive single player campaign and a multiplayer mode loaded with weapons, arenas, and options. Like previous games in the series, Modern Warfare 3 features three playable protagonists in its single player campaign. The first one has also been featured in the two previous games: Rob Zalnasko, voiced by Dean Winters. Zalnasko is the game's primary protagonist, tasked with defending Alaska from a Chinese invasion while also participating in a mission to infiltrate China across the Pacific Ocean and end the war by sabotaging the country's nuclear missile defenses. The second main character of the game is Tommy Stokes, voiced by Tupac Shakur (who also participated in the promotional campaign for Modern Warfare 2). Stokes is tasked with defending the American mainland from the ongoing Chinese invasion. Then there's Akata Hachimura, voiced by Shin Koyamada, a Japanese-American soldier fighting the Chinese Army in Hong Kong and Japan, who eventually joins up with Zalnasko on the final series of missions. These three characters all have distinct personalities, though their basic gameplay style is essentially the same. Modern Warfare 3 controls much like previous games in the series, with a few quality of life improvements mostly involving reloading and staying close to your squadmates in combat, as well as improvements to the game's cover system. By now, the Call Of Duty gameplay has achieved a level of refinement few other FPS titles can boast, and though missions can be quite tough, with plenty of enemies firing from all sides, it's never been easier to control characters in battle. The most improvements have come to the game's multiplayer system, which has added a boatload of new modes and options and has strongly increased the diversity of its battlefields, adding huge indoor spaces such as skyscrapers and even an underground tunnel system to allow for intense, cramped battles. Of course, most of the arenas remain outdoors, taking place in a wide variety of locales and environments. The most popular and innovative new online mode is the "reinforcements" mode which essentially makes backfill a dedicated part of a match, with designated reinforcements showing up at certain times, which sometimes will leave one team shorthanded and one team with a numerical advantage. Though the time both teams spend short-handed is always the same, players and teams must work to take full advantage of the times when they're up on numbers in order to build a lead for the times they go behind. Of course, all the standard deathmatch modes also return, and all new servers have been added to ensure that the games are as lag-free as possible. Modern Warfare 3 boasts the most complex and player-friendly multiplayer mode ever devised in a console FPS, and it's where Activision plans to make most of its money on the game.
The game begins with Zalnasko's campaign, in which he's battling Chinese troops in Alaska, starting with a mission in which Zalnasko's squad must fight to defend Anchorage, and then a series of island hopping missions in the Aleutians. This is where Zalnasko receives his mission to take out China's anti missile defense system and where he also gets intel on the North Korean spy who continues to operate within the Chinese government. The game then shifts over to Stokes' squad, defending a neighborhood in Los Angeles where he grew up, and then getting a call to ship out to Seattle, where a massive battle has broken out. This mission is one of the game's biggest set pieces, featuring a collapsing Space Needle and furious fighting in the city's streets, culminating in a huge bombardment from a Chinese submarine that's made its way into Puget Sound. We then shift over to Hachimura's squad, battling in Hong Kong alongside British soldiers to repel a full scale Chinese invasion of the city, including segments fought in a skyscraper with office-to-office fighting. Next, Hachimura's squad fights a battle in Tokyo. Then, he gets a secret directive to head to Korea to participate in an invasion of the North. Next, we go back to Zalnasko's mission, which sees his squad having already dropped secretly into China, near where the spy is said to be issuing orders to launch an EMP strike to cripple North America's electrical grid and missile defense. Zalnasko is able to infiltrate the enemy base, and he eventually attempts to capture the spy, but the spy fights back and Zalnasko is forced to kill him. He then evacuates China with his squad, and is given a directive to head into North Korea to rendezvous with Hachimura's team. However, we then see that the EMP was partially successful, knocking out power in much of the Western United States and part of Canada. Stokes' squad battles in a darkened Vancouver to defend a NATO summit there, and manages to save the generals and heads of state from being killed by a Chinese strike force. This helps the NATO diplomats to negotiate a peace settlement with China, under the condition that Zalnasko's team take out the rogue elements remaining in North Korea, who plan to launch dozens of nukes into both the United States and China. Zalnasko and Hachimura battle their way into the North Korean leader's stronghold, and all seems lost for them, but they are saved by a timely intervention from a squad of Chinese army defectors whom Zalnasko helped earlier on. The team is able to defeat the North Korean leader and his guards and stop the nuclear launch, saving the United States and China and forging the way for a peace agreement to end the war. Unfortunately, Zalnasko himself was mortally wounded in the fighting, but Hachimura survives and promises to tell of Zalnasko's heroism. The ending sees peace and rebuilding, with Hachimura and Stokes receiving the Medal of Honor, along with Zalnasko who receives it posthumously. The game and trilogy end on a bittersweet note, paving the way for the next era of games in the series.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is received highly positively amongst the gaming press, with strong reviews and a great reception for its multiplayer as well. Overall, opinion of the Call Of Duty series remains highly positive, despite the somewhat derivative nature of the games. The series remains one of Activision's most popular, and sales are around the same as they were for Modern Warfare 2. Overall, the game is the #2 selling title of the year in North America, just behind Pokemon Rise and Fall. It's released in November 2010 for the Sapphire, iTwin, Xbox 2, PC, and Macintosh, with versions of the game also coming to Supernova, iPod Play, and mobile (though they're not quite the same as the console versions). Meanwhile, the multiplayer version of the game becomes the hottest online console game of the year, with millions hopping on to play, buying millions of dollars worth of accessories and DLC. Just as IOTL, the Call Of Duty series remains an enormous cash cow for Activision and a pillar of gaming, and that doesn't look likely to change anytime soon.
