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rallamajoopAccent Core Plus is due out in Japan in a week, and I haven’t even gotten around to rambling about it properly yet. Well, far be it from me to miss the chance to editorialise over every shred of what little info they've given us. >D Fandom's been waiting for a continuation of the GGXX storyline since 2002 - expectations are gonna be high (from those who didn't give up and move on long ago, at any rate), and they've got an awful lot of story-ground still to cover. Not that there's precisely been a lot to go on, promotion wise, but that does still leave us plenty of room for tl;dr speculation...
What we know we’re getting
What little promotion material there is for the game leaps straight into assuring us we’ll be getting answers about the truth behind the Gear project, That Man’s plans and the Post War Administration Bureau – in short, all the big remaining mysteries left by GGXX and the games before it (thank yoooou ArcSys, it’s about bloody time). There’s also going to be a section dealing with events during the war itself – not at all surprising when they’ve added Kliff, Justice and Order Sol to the cast and promised us story modes for all of them. Also, going by the voice over on the trailers, we’ve got a pretty solid promise that we’ll be getting some answers about where Dizzy came from too. So far, sounding pretty damn good.
We also know they’re handling the story mode is differently this time. There are points where you get to select between different RPG-style responses that the character you’re playing as can give to whoever they’re talking to, and presumably those choices will send your down different story pathways. That’s a pretty big departure from the traditional method from GGX and GGXX where which path you wound up on depended on how you won particular battles along the way (and after spending hours trying to get instant kills to connect in the right place in the previous instalment, I for one am all for this new method). They’re also introducing something called a ‘Zapping System’, whatever that means (see ‘What we don’t know’ below), and as the end result of all this, they’re promising a massive number of different story paths and scenarios for people to play through. Promising indeed.
At base value, anyway.
What we don’t know
Here’s the thing – it’s been six years now since XX came out. However you look at it, that’s too long, so the biggest question hanging over the project is whether they’ll have completely lost the plot in the meantime. There were so many plot threads left over after GGXX that whether they can resolve them all with one game in this format is seriously questionable – especially without introducing any new playable characters (That Man and his remaining servants or other PWAB creations would be the obvious candidates). The new story mode format might be able to help there, but it’s impossible to be sure what kind of effect it might have when we still don’t know exactly what they’re doing with it.
When I looked up ‘Zapping System’ I found a large number of references to assorted Resident Evil games, and a handful of others referring to other game series that use the term. No-one seems to have bothered sitting down long enough to actually define the term – it’s like one of those words that grow out of an Internet meme and wind up getting used to mean something slightly different every time they crop up. Sometimes ‘Zapping System’ gets used to mean you can switch between playing as different characters from one team at different points in the game, other times it’s a system where what actions you take as one character change what options you have when you go through the next character’s story mode in the same area, still others use it to mean a system where the characters you can switch between exist in whole different time periods. The main common denominator seems to be the ability to switch characters, but only ever between two or three different options at most. I can hardly guess what it’d mean in a fighting game with a cast the size of Guilty Gear’s (though I do look forward to finding out).
Even more confusing, we don’t know what GG2 might throw into the mix. The answer could easily be ‘nothing’ given its AU status, but it’s hard not to wonder. A lot of the reason I was originally convinced GG2 must fit into the GGX storyline was that splitting off into an AU at that point in the made no sense (and in retrospect, I had that part right, because GG2 did make no sense. Go fig. -_-) As far as I can tell, the whole logic behind the idea that GG2 could somehow be the more ‘true’ sequel to GG was that it would deal more directly with the ‘main’ plotline surrounding That Man, whereas GGX-XX were more about Dizzy and the plot with the PWAB. Only that turned out to be garbage, because GG2 told us no more about That Man or his plans than GGXX ever did, and now both versions of the timeline are promising to resolve the same major plot point. It’s hard to see how this could end well. Assuming for a minute that GG2 doesn’t turn into such a massive commercial failure that we never see a GG3, where would they take this? Are we going to see the same secrets about That Man and all his plans revealed in both versions? Will there be a different Truth Behind The Gear Project and a different showdown in each?
