One of the more upsetting things for me about Breath of the Wild, at least conceptually, as I have yet to play the game, is how there was no option to change the spoken language of its characters without also changing the in-game text. It is a petty thing, but I never associated the denizens of Hyrule as being English speakers, as the snippets of Hylian featured in prior games did not sound like English. I bring this up because the ability to change the spoken language was added with a recent patch, but now I need to figure out which dub sounds the best, or the least worse.
So, the biggest piece of news this week is the announcement of Darksiders III. Yes, following the collapse of its publisher, THQ, and dissolving of its developer, Vigil Games the series’ fate was uncertain. At least before the rights to the series were picked up by Nordic Games, who subsequently renamed themselves THQ Nordic, and released the first two titles in the series on modern consoles. While this did somewhat signify a third installment, it actually seemed more likely that the publisher was simply trying to generate revenue off of the games and IPs it has gained the rights of. Which is a core component of THQ Nordic’s business plan from what I can gather.
As for Darksiders III itself, the game will center around Fury, a female horseman of the apocalypse, as she goes on a quest to kill the representations of the seven sins in order to help redeem her brother War after he accidentally genocided all the humans. The game will be developed by Gunfire Games, a company founded by many former Vigil Games staff, and will adopt an open ended approach as Fury’s quest takes her across the ruins of Earth. This was all revealed in a trailer that posted shortly after the game was leaked by Amazon, and in a surprising move, 12 minutes of gameplay footage were released a few days after the initial announcement.
As it stands, the gameplay shown looks a little underwhelming. Darksiders III looks to be a competent exploration driven hack and slashy affair, but without many remarkable aspects. Than again, the game is a full year away, so perhaps things will change and improve incrementally as development progresses and the game moves away from this state. Darksiders III will be released for PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2018. Before then, I probably should pick up the remastered versions of the first two games for a review… I’ll do that next time THQ Nordic puts them up for 90% off, because they are crazy like that.
Following a needlessly prolonged announcement for a game that is still in such an early stage of development, Bandai Namco has released the first proper and representative trailer for their upcoming Souls-esque action RPG from members of the God Eater team, Code Vein. Based on the trailer, the Souls influences are actually quite apparent. With glimpses of more methodical and dodge centered combat, weighty actions, and a series of slightly dreary environments that try to capture a more enticing look, but come across as a bit bland. The actual art style looks like it could use some work in order to better marry the more dismal environments with anime influenced character designs, but I’m guessing that will be refined over the ensuing year or so before Code Vein releases for undisclosed platforms in 2018.
Moving onto the port news, Marvelous Inc has announced that they are bringing the Playstation Vita game Valkyrie Drive – Bhikkhuni to Steam this summer. The game is an arena based action title centered around a group of women who can transform into weapons when sexually aroused, and are then wielded by their lesbian lover, embedding them with great power. It is a ludicrous concept that is unsurprisingly devised by the creators of Senran Kagura and, even more unsurprising, is bookended with gigantic jelly-like boobs. It was always a shameless and kind of crass concept, but as somebody who monetarily supports an artist who has drawn penis nipples in the past, I’m not one to judge.
Also, Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma has been announced for PS4 and will be released on August 18th, 2017. An unsurprising move that admittedly makes me wonder why this was not included in the PS4 release of Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, as then it would be the Zero Escape trilogy all in one convenient package. Probably because then Aksys would need to charge $60 for the package rather than a combined total of $90.