(PS3) Time and Eternity

[Ray]

While I did think the trailer was too short, it did show us what the full game would be like; the action looks awesome. Want for sure.

http://andriasang.com/comzr9/tokitowa_trailer_debut/

- The game is not a turn-based RPG. It's very close to an action RPG.

- The game has a mix of fixed and moving cameras.

- The game will be released this year -- 2012. Mikage said that it probably won't take all the way until Winter.

- The game will be ready in time for TGS (I believe Mikage is talking about it being shown at TGS rather than being released by then).

- The game will have download content.

- Mikage said that you can cheat on your wife and you can select your wife. It's possible he was joking.

- Asked to give a percentage completion, they said said around 20%. The basic program is done.

I seriously hope it isn't a dating sim because that would totally ruin the already established romance. Oh well, it is possible that Mikage was joking, but the cast being mostly female is highly suggestive of the fact that it will more than likely be a dating sim. I feel like my interest in this title has suddenly dropped a little. My main reason for liking this game was the fact that two of the main characters are a married couple; I imagine this will lead to an interesting relationship/romance? I wouldn't mind if this were to be a dating sim if you didn't have to cheat on your wife in order to get a new one.

Yay for ARPGness.

[Xion Valkyrie]

There's only like 10 seconds of actual gameplay in that trailer. I'm guessing they're still working out the kinks so they can't show us any combat.

Originally Posted by Aphrah

I seriously hope it isn't a dating sim because that would totally ruin the already established romance. Oh well, it is possible that Mikage was joking, but the cast being mostly female is highly suggestive of the fact that it will more than likely be a dating sim. I feel like my interest in this title has suddenly dropped a little. My main reason for liking this game was the fact that two of the main characters are a married couple; I imagine this will lead to an interesting relationship/romance? I wouldn't mind if this were to be a dating sim if you didn't have to cheat on your wife in order to get a new one.

Yay for ARPGness.

Maybe Catherine has sparked a new mechanic in JRPGs: Adultery!

[LoweGear]

Well, they did show gameplay footage, but they were so short that it wasn't possible to really gauge the actual animation. What we did see looked quite nice though, I'll give them that.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Xion Valkyrie

Maybe Catherine has sparked a new mechanic in JRPGs: Adultery!

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it has; it did handle it well after all.

But this game seems a little.. too colourful and upbeat for something like adultery? The developers could just put get the message across by saying: 'Choose your own love interest! But forget about the fact that the MC is actually married to one of the heroines. Ooor, they may play off the angle that he didn't actually kiss her, so it didn't actually count? That would kind of mean that this game was falsely advertised. This'll be deciding factor if I want to import it day 1 or just wait and see if it gets localized.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Von Himmel

I'm still hoping that their attitude toward western fans is only for tales series ...not that I like it if it were so either

I'm pretty sure they are more anti-hand-held when it comes to localization so I wouldn't completely give up hope yet, but yeah they're pretty awful to the North American market in general and not just with games. They don't seem to feel there's much potential there for anything other than console titles.

[Daniel E.]

The male character is simply refered as "the player" while the girls does get her name displayed. So much for my hopes of having a choice between the two.

[Tyabann]

Uggggh, wow. Just those few clips make it clear just how bad it's going to look.

Ninokuni and Tales of Vesperia were much more incredible in terms of the 'living anime' style... if the environments in this game weren't 3D they might have been able to pull it off, but as-is it's going to be incredibly jarring.

I still can't figure out if and how they're going to make a 3D camera work either.

[Crimrui]

Originally Posted by Aphrah

I seriously hope it isn't a dating sim because that would totally ruin the already established romance.

Well, it is possible that the marriage was established towards certain goal other then love? I don't know, I would definitely welcome a dating sim-elements, especially with beautiful graphics such as this. Being able to cheat (not counting Catherine) would be a bit unique for JRPG genre. And the half-naked blonde girl near the end gives a certain... adult feel. ^^

In that fast few scenes where it showed the world and the girl, it kinda looked to me like the world is the usual 3d cell-shaded thingy while the character itself is completely 2D. Kinda reminds me of those old point'n'click 2D adventure games, but far superior.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Crimson Cloud

Well, it is possible that the marriage was established towards certain goal other then love? I don't know, I would definitely welcome a dating sim-elements, especially with beautiful graphics such as this. Being able to cheat (not counting Catherine) would be a bit unique for JRPG genre. And the half-naked blonde girl near the end gives a certain... adult feel. ^^

In that fast few scenes where it showed the world and the girl, it kinda looked to me like the world is the usual 3d cell-shaded thingy while the character itself is completely 2D. Kinda reminds me of those old point'n'click 2D adventure games, but far superior.