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Activision Finalizes Silver Sail Acquisition, Will Gain Quixsters IP
Activision has completed its long-expected acquisition of the gaming software company Silver Sail. Founded in 1991, the company has been responsible for several long-time gaming franchises, most notably the fast-paced family-friendly action franchise Quixsters and the adventure game franchise Frederico. The company has also published numerous other games, most recently the mature Western title Honest Jack, which launched in 2008 to strong reviews but mediocre sales. The company has worked closely with Activision for the past decade, with the company publishing most of Silver Sail's games during the 2000s, and Activision has also promoted and pushed the Quixsters IP with a line of toys and tie-ins for other properties. Though Activision has long sought to acquire Silver Sail, the disappointing Honest Jack put a crimp in negotiations, and it was rumored that Activision was no longer willing to offer the price for Silver Sail that its owners wanted. The two companies have spent most of the last 18 months hashing out the details of the acquisition, and though most of those details have not been disclosed, it's rumored that Silver Sail was acquired for "just over $650 million", with most of that value coming from the strength of Quixsters. Silver Sail's 56 employees have either been hired on at Activision or will receive severance packages, which were reportedly one of the sticking points of the deal. Carlos Delgado, co-creator of the Frederico and Quixsters franchises and majority owner of Silver Sail, is said to have "personally funded" severance packages for the workers not hired on at Activision, and reports are that those workers will receive severance pay equivalent to five years of their previous salary, along with some Activision stock. Delgado himself is reported to have received around $300 million in the deal, and will continue to work at Activision in a "consulting capacity".
-from an article on Games Over Matter, posted on December 1, 2010
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December 3, 2010
Inez Delgado's eyes were focused on the television screen, while a Sapphire controller rested in her hands. She was battling one of the bosses of Freedonia, a quick moving goat-like predator said to be based on the myth of the chupacabra. The creature moved quickly, but Inez's character, a magic wielding elf woman, moved even faster, and was bombarding the creature with powerful ice magic, avoiding its charges and using her huge health bar as a buffer when she did take damage.
"Come on," said Inez quietly, her fingers skillfully hitting the buttons. It had been a long time since she'd suffered a death on this game, and she wasn't even close to suffering one now, but still she took nothing for granted, keeping her full attention on the game and using everything she had at her disposal to put the boss creature down quickly. "You're not so tough, you're not so tough!"
Carlos stepped into the living room and was quiet as he watched his daughter play. He'd seen just how much she enjoyed Freedonia, which was probably her favorite game of the year, and was surprised (and also proud) at all the literary references she'd been able to pick up. Even though Inez's future was now absolutely secure, he was proud of just how hard a worker she was, even if she'd never have to if she didn't want to.
"Got you!" Inez shouted, leaning back into her chair. "Whew... he was fast..."
"Hey, nice job," said Carlos, walking over to Inez and sitting down on the couch next to her. Inez smiled and pressed pause on her controller. "No, no, you can keep playing, I like watching, this game is cool."
"Heh, you know you guys didn't make this one," said Inez, starting the game back up and watching the cutscene that followed the boss.
"Yeah but I wish we had, it looks like it's gonna be Game of the Year," Carlos replied. "Well, this or Call Of Duty..."
"It better be this one," said Inez. "I know it'll make Uncle Bobby sad, but this game deserves to win way more than Call Of Duty does!"
"I think whenever Uncle Bobby get sad, all he has to do is check his bank statements and his smile will come back faster than that chupacabra can run."
Inez giggled.
"Speaking of which..." said Carlos, looking over at his daughter. "Now that I've sold the company, I'll be able to spend more time with you and mom, I hope..."