GG2 did introduce some interesting new things about the nature of magic and the mysterious someone-or-something creating Valentine/Justice clones, but is that just for that universe, or should we expect to see That Man mysteriously de-aged and characters talking about the Backyard theory of magic in AC+? I’d like to say the answer’s a definite no, and I’d still put my money there, but I’ve seen a few too many Japanese message board threads where people seem to be seriously debating whether we’ll to see Ky and Dizzy hook up somewhere in AC+, and it’s making me twitchy.
But eh, let’s put all that ambiguity aside for now and talk about what I hope we’d see from a proper sequel to GXX.
The Big Plot Things
The Post War Administration Bureau
Where to start with these guys? We don’t know who they are, what they’re trying to achieve or why, but they’ve sure been going to a lot of effort to get there. They created the Robo-Kys, they’re hunting down Ki magic users, they turned Testament into a Gear, created the forbidden beasts, and in the GG manga they’re even after the pieces of the Outrage. They’re secretly manipulating the UN and the Assassin’s Guild – they claim even That Man as one of their pawns, and it sounds like a lot of the secrets behind the Holy War itself were their personal doing. They are all kinds of Bad News. What we don’t know is why they’re doing it all, who’s in charge or just how deeply they’re connected to the secret reasons behind the war itself. That’s a lot of information to reveal over the course of one game – especially (as I mentioned before) without the game having the freedom to introduce any new playable characters who are working for the PWAB. In short: BIG expectations on this front.
That Man’s plans and the Gear Project
So, the Gear Project was meant to create a race of biological weapons. Only their creator double-crossed whoever employed him and the Gears turned on humanity instead. Only the Gear project was really meant to create a form of artificial human evolution, and merely changed its goal on the way. Only there’s still something more to it than that – possibly more than even Sol knows. While he’s well within his rights to want to bash That Man’s face in, one thing that’s been made abundantly clear is that (these days, at the very least), the Gearmaker’s intentions aren’t evil. He honestly regrets the destruction that occurred due to the war, and he’s hinted very strongly that the whole Gear Project – and maybe Sol’s transformation from scientist to warrior in particular – were done to protect the Earth from some even greater threat. What that was is the big mystery. It’s hard to imagine what explanation could possibly live up to that much suspense – it’s hard to imagine even getting a straight answer after all this time – but that doesn’t mean we’re any less curious, does it?
Dizzy’s parentage
We know Justice is her mother, everything else… doesn’t begin to add up. One of the GGXX endings seems to suggest Sol is her father, but if she’s really half-Gear then he’s the last realistic candidate. But forget who her father is for a moment – where did she come from? When Dizzy was found as an infant, Justice was in stasis for the third of five years, she certainly wasn’t about to give birth to anyone. Of course, That Man knows, but he’s not sharing.
The Japanese
May especially, but the whole race is a mystery. Sure, there’s hardly any of them left after the war and they’ve got natural ability with the least well known class of magic, but there’s got to be something more to why they’ve all been herded into ‘protective’ colonies to keep them cut off from the rest of the world.
Axl and Raven
Confirmation of just how Axl knows Sol may be too much to hope for, but we must be about due for some kind of answers on the time-travel front. We know a ‘parallel existence’ is what’s responsible for Axl’s timeslipping, we know Raven is that parallel, but we don’t know how on earth two so different characters could be connected. Actually, speaking of time travelers, it’d be nice to find out just what I-no’s deal is too.
The Assassins
Short of a miracle, we know Eddie’s on his way out – not only is he slowly dying, he’s got at least three powerful characters out after his shadowy neck. Millia for one has done little but chase after him for three games running – if they’re planning to stretch out his life for another sequel, I’m going to weep. What we don’t know is where Millia and Venom will land at the end of it, what kind of role Slayer will play in things or what will become of the Assassin’s Guild. It’s easy to come up with simple happy endings, but I wouldn’t count on it being that easy. I don’t think I’d want it to be that easy either.
