When Odin Sphere debuted last spring, it was lauded as one of the most beautiful games ever made, and a shining star of hope for 2D relevance in the mean world of console games. Although it may have overreached by stretching its assets across a few too many game hours, it was undeniably a painstaking labor of love. The main regret, then, was that it was such an intimate, personal project, so many years in the making, that we weren’t likely to see another to match its brilliance any time soon.
[[image:nn_081010_oboro_01.gif:If Hokusai only knew.:center:0]]
Which is why Muramasa: The Demon Blade (then known by its Japanese title, Oboro Muramasa Youtouden) was revealed to such amazement last September. Odin Sphere trailed its predecessor, Princess Crown, by a full decade, but here was evidence of “Princess Crown 3” not half a year later! Naturally, there was some skepticism that a company as small as Vanillaware could conjure an experience of the same quality in so short a time frame. And after the initial blurry Famitsu scans and shaky-cam trailer, no further details emerged, and the game slipped off the radar for over a year.
But here we are at TGS, and Vanillaware are eagerly showing off the fruits of their silent labor with gorgeous new screenshots, a playable demo with a slew of different environments, and best of all, an American publisher. Consider me back on the enthusiast bandwagon. In fact, I call shotgun.
I hope someone at Bandai gets a clue and decides to make a Super Robot Wars action game after seeing this. ‘nillaware is proving it CAN be done.
I don’t care that you posted the same screenshot we’ve all been drooling at for a year now.
*drools*
*cleans up* Uh, yeah, can’t wait!
I hope this does something interesting with Japanese mythology. It sure could use it!
Shotg- damn it.
Wow, that looks INCREDIBLE. And to sell me on a game, all you have to do is bring on the sea monsters.
That screenshot alone has me thrilled.
That Hosukai wave crash at the end of the new trailer is seriously farkin gorgeous. Gameplay looks pretty smooth, too, although Herr Bettenhausen says it’s simplistic.
I don’t care that you posted the same screenshot we’ve all been drooling at for a year now.
This is one of the shots that was just revealed near the beginning of this month. We don’t all have the severed head of Mimir to foretell us the future, Mr. Odin.
Man, please tell me this game will have more of an emphasis on the sidescroller element and less emphasis on the “running around in literal circles and growing fruit” element.
I loved, LOVED Odin Sphere. I put it down about 2/5 of the way through for about a month though, so maybe that’s why I didn’t get burnt out on the repitition. Suffice to say, I can’t wait for this one.
Man, please tell me this game will have more of an emphasis on the sidescroller element and less emphasis on the “running around in literal circles and growing fruit” element.
The seed-growing system is gone, and there’s actual platforming now. Will that do?
This looks very nice. I am on pins and needles to see the method used to animate those tentacles, They don’t appear to be segmented sprites, so I am wondering how many frames are going to be used to animate those huge, spindly things, since the technique used to animate everything else in the game works best with squarish shapes. Is the Octopus in any released video?
The ocean scene is in some videos of the TGS demo, but I’m pretty sure the octopus doesn’t pop up in it. Odin Sphere’s final boss pulled off animating a snakey shape rather well, though.
Thanks! It appears that instead of drawing to a quad, they draw to a checkerboard of quads, and undulate the vertexes. Really good stuff! The reason I was asking is I was working on something similar, but I was doing 3 quads per tentacle, and hinging them via sloppy calculous. This looks really fluid, but only works well with cartoony sprites, to better hide where it joins. Props to the developers for taking it a step further!
Here is a link to the youtube video of Odin Sphere’s final boy (spoilers)