"I hope so too, dad," Inez replied, hitting pause again and setting down the controller. "Because mom really misses you."
"I know, but from now on it'll be different."
"Are you sure?" asked Inez, looking up at her dad's face. "Mom's sad, all the time. And when she's not sad, she's mad. She says, 'Carlos works too much', or 'I'm an office widow', or..."
Carlos sighed, and Inez knew to stop, not wanting to make her dad any sadder. She knew her father knew just how much strain his work was putting on his marriage, and didn't need to repeat the things her mother told her when no one else was listening.
"I know this money's not going to make things right with mom, or with you. The only thing that'll make things right is me being home, and I promise, that's what I'm gonna do."
Inez smiled and hugged her father tightly.
"Thanks for working so hard, dad..." said Inez softly. "I've missed you too, you know..."
"Hey, you going to keep playing?" Carlos asked as his daughter released him from the hug. "I haven't been able to check this game out, I've been spending too much time looking at Call Of Duty."
"Hehe, I think I've almost beaten it, next stop is Boston," said Inez, starting the game back up.
"Whoa, spoilers!"
Inez just laughed and shook her head, watching the rest of the cutscene and restarting her game. She kept playing, and her dad kept watching, and everything was right with the world. She had some idea of just how much money her dad had just acquired, but it didn't matter all that much to her. What was most important was that her dad had a lot more time to spend with her, and that she could show him all the new games she'd been playing and everything she'd been doing with her music and with her voice acting. And maybe, just maybe, her dad could fix things up with her mom.
Also, she was glad that, according to her dad, Uncle Bobby had treated everyone at his old company fairly, and how much of a role her dad had played in that fair treatment. She was just starting to understand all the things people were saying about her dad's friend on the internet, and why people might not like him even though he had always been so kind to her and her dad.
It's just business, her dad had always told her. One day you'll understand.
Even though she was just ten, Inez was already starting to understand.
The number of people who made video games who were as nice as her dad were few and far between, and with her dad gone, there was now one less of them.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the eighth game in the Call Of Duty series and the third in the Modern Warfare series, depicting a fictional World War III between the United States and China. Like previous titles in the series, it's a military-based first person shooter with an emphasis on realism and squad-based gameplay, though this game more than any other in the series has a focus on dramatic, cinematic setpieces that wouldn't be out of place in a modern action movie. It features both an extensive single player campaign and a multiplayer mode loaded with weapons, arenas, and options. Like previous games in the series, Modern Warfare 3 features three playable protagonists in its single player campaign. The first one has also been featured in the two previous games: Rob Zalnasko, voiced by Dean Winters. Zalnasko is the game's primary protagonist, tasked with defending Alaska from a Chinese invasion while also participating in a mission to infiltrate China across the Pacific Ocean and end the war by sabotaging the country's nuclear missile defenses. The second main character of the game is Tommy Stokes, voiced by Tupac Shakur (who also participated in the promotional campaign for Modern Warfare 2). Stokes is tasked with defending the American mainland from the ongoing Chinese invasion. Then there's Akata Hachimura, voiced by Shin Koyamada, a Japanese-American soldier fighting the Chinese Army in Hong Kong and Japan, who eventually joins up with Zalnasko on the final series of missions. These three characters all have distinct personalities, though their basic gameplay style is essentially the same. Modern Warfare 3 controls much like previous games in the series, with a few quality of life improvements mostly involving reloading and staying close to your squadmates in combat, as well as improvements to the game's cover system. By now, the Call Of Duty gameplay has achieved a level of refinement few other FPS titles can boast, and though missions can be quite tough, with plenty of enemies firing from all sides, it's never been easier to control characters in battle. The most improvements have come to the game's multiplayer system, which has added a boatload of new modes and options and has strongly increased the diversity of its battlefields, adding huge indoor spaces such as skyscrapers and even an underground tunnel system to allow for intense, cramped battles. Of course, most of the arenas remain outdoors, taking place in a wide variety of locales and environments. The most popular and innovative new online mode is the "reinforcements" mode which essentially makes backfill a dedicated part of a match, with designated reinforcements showing up at certain times, which sometimes will leave one team shorthanded and one team with a numerical advantage. Though the time both teams spend short-handed is always the same, players and teams must work to take full advantage of the times when they're up on numbers in order to build a lead for the times they go behind. Of course, all the standard deathmatch modes also return, and all new servers have been added to ensure that the games are as lag-free as possible. Modern Warfare 3 boasts the most complex and player-friendly multiplayer mode ever devised in a console FPS, and it's where Activision plans to make most of its money on the game.