Well, according to the site bios, both of them have feelings for each other so that eliminates the possibility of it being a political marriage or the like. Don't get me wrong; I quite like dating-sim elements in my games, but I prefer if games have a romance set out in stone. Instead of focusing on multiple routes and multiple girls, I think the result would be much better if all effort were to be focused into making one single love story. It'd make for quite a heartwarming tale if it were to focus on romance of an already married couple. Until we get told whether or not it's a dating sim, I'll hope that it isn't one. If it does turn out to be the case, then I'll probably get over it and just ignore all of the girls' routes. I'll most likely important the game either way.

As for that blonde girl, she is quite similar to Toki; she wears the same outfit as her (could be some sort of uniform), has a very similar hairstyle, and Toki's pet dragon is seen beside her (in the image shown below). However, instead of wielding a gun, she wields a dagger, and has yellow eyes and hair. The two girls can be seen side-by-side here (NSFW-ish). I think she may the same person? I dunno, just some speculation on my part.


Dat ever so slightly visible ass. *ahem*

The trailer didn’t have much substance for me to pass an accurate judgment on the graphics/animation. It did look pretty though.

[Von Himmel]

Oh come on, having a dating sim element means that we're going to have a bonus romance story in it! I mean, if you don't like the romance for the main girl then you might end up liking the romance for the other girl

And I don't know...having us to name the male character ourselves makes me think that they're giving a hint about some player-driven story for this game

[relentlessflame]

This is going to sound totally silly, but I actually had a concept for an RPG story once that had the very same premise as this game, with the wedding opening being interrupted by an attack and setting up the premise for the game. Damn, I guess I was on to something! (No, definitely no...)

Anyway, I definitely have to check out this game to see how they developed this idea.

One thing I wanted to mention about the issue of the multiple possible heroines and the dating sim aspect... with a title like "Time and Eternity", I imagine the concept of alternate timelines may very well come into play here. Not sure if it could involve a "change the past to change the future" sort of scenario, or who knows... but I wouldn't necessarily take it for granted that they literally mean "the wedding is called off and the protagonist falls in love with someone else, quasi-cheating on his first love". With this theme and premise, I imagine they'll try to keep a lot of aspects of the story mysterious until the game is released.

[Crimrui]

Originally Posted by Aphrah

Well, according to the site bios, both of them have feelings for each other so that eliminates the possibility of it being a political marriage or the like. Don't get me wrong; I quite like dating-sim elements in my games, but I prefer if games have a romance set out in stone. Instead of focusing on multiple routes and multiple girls, I think the result would be much better if all effort were to be focused into making one single love story.

Guess I can agree to some extend. Problem with romance games is that conclusion of it pretty much happens at the end of the game, so you don't have time to spend more personal time with your loved character and to see how others react to you. But like Von Himmel said, if the players don't like the main couple they will pretty much be stuck with lovey-dovey stuff they don't care about for the whole game. So having multiple choices is always a good thing. What I would like them to do is to make the couple formed and loved express a bit early in the game so that rest of it is just getting to know your partner better. ^^

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Von Himmel

Oh come on, having a dating sim element means that we're going to have a bonus romance story in it! I mean, if you don't like the romance for the main girl then you might end up liking the romance for the other girl

And I don't know...having us to name the male character ourselves makes me think that they're giving a hint about some player-driven story for this game

Perhaps. Due to how this game has been advertised, I assumed it'd tell the tale of two married lovers. If they originally had said that you could choose a heroine and then marry her, I'd be all for this.

