Square-Enix's "4"
 

NEW GAME

The countdown timer will hit 000:00:00 at 11pm Eastern on July 5th.

No idea what that '4' is there for, unless it's the first part of a gradually revealed title. It looks like the image is only partially revealed at this point, and maybe will become more clear over time?

The music in the background reminds me of something like Dragon Warrior, but there's already way more than four of those. And already a remake of the fourth, isn't there?

What games has SE made three of? What comes to mind is the Mana series, but it's not as cartoonish compared to the latest SNES/GBA entries. The Mana series, I believe, stopped numbering at 3 in Japan. I could be mistaken, but I think the others were all differently named or subtitled.

Thoughts?

Romancing Saga 4, motherfuckers. Called it.

It could also technically be SaGa 4, but with a remake of SaGa 2 coming out in two or so months, I would doubt it.

I'm intensely curious to see how it'll look graphically-- but I guess that will also depend on what console it's coming out on. We'll see in about a week.

Xenogears continues. Called it.

Why would it be SaGa 4 since there's already six games in the series.

Yeah, but look at the teaser site, it doesn't seem much like Xenogears. Plus, Xenosaga never panned out into the real Xenogears prequels, which I'm still hoping for ;_;.

Any chance the four could be a release date or...no chance?

Really, there's not much saying it couldn't just be yet another Dragon Warrior 4 remake. They've already done the Playstation and DS, why not one of the newer home consoles?

It could also be a fourth SaGa Frontier game, depending on how you class Unlimited.

I'm all for a new normal SaGa game though, as SaGa / FFLegend games have a lot of good memories from the Game Boy days, particularly SaGa 2.

This might be a stretch, but consider that "4" as written a certain way also means "Death" in Japanese, it could have something to do with dying. *Shrug* I'm gonna go with the Romancing Saga 4 guess for now, since that's more likely.

So, they're going to kill Nomura. If it's that death thing.

Some new stuff appeared (at least to me) on the picture when the hour changed. by the way.

I would agree with you if the DS remake wasn't only a year-and-a-half or so old in Japan. Even if you were to count the most recent re-release of the Playstation remake, there was still a two year gap. Another important factor is that this four is written in Arabic numeral. Dragon Quest has always used Roman numerals.

Really, SaGa is Square-Enix's only series to use Arabic numerals, so I think it's pretty telling-- that is, if that "4" is in fact referencing this game's part in a series. If not... c'moooon, Live 4 Live!

Maybe it's a fourth "Chrono" title. Or Einhander 4. Or maybe it's Hitman 4, since they did acquire Eidos recently.

But IO is working on the 5th Hitman game. Blood Money was 4.

MOTHER 4 MOTHER 4 MOTHER 4

Could you imagine the collaboration there?

Or maybe 4 signifies the number of minutes you get to play in between the eight hours of cutscenes.

I'd love Mother 4, but I won't get my hopes up. I don't really think it will be anything that recently got DS revamp treatment (DQIV and FFIV). Wasn't there only 2 games in the "Chrono" sereis so far? It could just be something to throw us off and be something we wouldn't expect. The last time I paid attention to a SE countdown like this, their announcement ended up being Grandia 3...oh wait...dammit.

If ever there is made a Mother 4, I'll weep and gnash my teeth. If Square has any hand in its creation, I'll probably wind up committing some kind of sex crime on top of that.

I'm guessing it'll be Saga 4 / Final Fantasy Legend IV. They're remaking one of the Saga games for the DS (2? I think it's 2), so perhaps they're gearing up for a revival of the franchise.

Why must you toy with my fragile heart like this.

Continuing Xenogears would be epic.
I was counting Radical Dreamers in there. Wishful thinking?

I'm kinda hoping for a new Seiken Densetsu game, but Seiken Densetsu 4 (Dawn of Mana) has already been released :(

They can do a Space Invaders Extreme 4. They'll skip 3 and make 4 a full-blown story about spaceships with drug-induced psychedelic visuals. And it's going to be multi-platform so that everyone will be urged to do drugs while shooting anything that moves sideways.

Written by Grant Morrison.





I would also like Live 4 Live. Granted, that would mean that we'd only have HALF the characters.

A little while ago they threw a somewhat cartoony looking dragon up on the site, which makes it seem pretty clear its staying away from anything sci-fi like Xenogears. (Of course, now that I say this they'll have it watching a spaceship crash or gliding by skyscrapers in the background.)

I don't know, but maybe it is something more Enix related?