The game begins with Zalnasko's campaign, in which he's battling Chinese troops in Alaska, starting with a mission in which Zalnasko's squad must fight to defend Anchorage, and then a series of island hopping missions in the Aleutians. This is where Zalnasko receives his mission to take out China's anti missile defense system and where he also gets intel on the North Korean spy who continues to operate within the Chinese government. The game then shifts over to Stokes' squad, defending a neighborhood in Los Angeles where he grew up, and then getting a call to ship out to Seattle, where a massive battle has broken out. This mission is one of the game's biggest set pieces, featuring a collapsing Space Needle and furious fighting in the city's streets, culminating in a huge bombardment from a Chinese submarine that's made its way into Puget Sound. We then shift over to Hachimura's squad, battling in Hong Kong alongside British soldiers to repel a full scale Chinese invasion of the city, including segments fought in a skyscraper with office-to-office fighting. Next, Hachimura's squad fights a battle in Tokyo. Then, he gets a secret directive to head to Korea to participate in an invasion of the North. Next, we go back to Zalnasko's mission, which sees his squad having already dropped secretly into China, near where the spy is said to be issuing orders to launch an EMP strike to cripple North America's electrical grid and missile defense. Zalnasko is able to infiltrate the enemy base, and he eventually attempts to capture the spy, but the spy fights back and Zalnasko is forced to kill him. He then evacuates China with his squad, and is given a directive to head into North Korea to rendezvous with Hachimura's team. However, we then see that the EMP was partially successful, knocking out power in much of the Western United States and part of Canada. Stokes' squad battles in a darkened Vancouver to defend a NATO summit there, and manages to save the generals and heads of state from being killed by a Chinese strike force. This helps the NATO diplomats to negotiate a peace settlement with China, under the condition that Zalnasko's team take out the rogue elements remaining in North Korea, who plan to launch dozens of nukes into both the United States and China. Zalnasko and Hachimura battle their way into the North Korean leader's stronghold, and all seems lost for them, but they are saved by a timely intervention from a squad of Chinese army defectors whom Zalnasko helped earlier on. The team is able to defeat the North Korean leader and his guards and stop the nuclear launch, saving the United States and China and forging the way for a peace agreement to end the war. Unfortunately, Zalnasko himself was mortally wounded in the fighting, but Hachimura survives and promises to tell of Zalnasko's heroism. The ending sees peace and rebuilding, with Hachimura and Stokes receiving the Medal of Honor, along with Zalnasko who receives it posthumously. The game and trilogy end on a bittersweet note, paving the way for the next era of games in the series.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is received highly positively amongst the gaming press, with strong reviews and a great reception for its multiplayer as well. Overall, opinion of the Call Of Duty series remains highly positive, despite the somewhat derivative nature of the games. The series remains one of Activision's most popular, and sales are around the same as they were for Modern Warfare 2. Overall, the game is the #2 selling title of the year in North America, just behind Pokemon Rise and Fall. It's released in November 2010 for the Sapphire, iTwin, Xbox 2, PC, and Macintosh, with versions of the game also coming to Supernova, iPod Play, and mobile (though they're not quite the same as the console versions). Meanwhile, the multiplayer version of the game becomes the hottest online console game of the year, with millions hopping on to play, buying millions of dollars worth of accessories and DLC. Just as IOTL, the Call Of Duty series remains an enormous cash cow for Activision and a pillar of gaming, and that doesn't look likely to change anytime soon.
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Activision Finalizes Silver Sail Acquisition, Will Gain Quixsters IP
Activision has completed its long-expected acquisition of the gaming software company Silver Sail. Founded in 1991, the company has been responsible for several long-time gaming franchises, most notably the fast-paced family-friendly action franchise Quixsters and the adventure game franchise Frederico. The company has also published numerous other games, most recently the mature Western title Honest Jack, which launched in 2008 to strong reviews but mediocre sales. The company has worked closely with Activision for the past decade, with the company publishing most of Silver Sail's games during the 2000s, and Activision has also promoted and pushed the Quixsters IP with a line of toys and tie-ins for other properties. Though Activision has long sought to acquire Silver Sail, the disappointing Honest Jack put a crimp in negotiations, and it was rumored that Activision was no longer willing to offer the price for Silver Sail that its owners wanted. The two companies have spent most of the last 18 months hashing out the details of the acquisition, and though most of those details have not been disclosed, it's rumored that Silver Sail was acquired for "just over $650 million", with most of that value coming from the strength of Quixsters. Silver Sail's 56 employees have either been hired on at Activision or will receive severance packages, which were reportedly one of the sticking points of the deal. Carlos Delgado, co-creator of the Frederico and Quixsters franchises and majority owner of Silver Sail, is said to have "personally funded" severance packages for the workers not hired on at Activision, and reports are that those workers will receive severance pay equivalent to five years of their previous salary, along with some Activision stock. Delgado himself is reported to have received around $300 million in the deal, and will continue to work at Activision in a "consulting capacity".