Name the main character? I don't know about that; I can't find anything, which would hint at us being given the choice to name him. Calling him 'The Player' just made me think that he may be either a) a silent protagonist (I don't really like this, unless it's done extremely well a la Bioshock 2) or b) his name will not be disclosed until the very end. Ah, he could be nameable too, I guess. ^^

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

One thing I wanted to mention about the issue of the multiple possible heroines and the dating sim aspect... with a title like "Time and Eternity", I imagine the concept of alternate timelines may very well come into play here. Not sure if it could involve a "change the past to change the future" sort of scenario, or who knows... but I wouldn't necessarily take it for granted that they literally mean "the wedding is called off and the protagonist falls in love with someone else, quasi-cheating on his first love". With this theme and premise, I imagine they'll try to keep a lot of aspects of the story mysterious until the game is released.

Yeah, I imagine they’ll only be releasing snippets of information as the release date approaches us. We haven’t even seen the so-called ‘Player’ character in action yet.

Originally Posted by Crimson Cloud

Guess I can agree to some extend. Problem with romance games is that conclusion of it pretty much happens at the end of the game, so you don't have time to spend more personal time with your loved character and to see how others react to you. But like Von Himmel said, if the players don't like the main couple they will pretty much be stuck with lovey-dovey stuff they don't care about for the whole game. So having multiple choices is always a good thing. What I would like them to do is to make the couple formed and loved express a bit early in the game so that rest of it is just getting to know your partner better. ^^

Yes! Exactly that. As for the multiple routes thing, I'll decide how I feel about it after it gets confirmed.

I don't know how I missed this post: http://andriasang.com/comzr1/tokitowa_action/

He also provided some hints about what we can expect from the gameplay, one of the more mysterious parts from last week's announcement. The game's battle system will not be the type where you select commands from a menu. It will have action elements. Also, the element of "time" will have a role in the battle system in unexpected ways.

The theme of the game is time, said Yoshizumi ("Toki" means time). An important keyword is marriage (your character and the main heroine are married). The game will be full of serious, sexy and comical elements.

There are currently no plans to make the game into a series, said Yoshizumi. However, he does not want the game to end with this first title.

Woo! Since the marriage between the Prince and Toki is said to be important, I'm just going to take this as a no to multiple romances question.


Full size here. The assassin can be seen in the image on the bottom of the left page.

[Crimrui]

^He is really forcing this ''marriage'' word a bit too far. And it will be quite a shame, for me anyway, if there are no multiple choices but I'll still be ok with it, since I like Toki's design.

I definitely hope that by those ''sexy elements'' he doesn't mean that the main guy will be teased by other girls like in those harem animes we see today, although the choices doesn't matter as there is only one ending. An image of Star Ocean The Last Hope comes to mind, where the game gave you a choice to interact with team mates and raise their affection towards the main character. Although it was more of a tease with female characters as it wouldn't change the ending (although character specific ending was present in the second and third game), you would just get a special scene regarding their story. In that case, I would rather have no choices at all.

But anyway, this is just a random talk, there is still much more to be revealed about the game so I might change my opinion thousand of times. ^^

[frubam]

Quite an interesting concept. I hope it's like Thousand Arms. I really loved that game =03.

[Iron Maw]

Character designs look pretty generic in game compare to Vofan's art. =/ Still it's pretty neat concept, but I can't help bu,t feel that's going to look really weird when it's said and done.

Originally Posted by frubam

Quite an interesting concept. I hope it's like Thousand Arms. I really loved that game =03.

A side scroller-ike style with Hi-Res sprites al'a Valkyrie Profile would be even better IMO.

[Ray]

http://andriasang.com/comzv0/tokitowa_screens_details/

Details on the battle system are being kept under wraps right now. However, Hirono said that they're hoping to make it not feel like you're just watching an anime, so the battle system will have an action feel and will not be command type. Also, the elements of "time" are included in the battle system in some unexpected form.

Mikage described the story has having elements of serious, sexy and comical. However, overall, it has a bright touch.

Serious, sexy, and comical? I'm in. I wonder how long it'll be before we get a few minutes of actual gameplay.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Aphrah

http://andriasang.com/comzv0/tokitowa_screens_details/



Serious, sexy, and comical? I'm in. I wonder how long it'll be before we get a few minutes of actual gameplay.

So...like everything to come out of Japan pretty much ever it sounds like.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

So...like everything to come out of Japan pretty much ever it sounds like.

Yeah, I guess. Everything simply boils down to whether or not I like the art direction, and in this case, I do.

[grylsyjaeger]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

FISHNET ZETTAI RYOUIKI.

*grabs and takes Toki home*

Damn it, why the fuck am I always second to you!!