Someone mentioned a new game called the Four Warriors of Light that they trademarked apparently.

Yes, this. Hopefully it's not another remake. D:

EDIT: Holy crap. There's a big huge dragon sketch now. And the music got louder. I don't have to crank my speakers all the way up to hear it now.

Square Enix is releasing a game called "Four Warriors Of Light"?

If this doesn't turn out to be an FF1 rehash of some kind I'll eat my hat.

The deliberately chiptuney music on the site only reinforces this suspicion.

Makes sense to me.

Additionally, it's also been 4 weeks since the last FF1 remake came out, so they're overdue anyway.

TOXX CLAUSE IN EFFECT

PANG, PREPARE A HAT TO EAT

Additional Spam:
I hope you're right, and at the same time, I hope you're wrong.

I've never played FF1. Were there dragons like that one in the picture, and did they play a key role or something?

There was one dragon of importance, he was a boss... dunno what else though.

Bahamut played a major role in FF1, actually. He gave you your class changes, most notably.

DOESN'T LOOK LIKE BAHAMUT NOW DOES IT

Fuck if I know. I didn't even check the site. I just threw that out there.

Yeah, that music sounds like some shit you'd hear in a SaGa game. If you compare it to a lot of the Final Fantasy Legend 1 tracks, there's a lot of similarities.

Looking like the favorable assumption at this point is Romancing SaGa 4 for the DS using that SaGa 2 remake engine, which I have mixed feelings about. I seriously don't want to believe they'd actually remake Final Fantasy 1 again for like what, the sixth time?

The music sounds like it would be something on the DS, and just because there appears a four doesn't meant that there will necessarily be numerals in the title. My guess is that it is a new Crystal Chronicles game. The style fits, the two DS games appeared relatively close together, and I'm not sure if My Life as King is an official installment.

But there's already been four Crystal Chronicles games. Or was there two on the Wii, so five?

Crystal Chronicles (GCN)
My Life as a King (Wii)
My Life as a Darklord (Wii)
Crystal Bearers (Wii)
Ring of Fates (DS)
Echoes of Time (DS/Wii)

There are already six.

The ones on the Wii are actual games? I always thought that they were just downloadable minigames (don't own a Wii so I guess I'm in the wrong here).

Well Crystal Bearers and Echoes of Time at least are the traditional 4-players-carrying-the-bucket Crystal Chronicles style games on the Wii. I've only ever played the first game on the GC, though.

The music is purposefully masked/downgraded to sound like that. Like listening to midi versions of OWA.

It's Uematsu's handiwork, I'm most certain, because of my vgm learnings. It's not Ito (who did the six first SaGa games).

Yeah i know it's old, but it still happened, so it had better still be considered in this speculation party we're having.

In light of this, my money's on an FF1 remake (no matter how much i want it to be Chrono Break deep down inside)

Do you have any other disgusting, filthy confessions to make, you heathen son-of-a-bitch

I haven't played FFII, FFIII, FFX, FFX-2, FFXI, FFXII, or FFXIII either! :tpg:

Maybe the 4 stands for the FOURTH time it will be remade.

...why am I even waiting for this announcement?

I swear, if this is gonna be the fourth thing they're gonna do with Final Fantasy VII, I'm gonna flip a shit.

Not only does FF7 have nothing to do with sunny idyllic hamlets with magical dragon inhabitants, there's been five FF7 products. The game itself, Advent Children, Before Crisis, Crisis Core, and Dirge of Cerberus.

My guess is Bahamut Lagoon 4. Now I know, there's hasn't been any Bahamut Lagoon sequels. But maybe they're naming this 4 in order to make people THINK there were, in order to drum up hype! It's like calling yourself Esquire even though you aren't one.

- A. Lurker, Esq.

I asked for filthy confessions, not an account of reasonable behaviors common to every right-thinking gentleman.

Provided we both mean Japanese FFIII and not US FFIII, otherwise I have to end you

But also, he hasn't played FFX-2.


Still hoping for Live 4 Live. And a return to the classic Shimomura sound that will entail.




NO BOUNCY BATTLE MUSIC THIS TIME, OKAY

Four different remakes of four different games from four different series.

Fourth canon game set in Ivalice, behind FF"I'm Captain Basch!", FFT, and Vagrant Story (of some guy in need of real pants).

Uh...four people will give a shit once they announce it is just some crap game for the DS.

Now, there's a warrior riding the dragon.

Do you mean Live A Live? I doubt it.