-from an article on Games Over Matter, posted on December 1, 2010
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December 3, 2010
Inez Delgado's eyes were focused on the television screen, while a Sapphire controller rested in her hands. She was battling one of the bosses of Freedonia, a quick moving goat-like predator said to be based on the myth of the chupacabra. The creature moved quickly, but Inez's character, a magic wielding elf woman, moved even faster, and was bombarding the creature with powerful ice magic, avoiding its charges and using her huge health bar as a buffer when she did take damage.
"Come on," said Inez quietly, her fingers skillfully hitting the buttons. It had been a long time since she'd suffered a death on this game, and she wasn't even close to suffering one now, but still she took nothing for granted, keeping her full attention on the game and using everything she had at her disposal to put the boss creature down quickly. "You're not so tough, you're not so tough!"
Carlos stepped into the living room and was quiet as he watched his daughter play. He'd seen just how much she enjoyed Freedonia, which was probably her favorite game of the year, and was surprised (and also proud) at all the literary references she'd been able to pick up. Even though Inez's future was now absolutely secure, he was proud of just how hard a worker she was, even if she'd never have to if she didn't want to.
"Got you!" Inez shouted, leaning back into her chair. "Whew... he was fast..."
"Hey, nice job," said Carlos, walking over to Inez and sitting down on the couch next to her. Inez smiled and pressed pause on her controller. "No, no, you can keep playing, I like watching, this game is cool."
"Heh, you know you guys didn't make this one," said Inez, starting the game back up and watching the cutscene that followed the boss.
"Yeah but I wish we had, it looks like it's gonna be Game of the Year," Carlos replied. "Well, this or Call Of Duty..."
"It better be this one," said Inez. "I know it'll make Uncle Bobby sad, but this game deserves to win way more than Call Of Duty does!"
"I think whenever Uncle Bobby get sad, all he has to do is check his bank statements and his smile will come back faster than that chupacabra can run."
Inez giggled.
"Speaking of which..." said Carlos, looking over at his daughter. "Now that I've sold the company, I'll be able to spend more time with you and mom, I hope..."
"I hope so too, dad," Inez replied, hitting pause again and setting down the controller. "Because mom really misses you."
"I know, but from now on it'll be different."
"Are you sure?" asked Inez, looking up at her dad's face. "Mom's sad, all the time. And when she's not sad, she's mad. She says, 'Carlos works too much', or 'I'm an office widow', or..."
Carlos sighed, and Inez knew to stop, not wanting to make her dad any sadder. She knew her father knew just how much strain his work was putting on his marriage, and didn't need to repeat the things her mother told her when no one else was listening.
"I know this money's not going to make things right with mom, or with you. The only thing that'll make things right is me being home, and I promise, that's what I'm gonna do."
Inez smiled and hugged her father tightly.
"Thanks for working so hard, dad..." said Inez softly. "I've missed you too, you know..."
"Hey, you going to keep playing?" Carlos asked as his daughter released him from the hug. "I haven't been able to check this game out, I've been spending too much time looking at Call Of Duty."
"Hehe, I think I've almost beaten it, next stop is Boston," said Inez, starting the game back up.
"Whoa, spoilers!"
Inez just laughed and shook her head, watching the rest of the cutscene and restarting her game. She kept playing, and her dad kept watching, and everything was right with the world. She had some idea of just how much money her dad had just acquired, but it didn't matter all that much to her. What was most important was that her dad had a lot more time to spend with her, and that she could show him all the new games she'd been playing and everything she'd been doing with her music and with her voice acting. And maybe, just maybe, her dad could fix things up with her mom.
Also, she was glad that, according to her dad, Uncle Bobby had treated everyone at his old company fairly, and how much of a role her dad had played in that fair treatment. She was just starting to understand all the things people were saying about her dad's friend on the internet, and why people might not like him even though he had always been so kind to her and her dad.
It's just business, her dad had always told her. One day you'll understand.
Even though she was just ten, Inez was already starting to understand.
The number of people who made video games who were as nice as her dad were few and far between, and with her dad gone, there was now one less of them.
Inez: "(to Bobby K) And now I wait for your sudden and yet inevitable betrayal."
I'm so glad that one of the games I've spent so much time hashing out with Ry hit such a chord with you. What do you think of the other games I've thought up for TTL?
What else could serve as a threat in a world where magic is commonplace? It'd have to be something, or someone, bad enough to make the rest of the world want to mystically nuke Freedonia to want to avoid fighting again.
