So, I was directed to a three hour unscripted lecture on the story of Kingdom Hearts. I watched it, and am almost amazed at how much the story resembles the slew of fan fiction that it inspired. It is the most contrived and convoluted thing I have ever seen go on for this long, and I am convinced that Square Enix lacks any sort of narrative editors and that Tetsuya Nomura should never, ever, be put in charge with the story for anything ever again. Now all of that incomprehensibility is inside me, and it will never leave. Anyways, there’s a bunch of news this week for some reason, and now I need to talk about it.
Last week I brought up how Square Enix, or more specifically Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics, were beginning work on a series of games based on Marvel properties, namely The Avengers. Since then, sources have contacted Eurogamer, and they revealed two things. The first is that the developers are also working on a project based on Guardians of the Galaxy, while the second is that there probably won’t be another Deus Ex game for quite some time. Despite statements of commitment to the franchise from Square Enix, the publisher was underwhelmed by the sales of the most recent installment, Mankind Divided. Though, based on the information revealed in a scathing episode of Jimquisition, I’m willing to believe that was entirely Square Enix’s fault.
The game supposedly took 5.5 years to develop, a lot of content was cut, began as two separate titles that were in development simultaneously, and had development resources spread thin in order to accommodate an additional campaign that is designed like a free to play title. Combined with generally unreasonable sales expectations, which the company has expressed often in the past, and this just seems like the fans of Deus Ex are being punished for the incompetence by Square Enix’s upper management. Or at least the upper management of their western branch.
Granted, their Japanese branch is still capable of many boneheaded and stupid moves, such as the development of Final Fantasy XV, which, to the public, took over a decade and was released in an unfinished state. To the point where it will likely be one or more years until the game is properly done. Once it is however, it will probably come to the PC. Yes, the director of XV, Hajime Tabata, said he wanted to bring the game to PC, complete with unique features and from what was implied, greater visual fidelity than what the console versions can offer. While I am still hesitant towards the game as a whole, I would be happy to eventually play it once the game is actually done.
Moving to the next topic, German game retailer, 4u2play.de put up store pages for several unnanounced niche Japanese games. These include YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World, a remake of a 90s visual novel about a young man who can explore parallel worlds. Punch Line, an adventure game based on an anime of the same name written by Zero Escape director Kotaro Uchikoshi. Chaos;Child, a visual novel belonging to the same series as Steins;Gate, and successor to ChäoS;HEAd. Earth Defense Force 5, an action game about murdering giant insects, aliens, and robots. Along with School Girl Zombie Hunter, a third person shooter set in the same universe and mindset as Onechanbara.
Retail listings for games tend to be pretty reliable, so it’s highly likely that all five of these games are indeed coming to the west by way of a Western publisher. Especially considering how specific these titles are, the fact that this is a European retailer leaking this information, and how localizations of Earth Defense Force 5 and School Girl Zombie Hunter seem like games that XSEED would inevitably end up localizing on the behalf of D3 Publisher. Because I’m pretty sure they pay XSEED to localize the games, seeing as how they left the home console business in North America… 
Speaking of XSEED, about six months ago, they released a PC port of the Wii game Little King’s Story, a delightful little title that I thoroughly enjoyed going through a second time, but its port was certainly lacking, and caused issues for some. In an attempt to fix this, the company contacted none other than the man who fixed Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition on PC, Peter “Durante” Thoman. Over the past few months, he has been going through the game’s source code and managed to fix the great majority of issues the game had. He improved the framerate, stuttering, overall performance and even enhanced the graphics and controls options. I can only hope this news actually spreads and more people actually buy this lovely little gem, as sales have been far lower than they should have.
As for news that should have been announced several weeks ago, Nintendo has revealed the price model for the online services of the Nintendo Switch, and it actually caught me by surprise. Their as of yet unnamed online service will cost somewhere from 2,000 to 3,000 annually. A price of roughly half as much as Xbox Live or Playstation Plus, but for a service with dramatically less value. I brought this up before, but Nintendo’s plan on offering a single game to players a month, a game that is removed from their account at month’s end no less, makes the service seem far less valuable than the competition, which are arguably worth keeping just for the steady influx of free games. Especially considering the limited library of online titles available on the Switch.
This past week, Nintendo also officially cancelled their experimental Wii U title, Project Giant Robot. The game failed to get off the ground gracefully, and died as a tech demo. A game built around technology nobody really wanted to play a game with, and was probably going to be rubbish when you really think about it. Though, Nintendo might have just given up on the game after deciding to adopt a scorched Earth mentality towards the Wii U, which basically died after Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE was released.
Man, this week really had everything. Corporate stupidity, niche game leaks, talk of a PC port, Nintendo news, and Nintendo stupidity, and something pertaining to one of my all-time favorite games. Anyways, back to working on my creative writings, playing games, and doing schoolwork. See ya later space cowboys.