My guess is a 4-player SaGa game for the DS.

There should be a fourth-game in the loose series of Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma.

There should be, of course, but SE is retarded and will do something shitty that no one gives a shit about.

Granted, we could also use a domestic release of 'nigma.

No, you see, he's playing on the whole 4 thing. So Live 4 Live. :cool:

It'd be depressing if this whole thing were Live A Live related (99% sure it isn't though, so there's not much point in conjecturing). Presumably they (SE) would dumb down the battle system, add flashy cutscenes and basically ruin everything.

Really, the game data for the classic SNES games should be stored on a high-security computer somewhere in the middle of nowhere to distance them from potentially malicious hands---in a storage facility guarded by a moat with disgruntled crocodiles and sharks. and baboons

Grandia 1 and 2 were amazing, and I haven't played the third, but sure I am all for that!

And now there is some teenage looking boy with a sword flying on the dragon.

They're pushing back the boundaries of imaginative game design then, whatever it turns out to be.

A teenage boy? With a sword? On a dragon? Be still my beating heart, I've not played a game like that for days.

What if he is the dragon?!

...Oh, wait... That's been done, too...

Why can't it just be a new IP simply called "4"? I wouldn't put it past Square-Enix. Oh wait. A new IP. That's not likely.

The Last Remnant was completely new IP, it's not like everything they chuck out is a sequel although I admit that calling it "4" does suggest an element of following on from three other things.

There's no way this is a teaser for something new.

The Last Remnant marks the first new in-house Square Enix IP since Kingdom Hearts (which came out in 2002.) Given their acquisition of Eidos, it's safe to assume they're treating the west as a more important market than ever, and resultantly, they're loathe to try new IPs because the dipshits running the mainstream gaming news outlets on this side of the planet always complain about them not being Final Fantasy XVII or Dragon Quest MCMXCVII. For a title from a big name like SE, The Last Remnant got a pretty lousy reception outside of Japan (Famitsu gave it 38/40, IGN gave it 5.5/10.)

Thinking about it, why couldn't it be a new FF Tactics game? Not counting spinoffs like Crystal Defenders and the PSP port of FFT, there've been three of those in total. The art style kind of fits, too.

If you think they're going more West-centric, then it's far more likely to be new IP I reckon. I mean, focussing on the "Western" market means aiming at "Casual" gamers rather than "Hardcore" ones right? Well how many of the people who bought the Tomb Raider games and Hitman do you think have even heard of SaGa Frontier or are aware that there's been 3 Romancing SaGa games already?

It's either an announcement of a sequel of something obscure for the Jap market or it's something new for the rest of the world.

Not necessarily... It's just that while Final Fantasy is as much of a cash cow as it ever has been over here, their other "hardcore" titles have gone relatively unnoticed. For some reason, while new IPs are all the rage among American and European developers, new Japanese offerings haven't really enjoyed the same kind of success. I don't think it'll be anything specifically aimed at the international market, I just think it'll be a sequel/spinoff/rehash because it's a far wiser business move for if and when they do decide to release this title in the west.

That said, the fact that the countdown page is present at Square's Japanese site and nowhere to be found on their North American one also implies that they've not even considered localising whatever this new game is. The Chrono Trigger DS countdown from last year was on both.

Not necessarily. The last time Square-Enix said they had the "Western" market in mind was when they were developing the Last Remnant. The Conqueror, a guy who was supposed to be a nod to the hulking and brutal warriors of the typical (and stereotyped) Western RPG, was something that came out of that westward focus.

Gaming is definitely making a move towards the realm of "casual," but it's not at the point where an RPG developer/publisher in possession of many nonRPG-making subsidiaries has to shift focus away from what they normally do.

It's a Square remake of Left 4 Dead. Why lie.

Gaming has been a casual, mass-market passtime since the release of the first Wipeout game on Playstation, if not before. The computer game industry outstripped Hollywood in terms of annual revenue years ago and nobody who goes to watch Hollywood blockbusters would ever describe themselves as "Hardcore" unless they were a collosal faggot. Even jrpgs have been mainstream since FFVII, it's just that Japanese developers haven't realised that yet and internet nerds like to cling to their shield of obscure taste in an attempt to disassociate themselves from the general public, probably so they have something to feel superior about. After all, to admit that gaming is about as mainstream a hobby as you can get these days would be to admit that rather than not fitting in with people because they've got an obscure hobby, they simply have terrible social skills and an inability to fit in with people who share a major interest with themselves. Gaming is no more a niche activity than reading or watching television.