My other favorite is probably Divine Wrath--I'm a sucker for fighting games, and that game's eat-your-heart-out-Mortal-Kombat blood, over-the-top violence levels, and insane roster (where else can Santa Claus fight Death himself?) make the game outstanding.
Speaking of which, RySenkari, can you remind us about all the characters in the general franchise, from the first game to the newest title?
Fall 2010 (Part 9) - A Smashing New Sapphire Hit
Super Smash Bros. Unleashed
Super Smash Bros. Unleashed is the fourth Super Smash Bros. title, the first and only title in the series for the Nintendo Sapphire, and the sequel to 2005's Super Smash Bros. Clash. Like previous games in the series, it's a party-based fighting game capable of supporting up to four players either locally or online, and in addition to its multiplayer fighting modes, it features a wide variety of single player modes and mini-games to keep players entertained while also serving up a healthy dose of Nintendo nostalgia. It features the biggest roster of all the Super Smash Bros. titles to date, building off the roster from Clash by adding 12 additional fighters, though it also sees the removal of three: Lucas, Morticloak, and Zero Suit Samus do not return for Unleashed, but the following legacy fighters do return:
Ash Beckland
Battletoads
Bowser
Captain Falcon
Cloud
Diddy Kong
Donkey Kong
Fox
Ganondorf
Ice Climbers
Jade
Joanna Dark
King Dedede
Kirby
Lane
Link
Luigi
Marcus
Mario
Marth
Meta Knight
Ness
Peach
Pikachu
Pit
Rebecca
Ridley
R.O.B.
Samus
Shad
Shirei
Simon Belmont
Solid Snake
Sora
Vapor Snake
Wario
Woofle
Yoshi
Zelda
In addition, 12 new fighters have been added to the game. All of them were revealed at various points before the game's release. Some of the new fighters are from OTL, while others are exclusive TTL:
Nero (from Big Bad Hero)
Villager (from Animal Crossing)
Kamek (from the Mario and Yoshi series)
Wolf (from Star Fox)
Kairi (from Kingdom Hearts)
Blizzeria
Cindake (the legendary duo from Pokemon Black And White)
Lady LeChique (from the 2008 F-Zero game)
Luma and Lake (from Mystic)
Fulgore (from Killer Instinct)
Sweet Tooth (from Twisted Metal)
Ahsoka Tano (from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, this was the final character reveal and was easily the most surprising and impactful of the new character announcements, announced at Star Wars Celebration 2010 alongside information about the upcoming Episode VII movie)
The complete roster has a total of 51 characters, and each of the 39 returners has at least one new move, making every character in Unleashed feel fresh and new. The fighting is a bit more fast paced than in previous games, though the basic gameplay remains unchanged and hardcore Clash players will have no problem transitioning to this new title. In addition to the 51 characters, the game features vastly more stages and music than Clash did, with twice as many songs and a total of 80 stages, with every franchise featured in the game getting at least one stage. The addition of Ahsoka means we get two Star Wars stages, including Ahsoka's training ground and a stage based on the Death Star, with numerous Star Wars music tracks also featured (Nintendo and Sakurai wanted John Williams to compose the game's theme song, but Williams was unavailable and instead, a hard-driving rock theme was instead composed for the game). The major new feature of Unleashed is the addition of the "Smash Coach", an optional AI trainer that studies the player's style of gameplay and then suggests characters and strategies best suited to that player. As the player logs hours with the game, the Smash Coach's "certainty" will increase, so people just starting out will only have a certainty percentage in the single digits, but someone with hundreds of hours played will have a 100% certainty level, allowing the Coach to provide that player's true best choice of main. Through use of the Smash Coach and updates downloaded over Nintendo's servers that constantly change the Coach's strategies based on the current meta, players will get the best possible idea of their best playstyle. Though the AI isn't flawless by any means, it does help millions of novice Smash players improve their gameplay and gravitate toward characters they might enjoy playing more.