Other Stuff
Actually, the above points are the short list. The long version would involve a categorised list of what's still to be resolved regarding every character in the game - from the giant Axl/Raven mystery to the minor question of what they could possibly do with Bridget this time when even the PWAB hardly bothers keeping a file on him. But all that would be the subject for another post, should I get around to writing it at all. 25 different characters is a lot for even my crazy love of over-analysing things to get through.
The Future
…in short, I’m not too sure there’s going to be one. In fact, I’m a bit torn over whether or not there should be. The question here is the big one of whether AC+ is going to be the last we’re going to see of the GG series – so it’s a bit of a choice of whether we want to see all the story threads tied up neatly in this one game at the price of us not getting anything to follow it. Before you scoff at the idea of them ending the series, remember we’ve got the Overture series too now, and they’ve shown a whole lot more interest in developing that than the GGX series lately. The amount of work ArcSys have gone to to promote AC+ hasn’t been very encouraging either. Part of the reason the ‘what we don’t know’ section is so much bigger than the ‘what we do’ is there’s been stuff all information out about this game anywhere on the web (whether there’s more coming out in hard copy magazines in Japan I don’t know, but I wouldn’t count on it).
Meanwhile, what they have been busily promoting for the last couple of months is this new BlazBlue game they’ve got in the works, which for me personally has been a big disappointment. Don’t get me wrong – the visuals, the animation and the backgrounds of BlazBlue all look absolutely gorgeous, but the characters and the story are one of the saddest excuses for a second-rate rip-off I have ever seen. The main four we’ve seen introduced so far can be described as a Sol-clone, a Ky-clone, a Potemkin-clone and a generic token female. Think perhaps I’m being a little harsh? Read up on the world the game’s set in. Get this – it’s a alternate future version of earth set around 2200AD, where magic has been discovered! And there’s been a war or two, a major controlling organisation has cleaned things up and taken over – even the roles played by the two main characters are sounding embarrassingly familiar. No wonder people reading that first article made the mistake of thinking it was set in the GG world. Okay, maybe BlazBlue still deserves to be given a chance, but so far it’s not just sounding unoriginal, it’s Guilty Gear with the serial numbers filed off and fed back to us through a couple of low-grade photoshop filters. And if there’s that little imagination in the basics, I wouldn’t count on there being anything in the details to make up for it.
It’s painfully obvious this game is meant to appeal to the same fans who enjoy the GG series – going purely by the visuals, it looks like just about everything anyone could have wanted from GGXXX. But the result is that BlazBlue looks an awful lot like the game we’re being given instead of GGXXX. Maybe there's a good marketing reason for that - I don't pretend to know - but being fed a 'successor' to GG that will be neither the old series we enjoyed nor anything really new and different is a bit on the insulting side, and it's certainly not going to encourage me to check out the new game. In theory they could go on to make a GGXXX later on I guess, but I wouldn’t count on it – the two games would be so similar they’d wind up as their own biggest competition. And when you compare the shear volume of promotional material we’ve seen around for Overture, BlazBlue or even the first version of Accent Core, it’s hard not to feel like AC+ is being treated like something they’re squeezing out in the cracks between the ‘important’ projects just to get the GGX series over and finished with, which doesn’t bode well at all.
Having said all that though, there’s still no really solid evidence that AC+ is being set up as the conclusion to the GGX series. Even if I’m right in guessing that ArcSys doesn’t have any definite plans to continue the series, there’s always the chance they might leave a few plot points unresolved in case they change their minds later on – anything’s possible as long as the profit margins on the rest of their new shiny games are still in doubt. The telling thing here is that nowhere in the limited press information they’ve released about the game do they say this is ‘The End’ of the GGX series. Instead, they call it a ‘continuation of the GGXX story’, or the ‘compilation of the GG story’ on the official site (which is confusing enough in context to make me wonder if it’s a misprint). There is also promotional poster out there with a tagline that talks about the ‘coexistence of humans and Gears’ and something about the ‘introduction to a new story’, though whether they’re talking about AC+ itself or something to come after isn’t obvious enough to shed much light on things. The trailers up on the official site use the same words too, though not with anything more in the way of illuminating context.