I can think of fewer more anachronistic and frankly tragic terms than "Hardcore gamer".

I was under the impression we were discussing the redubbed "casual" market that's come from the Wii and the recent push to capture that audience from Nintendo-- parents, older individuals, people who think they can lose weight by moving a remote around, etcetera. That's what I was talking about.

I wasn't trying to place a divide between hardcore and casual, and classifications like that are annoying. I was only saying that Square-Enix's idea of "western focus" still entails muscles and ultraviolence, not Wii Fit and EA Sports Active or whatever.

Exactly. I can't stand the labels. I take gaming seriously, but not so seriously that I consider what is inherently a casual activity something to define myself by. I'm a player of games, not a "hardcore gamer".

The real distinction here should be one of quality and substance, not target markets.

Oh is hardcore gaming dead? Well fuck that then.

http://www.thegond.com/rp/12x12block.gifWHO'S UP FOR SOME EXTREME IRONING?!

http://www.thegond.com/rp/extremeironing.jpg

That is the game that had characters with no eyes, or noses right. Just a blank face. I think I have that laying around somewhere.

Yeah, that game used to creep the shit out of me because the characters had no faces.

Of course, it could be worse... much much worse:

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images...1786_front.jpg

Oh god. I remember asking my grandparents for Beyond the Beyond back when I first got my Playstation. Luckily the guy at the store talked them into buying me Wild Arms.

A few years later I bought BtB. That was when I realized Christmas lists are stupid because kids want the worst things ever.

THQ renders it meaningless. Might as well have been LJN.

How so? From my understanding, they didn't have much to do with the development. They're just the ones that brought it over here and slapped on some terrible dubbing.

Honestly, now that I've seen the boy, it really seems like it fits in with Crystal Chronicles art style. I think.

Either that or they're cartoonying up FFT some more.

Granstream was made by the same guys that did gaia and evermore and terranigma. Different distributor.

Plus you can't hate on THQ when they've published Full Spectrum Warrior.

Oh hey, there's a girl there too. This just keeps getting more "original". The drawing style is definitely in the vein of FFT now.

The timer is set to run out the day after the end of the Japan Expo 2009 in Paris, at which Sqeenix have a rather large stall, which to me suggests a Japan-centric game, since you'd think if it was a global thing they'd mention it at the big show they were attending.

In other Japan Expo Squeenix news, they'll have copies of Dissidia allowing European gamers to play it for the first time ever! :tpg:

Are Square not aware that anyone who had any interest in playing that torrented it a couple of days before the official release date?

I know two yaoi fangirls intent on buying a PSP when Dissidia comes out. Maybe they revealed there's Kingdom Hearts characters in there and I didn't hear about it?

It's actually just that one co-worker of yours buying two, isn't it?

He doesn't buy games, he just gets promos.

oh hay guys http://www.thegond.com/em/emot-ms.gif

fffffff. So it's an FFI remake? Fuck that. Nothing to see here. Being that they've already done III and IV, we're probably going to see a pointless and terrible FFII remake, too, simply to maintain some kind of continuity in their rehashes. :( Cocks.

e: Although, that said, if there's any chance that this is a completely new game styled after oldschool FF, then I'm actually interested. Unlikely, though.

IGN's article says it's a completely original game.

If anything, it's more of a sequel to Final Fantasy I, kind of like how they did Final Fantasy IV: The After Years as a sequel to Final Fantasy IV. The issue is that FF4 had a story (a good one at that), while the story for FF1 is the most generic one you could come up with. The scan does say that it is a completely new work, so an exact remake seems unlikely. (Unless that was square's idea of a completely new work.)

I see. It could actually turn out to be worth a look at, then.

Oh. Looks rather plain, especially compared to DQIX and 7th Dragon.

Awwww, I was gonna guess Final Fantasy Legends 4. So are these guys supposed to be younger versions of THE Warriors of Light from the first FF or what?

God dammit. I was looking forward to pictures of Pang eating a hat.

Hey! It's for the DS! At least the DS is getting some RPG love. Thanks Squeenix.

Am I the only one who noticed they look like TaruTaru from FFXI?

Look at the noses and ears..

Well, with as shitty as those screenshots look, I wouldn't say it's RPG "love"....

This is all good, but it's not like the DS was lacking in RPG love, I mean, it's got quite a few.

Anyways, this could be decent, could be pap, guess we'll see how it all pans out but I can't say I'm particularly excited just yet.