The game's big single player mode is called The Great Rescue, in which most of the game's roster has been kidnapped by an army of dark warriors, and the player has only a limited amount of smash fighters to battle through a series of worlds to save them. While it would be easy to compare this mode to "World Of Light" from OTL, it's more like an enhanced arcade mode, with ladders of fights that gradually increase in difficulty, and no shortcuts or distractions, just various Smash battles with some gimmicks and cutscenes (in a way, it's sort of like Event Mode from OTL Melee). While not as sprawling or as epic as Clash's adventure mode, it's still quite fun and allows for some interesting interactions. Rather than epic boss fights against large creatures, the game pits you in battle against more humanoid fighters, both polygon-esque and based on characters in the game, with a huge variety of gimmicks. Every few fights, you can unlock a character. From an initial roster of 25, it's possible to unlock all 26 other playable characters in this mode, though it's also possible to do that just by playing through vs. mode. There's also an interesting arcade variant called "Rivalry Battles", that only opens up once the player has unlocked all 51 characters. In this mode, every character in the game is paired off against a "rival". Sometimes these are no brainers: Mario and Bowser face each other, Link and Ganondorf, etc. Others are a bit deeper: Shad fights Marcus in a battle of heroes, for example. Meanwhile, Joanna Dark, the odd woman out, faces Velvet Dark, in the game as a costume swap for Joanna and serving as a sort of "echo fighter" for her. The Rivalry battles have some interesting dialogue but aren't too heavy on story, and are an interesting way to lengthen the player's time with the game's basic arcade mode while also providing some interesting interactions.
The game has much more of an emphasis on multiplayer than on single player, and it's the first Super Smash Bros game to offer online gameplay. The servers are stable and reliable, with Sony in charge of the game's online multiplayer, and there are daily tournaments and leagues, in addition to random Smash battles and 1v1 pairings. There's no official "For Fun" and "For Glory" mode, but players can easily find item heavy servers for fun gameplay and tournament ladders for serious gameplay, and the game quickly becomes Nintendo's most popular online title. The game features excellent graphics, though it's not quite as detailed as some of Nintendo's other games that year, it's still very comparable to OTL's Ultimate in terms of graphical fidelity, with beautiful HD characters, animations, and backgrounds. Though Unleashed doesn't quite surpass Clash in long-term tournament popularity, it's still considered an excellent fighter with a robust metagame and a huge fandom, with real-life tournaments frequently available. It's released on November 2, 2010, and sales are extremely strong out of the gate, nearly as strong as sales of the latest Call Of Duty title. Reviews for the game are excellent as well, making it an overall Game of the Year contender. The one big knock against Unleashed is its lack of DLC: while Nintendo's motivations for no DLC are admirable (wanting to ship a complete game out of the gate), many players clamor for extra characters and stages to be added to the game. Nintendo's choice not to include DLC in Unleashed does leave some money on the table, and it's a mistake they're not likely to make again with the inevitable fifth game in the series.
Super Smash Bros. Unleashed is the fourth Super Smash Bros. title, the first and only title in the series for the Nintendo Sapphire, and the sequel to 2005's Super Smash Bros. Clash. Like previous games in the series, it's a party-based fighting game capable of supporting up to four players either locally or online, and in addition to its multiplayer fighting modes, it features a wide variety of single player modes and mini-games to keep players entertained while also serving up a healthy dose of Nintendo nostalgia. It features the biggest roster of all the Super Smash Bros. titles to date, building off the roster from Clash by adding 12 additional fighters, though it also sees the removal of three: Lucas, Morticloak, and Zero Suit Samus do not return for Unleashed, but the following legacy fighters do return:
Ash Beckland
Battletoads
Bowser
Captain Falcon
Cloud
Diddy Kong
Donkey Kong
Fox
Ganondorf
Ice Climbers
Jade
Joanna Dark
King Dedede
Kirby
Lane
Link
Luigi
Marcus
Mario
Marth
Meta Knight
Ness
Peach
Pikachu
Pit
Rebecca
Ridley
R.O.B.
Samus
Shad
Shirei
Simon Belmont
Solid Snake
Sora
Vapor Snake
Wario
Woofle
Yoshi
Zelda
In addition, 12 new fighters have been added to the game. All of them were revealed at various points before the game's release. Some of the new fighters are from OTL, while others are exclusive TTL:
Nero (from Big Bad Hero)
Villager (from Animal Crossing)
Kamek (from the Mario and Yoshi series)
Wolf (from Star Fox)
Kairi (from Kingdom Hearts)
Blizzeria
Cindake (the legendary duo from Pokemon Black And White)
Lady LeChique (from the 2008 F-Zero game)
Luma and Lake (from Mystic)
Fulgore (from Killer Instinct)
Sweet Tooth (from Twisted Metal)
Ahsoka Tano (from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, this was the final character reveal and was easily the most surprising and impactful of the new character announcements, announced at Star Wars Celebration 2010 alongside information about the upcoming Episode VII movie)
The complete roster has a total of 51 characters, and each of the 39 returners has at least one new move, making every character in Unleashed feel fresh and new. The fighting is a bit more fast paced than in previous games, though the basic gameplay remains unchanged and hardcore Clash players will have no problem transitioning to this new title. In addition to the 51 characters, the game features vastly more stages and music than Clash did, with twice as many songs and a total of 80 stages, with every franchise featured in the game getting at least one stage. The addition of Ahsoka means we get two Star Wars stages, including Ahsoka's training ground and a stage based on the Death Star, with numerous Star Wars music tracks also featured (Nintendo and Sakurai wanted John Williams to compose the game's theme song, but Williams was unavailable and instead, a hard-driving rock theme was instead composed for the game). The major new feature of Unleashed is the addition of the "Smash Coach", an optional AI trainer that studies the player's style of gameplay and then suggests characters and strategies best suited to that player. As the player logs hours with the game, the Smash Coach's "certainty" will increase, so people just starting out will only have a certainty percentage in the single digits, but someone with hundreds of hours played will have a 100% certainty level, allowing the Coach to provide that player's true best choice of main. Through use of the Smash Coach and updates downloaded over Nintendo's servers that constantly change the Coach's strategies based on the current meta, players will get the best possible idea of their best playstyle. Though the AI isn't flawless by any means, it does help millions of novice Smash players improve their gameplay and gravitate toward characters they might enjoy playing more.
