rallamajoop: (Guilty Gear)
[personal profile] rallamajoop
Accent 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.

Date: 2008-03-20 06:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gonsai.livejournal.com
I'm beginning to worry if Daisuke is even interested in his original story anymore. I mean, I can't say I've been this dedicated to things I conceptualized while in high school, and Daisuke is OLDER than me, so he might just be getting tired of his childhood fantasies.

Date: 2008-03-20 07:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
Yeah, and I can't say I entirely blame him if that is the case, but I can still wish they'd explain what they actually want to do with all these mixed up series rather than confusing the timelines so much. :/ But by all accounts he's still interested in developing the Overture side of the GG world, whereas it looks like they've got no-one else with half his skill with character design to work on their new fighter. (Say what you like about Ishiwatari, he's still a genius at character design, or he'd never have been able to sell me a fighting game to begin with ^^;)

Date: 2008-03-20 08:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gonsai.livejournal.com
Well, considering how different Overture is from the main GG product, it makes sense that he's straying away from his original plans.

Date: 2008-03-20 12:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aphelion-orion.livejournal.com
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?

This is the first time I'm hearing of this, and it makes me just so incredibly sad. That's exactly what Nomura is doing to Final Fantasy, what with his silly Cloud and Sephiroth clones. Why, Dai-Dai, why?

Date: 2008-03-20 12:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
Actually, that's the one he's *not* responsible for - as in, he's not the character designer for BlazBlue, someone else got that job. And man, it *shows*. Kinda seems like they told the new guy 'we want something like Guilty Gear!' and he took them a bit literally. :/

Date: 2008-03-20 01:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] phred-has-sonar.livejournal.com
From what I have been reading around the internets, BlazBlue is set in the Guilty Gear universe about ten years after XX.

Date: 2008-03-20 01:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] celadonite.livejournal.com
Erm, actually, it's not. The '10 years' refers to the release of the original GG game, not the plot itself.

Date: 2008-03-20 02:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] phred-has-sonar.livejournal.com
Awesome. Thanks for clearing that up. I am sad it isn't a sequel, but I'm still looking forward to it.

Date: 2008-03-20 08:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] r-chan.livejournal.com
Well, being in Japan next week, I'm going to try and grab a copy of AC+ and poke it for myself. I'll let you know any answers I get :/ I'm quietly cynical over GG in general now after GG2 broke my heart. However, as long as they don't try to tie the two in, I still have a teeny hope that maybe this one could be the start of a 'new arc' for the X-verse. Like you said, there was mention of an even greater threat, right? Whilst I suspect it could be the PWAB being more sinister than they first appear, there is still a chance AC+ will serve to introduce it rather than conclude it. It's a chance, right?

...right...?

...*weeps*

Date: 2008-03-20 11:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
...yeah, as [livejournal.com profile] celadonite said, then you've been reading information from that article that was so grossly mistranslated that even someone with my Japanese skills could tell it was wrong, not that that stopped the mistakes making it all over the Internet before anyone could correct them. >< *grumblemuttergrumble*

Date: 2008-03-21 12:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
I'm in this funny place again where I don't even know whether I want to hear the spoilers for AC+ until there's a full translation for it out - not that I'm likely to have much choice. >.> So much gets misheard, mistranslated or misreported around this fandom that it's hard to know what the full story is half the time. Still, good luck making sense of it all - there's going to be an awful lot of Japanese text to get through. ^^;

I still have a teeny hope that maybe this one could be the start of a 'new arc' for the X-verse. Like you said, there was mention of an even greater threat, right? Whilst I suspect it could be the PWAB being more sinister than they first appear, there is still a chance AC+ will serve to introduce it rather than conclude it. It's a chance, right?

Oh, if only! And there are things in the promo material that could be taken to hint that way (and not a single mention of anything GG2 related so far, which I'm very glad of) but when so much of the early previews for GG2 turned out to be so misleading, I don't want to trust that interpretation until I know for sure. I've got so many different theories on what they might be doing with the series right now but not a clue which one's more likely.

And I guess I should really be happy if they at least give the XX arc a satisfying conclusion with this game, but there's still so much stuff they've never explored in the GG world that it would make me very sad if this is it.

Date: 2008-03-21 12:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
My best theory on Overture lately is that it all came out of a giant desire to rewrite everything - as in, even completely irrelevant stuff like Sol's Gear form or what sword he uses. And yet, it's still got Guilty Gear in the title, so it's not like he's veering off into any really new territory.

Date: 2008-03-21 12:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gonsai.livejournal.com
Well, the Guilty Gear name is barely his anymore. It's copyright to Arcsys, not him.

Date: 2008-03-21 06:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] celadonite.livejournal.com
One would think that the lack of gratuitous buckles and straps in the character designs would give it away as being unrelated to GG, no?

Date: 2008-03-21 12:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
...you know, I hadn't more than glanced at the designs before, but that is so true.

There are a couple of token belts on the Sol-clone's costume, of course, but you can tell the character designer's heart wasn't really in it.

Date: 2008-03-21 01:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] celadonite.livejournal.com
Not to mention the characters look well-dressed so far and are sensible in their posing. I know Sin took the cake with the mook cover, but come on Arcsys!

After reading your comment, I went back and counted. Ragna has about 14 buckles if you count those metal clasps (that don't look like real buckles imo) compared to Sol's 26, while Jin has none visble compared to Ky's ten (11 if you include the one in his inner shirt). Distracted character designers indeed.

Date: 2008-03-21 10:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shinigamixiii.livejournal.com
Well, the new story branch approach seems to have my vote for it. And for the game to get all the answers we need, the story paths count must be very large indeed. (I've heard rumors of a 300+ count, but I'm still a bit skeptical). This game's been the most ambiguous thing I've ever seen in my life--as short as it may be at the moment--and as much patience as I have, my anticipation to see how these plotholes are going to get resolved is starting to spill over.

I swear, if they butcher the GGX series any more, I will personally storm their headquarters and kill them. (I already have one friend recruited should the situation arise; wanna help?).

Date: 2008-03-22 09:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
Excluding the girl, who looks like fanservice waiting to happen. Actually, between the wide eyed look and the dodgy outfit, she's looking rather like a blonde Dizzy without the wings, tail or any of the interesting character traits. Unless you also count Jin's skirt-and-leggings arrangment. But it'll never be a remotely valid Guilty Gear substitute if they don't find a way to make their art a whole lot more imaginatively suspect!

Yeah, the metal clasps just aren't the same. Instead, there's something weirdly Japanese about Ragna's pants and Jin's coat and shirt that doesn't quite mesh with the other half of the costumes. It's a bit like they'd heard of innovative costume design but hadn't quite got the idea.

Date: 2008-03-22 10:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rallamajoop.livejournal.com
Yeah, the new story approach definitely does sound like one of the most interesting bits. (I've heard the 300 number quoted too, but I'm assuming they must be talking about story events or something rather than endings, because otherwise that's just getting a bit ridiculous.) I have been seriously disappointed by the lack of promotion for it, so right now I'm mostly just crossing my fingers and hoping all the surprises we get when we see the full version won't be bad ones.

You know, I may just be in Japan later this year...

Date: 2008-03-22 03:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shinigamixiii.livejournal.com
Yeah, let's just hope...

Take us with you if you do! XD

Please, help me, brothers!!!

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