So it’ll certainly be interesting to see what we actually are going to get out of AC+ when it shows up (all the more so given that any kind of full English translation will still be so far away, assuming it happens at all). You'd think those big PWAB/That Man/Dizzy plot mysteries would be enough on their own, but as it turns out that's only one entry on the list of things I'll be wondering about right up to the official release.
What we know we’re getting
What little promotion material there is for the game leaps straight into assuring us we’ll be getting answers about the truth behind the Gear project, That Man’s plans and the Post War Administration Bureau – in short, all the big remaining mysteries left by GGXX and the games before it (thank yoooou ArcSys, it’s about bloody time). There’s also going to be a section dealing with events during the war itself – not at all surprising when they’ve added Kliff, Justice and Order Sol to the cast and promised us story modes for all of them. Also, going by the voice over on the trailers, we’ve got a pretty solid promise that we’ll be getting some answers about where Dizzy came from too. So far, sounding pretty damn good.
We also know they’re handling the story mode is differently this time. There are points where you get to select between different RPG-style responses that the character you’re playing as can give to whoever they’re talking to, and presumably those choices will send your down different story pathways. That’s a pretty big departure from the traditional method from GGX and GGXX where which path you wound up on depended on how you won particular battles along the way (and after spending hours trying to get instant kills to connect in the right place in the previous instalment, I for one am all for this new method). They’re also introducing something called a ‘Zapping System’, whatever that means (see ‘What we don’t know’ below), and as the end result of all this, they’re promising a massive number of different story paths and scenarios for people to play through. Promising indeed.
At base value, anyway.
What we don’t know
Here’s the thing – it’s been six years now since XX came out. However you look at it, that’s too long, so the biggest question hanging over the project is whether they’ll have completely lost the plot in the meantime. There were so many plot threads left over after GGXX that whether they can resolve them all with one game in this format is seriously questionable – especially without introducing any new playable characters (That Man and his remaining servants or other PWAB creations would be the obvious candidates). The new story mode format might be able to help there, but it’s impossible to be sure what kind of effect it might have when we still don’t know exactly what they’re doing with it.
When I looked up ‘Zapping System’ I found a large number of references to assorted Resident Evil games, and a handful of others referring to other game series that use the term. No-one seems to have bothered sitting down long enough to actually define the term – it’s like one of those words that grow out of an Internet meme and wind up getting used to mean something slightly different every time they crop up. Sometimes ‘Zapping System’ gets used to mean you can switch between playing as different characters from one team at different points in the game, other times it’s a system where what actions you take as one character change what options you have when you go through the next character’s story mode in the same area, still others use it to mean a system where the characters you can switch between exist in whole different time periods. The main common denominator seems to be the ability to switch characters, but only ever between two or three different options at most. I can hardly guess what it’d mean in a fighting game with a cast the size of Guilty Gear’s (though I do look forward to finding out).
Even more confusing, we don’t know what GG2 might throw into the mix. The answer could easily be ‘nothing’ given its AU status, but it’s hard not to wonder. A lot of the reason I was originally convinced GG2 must fit into the GGX storyline was that splitting off into an AU at that point in the made no sense (and in retrospect, I had that part right, because GG2 did make no sense. Go fig. -_-) As far as I can tell, the whole logic behind the idea that GG2 could somehow be the more ‘true’ sequel to GG was that it would deal more directly with the ‘main’ plotline surrounding That Man, whereas GGX-XX were more about Dizzy and the plot with the PWAB. Only that turned out to be garbage, because GG2 told us no more about That Man or his plans than GGXX ever did, and now both versions of the timeline are promising to resolve the same major plot point. It’s hard to see how this could end well. Assuming for a minute that GG2 doesn’t turn into such a massive commercial failure that we never see a GG3, where would they take this? Are we going to see the same secrets about That Man and all his plans revealed in both versions? Will there be a different Truth Behind The Gear Project and a different showdown in each?
GG2 did introduce some interesting new things about the nature of magic and the mysterious someone-or-something creating Valentine/Justice clones, but is that just for that universe, or should we expect to see That Man mysteriously de-aged and characters talking about the Backyard theory of magic in AC+? I’d like to say the answer’s a definite no, and I’d still put my money there, but I’ve seen a few too many Japanese message board threads where people seem to be seriously debating whether we’ll to see Ky and Dizzy hook up somewhere in AC+, and it’s making me twitchy.