The game's big single player mode is called The Great Rescue, in which most of the game's roster has been kidnapped by an army of dark warriors, and the player has only a limited amount of smash fighters to battle through a series of worlds to save them. While it would be easy to compare this mode to "World Of Light" from OTL, it's more like an enhanced arcade mode, with ladders of fights that gradually increase in difficulty, and no shortcuts or distractions, just various Smash battles with some gimmicks and cutscenes (in a way, it's sort of like Event Mode from OTL Melee). While not as sprawling or as epic as Clash's adventure mode, it's still quite fun and allows for some interesting interactions. Rather than epic boss fights against large creatures, the game pits you in battle against more humanoid fighters, both polygon-esque and based on characters in the game, with a huge variety of gimmicks. Every few fights, you can unlock a character. From an initial roster of 25, it's possible to unlock all 26 other playable characters in this mode, though it's also possible to do that just by playing through vs. mode. There's also an interesting arcade variant called "Rivalry Battles", that only opens up once the player has unlocked all 51 characters. In this mode, every character in the game is paired off against a "rival". Sometimes these are no brainers: Mario and Bowser face each other, Link and Ganondorf, etc. Others are a bit deeper: Shad fights Marcus in a battle of heroes, for example. Meanwhile, Joanna Dark, the odd woman out, faces Velvet Dark, in the game as a costume swap for Joanna and serving as a sort of "echo fighter" for her. The Rivalry battles have some interesting dialogue but aren't too heavy on story, and are an interesting way to lengthen the player's time with the game's basic arcade mode while also providing some interesting interactions.
The game has much more of an emphasis on multiplayer than on single player, and it's the first Super Smash Bros game to offer online gameplay. The servers are stable and reliable, with Sony in charge of the game's online multiplayer, and there are daily tournaments and leagues, in addition to random Smash battles and 1v1 pairings. There's no official "For Fun" and "For Glory" mode, but players can easily find item heavy servers for fun gameplay and tournament ladders for serious gameplay, and the game quickly becomes Nintendo's most popular online title. The game features excellent graphics, though it's not quite as detailed as some of Nintendo's other games that year, it's still very comparable to OTL's Ultimate in terms of graphical fidelity, with beautiful HD characters, animations, and backgrounds. Though Unleashed doesn't quite surpass Clash in long-term tournament popularity, it's still considered an excellent fighter with a robust metagame and a huge fandom, with real-life tournaments frequently available. It's released on November 2, 2010, and sales are extremely strong out of the gate, nearly as strong as sales of the latest Call Of Duty title. Reviews for the game are excellent as well, making it an overall Game of the Year contender. The one big knock against Unleashed is its lack of DLC: while Nintendo's motivations for no DLC are admirable (wanting to ship a complete game out of the gate), many players clamor for extra characters and stages to be added to the game. Nintendo's choice not to include DLC in Unleashed does leave some money on the table, and it's a mistake they're not likely to make again with the inevitable fifth game in the series.
Yeah! Smash Bros.! Woo-hoo! Good to see the series and competitive scene doing well.
Um, what? As cool as Star Wars in Smash Bros. is, Sakurai has repeated many times that Smash is a tribute to video games. It's why Goku (who now has his own fighting game, Dragon Ball Fighter Z) and Shrek will never appear in the game, no matter how much fans clamor for them or how many video games they appear in. If their origins are in media other than games, Sakurai doesn't want them in. And that's a decision he's unlikely to ever reverse on, unlike Ridley being "too big" for the game or Villager not fitting a fighting game's inherently violent nature. Honestly... that might be the most unrealistic thing I've seen in the whole timeline.
Unless there's more reasoning behind it?
- Status