A trio of mysterious titles from Namco

[Angry the Clown]

Remember the news that Ken Kuturagi would be chairman of Cellius, a development partnership between SCEI and Namco/Bandai (49% and 51% ownership split respectively)? Well these, apparently, are mock ups for a trio of titles and there?s some speculation that they MIGHT be part of that Cellius project. Source of the following images is unknown, but it is thought to be the next issue of Famitsu. Game synopsis translation comes stolen from Kotaku.

 

 

BRAVE ARMS

Brave Arms is a 3rd person adventure in which you seemingly have no ranged weapons, so you attack by getting in close and fighting at ultra-close range with context-sensitive attacks. You can see a "guide line" of your enemies' attacks that tells you what they're about to do and if you react with proper timing you can counter it by pressing the Juggle Button at the instant it would hit you. So it's about getting in close, then it becomes a context-sensitive fighter. It sounds quite similar to Cipher Complex, actually.

 

 

CHAIN LIM!T

CHAIN LIM!T uses the Target Link system, which is SORT of similar to QTE, but far more advanced. It looks like you use the two sticks; the left stick chooses areas you can interact with in the environment while the right chooses your action. In the middle shot of the first page, the guy is choosing "Bite" and the tape on his girl's pants. But he could choose to throw some other object or combine two other objects or whatever. Not exactly a linear QTE sort of thing. In the airplane engine thing, we're seeing three scenarios. One where it looks like he dodges a falling box that hits the guy holding his legs, one where he messes up and dies, and one where he selects "remove" while targeting his own belt to drop his pants along with the guy holding them. So theoretically, you can choose any option at any target point, giving you 20+ possible actions. So instead of simple QTE multiple choice, you can combine your options in creative ways.

 

 

 

SECOND

Second is an investigation/adventure game with multiple game modes. One is exploration, one is shooting, and one is selecting voice responses in realtime, which is very similar to Indigo Prophecy. The modes can happen on top of each other, so you can have gun shooting while choosing voice responses. So in the shooting scene they show, you can either blow the target away with your gun (by physically doing it, not selecting it as an option), or try and negotiate with him by selecting your dialogue. You can always change the camera with the right stick, and the options/voice commands change based on what you're facing.

[dogbert]

Source of the following images is unknown, but it is thought to be the next issue of Famitsu.

 

There's people of the opinion that these are in-house mockups to 'sell' the game done in the style of famitsu rather than being actual pages, but who knows.

[Mark E]

Very interesting at any rate.

 

The second two games look a lot more interesting to me than the first, maybe I'm just tired of quasi-militaristic combat games that don't have terrorist hunt modes though .

 

Anything like Indigo Prophecy that actually stays true to its characters and has a good story would be alrighty by me, and I cannot stay away from any game with a good investigation option. And I love how hilariously over the top the second game looks. Nooo, don't get sucked into that jet turbine man, noooo!