But eh, let’s put all that ambiguity aside for now and talk about what I hope we’d see from a proper sequel to GXX.
The Big Plot Things
The Post War Administration Bureau
Where to start with these guys? We don’t know who they are, what they’re trying to achieve or why, but they’ve sure been going to a lot of effort to get there. They created the Robo-Kys, they’re hunting down Ki magic users, they turned Testament into a Gear, created the forbidden beasts, and in the GG manga they’re even after the pieces of the Outrage. They’re secretly manipulating the UN and the Assassin’s Guild – they claim even That Man as one of their pawns, and it sounds like a lot of the secrets behind the Holy War itself were their personal doing. They are all kinds of Bad News. What we don’t know is why they’re doing it all, who’s in charge or just how deeply they’re connected to the secret reasons behind the war itself. That’s a lot of information to reveal over the course of one game – especially (as I mentioned before) without the game having the freedom to introduce any new playable characters who are working for the PWAB. In short: BIG expectations on this front.
That Man’s plans and the Gear Project
So, the Gear Project was meant to create a race of biological weapons. Only their creator double-crossed whoever employed him and the Gears turned on humanity instead. Only the Gear project was really meant to create a form of artificial human evolution, and merely changed its goal on the way. Only there’s still something more to it than that – possibly more than even Sol knows. While he’s well within his rights to want to bash That Man’s face in, one thing that’s been made abundantly clear is that (these days, at the very least), the Gearmaker’s intentions aren’t evil. He honestly regrets the destruction that occurred due to the war, and he’s hinted very strongly that the whole Gear Project – and maybe Sol’s transformation from scientist to warrior in particular – were done to protect the Earth from some even greater threat. What that was is the big mystery. It’s hard to imagine what explanation could possibly live up to that much suspense – it’s hard to imagine even getting a straight answer after all this time – but that doesn’t mean we’re any less curious, does it?
Dizzy’s parentage
We know Justice is her mother, everything else… doesn’t begin to add up. One of the GGXX endings seems to suggest Sol is her father, but if she’s really half-Gear then he’s the last realistic candidate. But forget who her father is for a moment – where did she come from? When Dizzy was found as an infant, Justice was in stasis for the third of five years, she certainly wasn’t about to give birth to anyone. Of course, That Man knows, but he’s not sharing.
The Japanese
May especially, but the whole race is a mystery. Sure, there’s hardly any of them left after the war and they’ve got natural ability with the least well known class of magic, but there’s got to be something more to why they’ve all been herded into ‘protective’ colonies to keep them cut off from the rest of the world.
Axl and Raven
Confirmation of just how Axl knows Sol may be too much to hope for, but we must be about due for some kind of answers on the time-travel front. We know a ‘parallel existence’ is what’s responsible for Axl’s timeslipping, we know Raven is that parallel, but we don’t know how on earth two so different characters could be connected. Actually, speaking of time travelers, it’d be nice to find out just what I-no’s deal is too.
The Assassins
Short of a miracle, we know Eddie’s on his way out – not only is he slowly dying, he’s got at least three powerful characters out after his shadowy neck. Millia for one has done little but chase after him for three games running – if they’re planning to stretch out his life for another sequel, I’m going to weep. What we don’t know is where Millia and Venom will land at the end of it, what kind of role Slayer will play in things or what will become of the Assassin’s Guild. It’s easy to come up with simple happy endings, but I wouldn’t count on it being that easy. I don’t think I’d want it to be that easy either.
Other Stuff
Actually, the above points are the short list. The long version would involve a categorised list of what's still to be resolved regarding every character in the game - from the giant Axl/Raven mystery to the minor question of what they could possibly do with Bridget this time when even the PWAB hardly bothers keeping a file on him. But all that would be the subject for another post, should I get around to writing it at all. 25 different characters is a lot for even my crazy love of over-analysing things to get through.
The Future
…in short, I’m not too sure there’s going to be one. In fact, I’m a bit torn over whether or not there should be. The question here is the big one of whether AC+ is going to be the last we’re going to see of the GG series – so it’s a bit of a choice of whether we want to see all the story threads tied up neatly in this one game at the price of us not getting anything to follow it. Before you scoff at the idea of them ending the series, remember we’ve got the Overture series too now, and they’ve shown a whole lot more interest in developing that than the GGX series lately. The amount of work ArcSys have gone to to promote AC+ hasn’t been very encouraging either. Part of the reason the ‘what we don’t know’ section is so much bigger than the ‘what we do’ is there’s been stuff all information out about this game anywhere on the web (whether there’s more coming out in hard copy magazines in Japan I don’t know, but I wouldn’t count on it).
Meanwhile, what they have been busily promoting for the last couple of months is this new BlazBlue game they’ve got in the works, which for me personally has been a big disappointment. Don’t get me wrong – the visuals, the animation and the backgrounds of BlazBlue all look absolutely gorgeous, but the characters and the story are one of the saddest excuses for a second-rate rip-off I have ever seen. The main four we’ve seen introduced so far can be described as a Sol-clone, a Ky-clone, a Potemkin-clone and a generic token female. Think perhaps I’m being a little harsh? Read up on the world the game’s set in. Get this – it’s a alternate future version of earth set around 2200AD, where magic has been discovered! And there’s been a war or two, a major controlling organisation has cleaned things up and taken over – even the roles played by the two main characters are sounding embarrassingly familiar. No wonder people reading that first article made the mistake of thinking it was set in the GG world. Okay, maybe BlazBlue still deserves to be given a chance, but so far it’s not just sounding unoriginal, it’s Guilty Gear with the serial numbers filed off and fed back to us through a couple of low-grade photoshop filters. And if there’s that little imagination in the basics, I wouldn’t count on there being anything in the details to make up for it.
It’s painfully obvious this game is meant to appeal to the same fans who enjoy the GG series – going purely by the visuals, it looks like just about everything anyone could have wanted from GGXXX. But the result is that BlazBlue looks an awful lot like the game we’re being given instead of GGXXX. Maybe there's a good marketing reason for that - I don't pretend to know - but being fed a 'successor' to GG that will be neither the old series we enjoyed nor anything really new and different is a bit on the insulting side, and it's certainly not going to encourage me to check out the new game. In theory they could go on to make a GGXXX later on I guess, but I wouldn’t count on it – the two games would be so similar they’d wind up as their own biggest competition. And when you compare the shear volume of promotional material we’ve seen around for Overture, BlazBlue or even the first version of Accent Core, it’s hard not to feel like AC+ is being treated like something they’re squeezing out in the cracks between the ‘important’ projects just to get the GGX series over and finished with, which doesn’t bode well at all.
Having said all that though, there’s still no really solid evidence that AC+ is being set up as the conclusion to the GGX series. Even if I’m right in guessing that ArcSys doesn’t have any definite plans to continue the series, there’s always the chance they might leave a few plot points unresolved in case they change their minds later on – anything’s possible as long as the profit margins on the rest of their new shiny games are still in doubt. The telling thing here is that nowhere in the limited press information they’ve released about the game do they say this is ‘The End’ of the GGX series. Instead, they call it a ‘continuation of the GGXX story’, or the ‘compilation of the GG story’ on the official site (which is confusing enough in context to make me wonder if it’s a misprint). There is also promotional poster out there with a tagline that talks about the ‘coexistence of humans and Gears’ and something about the ‘introduction to a new story’, though whether they’re talking about AC+ itself or something to come after isn’t obvious enough to shed much light on things. The trailers up on the official site use the same words too, though not with anything more in the way of illuminating context.
So it’ll certainly be interesting to see what we actually are going to get out of AC+ when it shows up (all the more so given that any kind of full English translation will still be so far away, assuming it happens at all). You'd think those big PWAB/That Man/Dizzy plot mysteries would be enough on their own, but as it turns out that's only one entry on the list of things I'll be wondering about right up to the official release.
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Date: 2008-03-20 12:43 pm (UTC)