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Platform: Nintendo
DS
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Xenosaga
I & II
Not
many RPG series have had fans of the genre more divided than Xenosaga.
Some people absolutely love the games, while others consider them
to be some of the most pretentious, convoluted pap ever released.
Whatever the case, people on both sides of the argument can
prepare to lock horns once more, as Namco is preparing a retelling of
these games on the Nintendo DS.
Mostly
what we know about so far is related to various aspects of the game’s
story, and who will be involved in retelling it.
As the title suggests, Namco will be taking the narrative from
both PS2 installments in the series, and combining them into one DS
game. Now, these two games
have a lot of content in them, so as you might suspect, some
retooling is in order so to both properly retell the events of
these games, and make sure that they fit in a relatively tiny storage
medium like a DS cartridge.
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This certainly won’t be an easy task, but Namco appears up to the challenge, bringing in a couple of anime heavyweights to assist in creating the narrative for this new game. With Yuichiro Takeda, who was responsible for the Xenosaga anime as well as the Jipang series, and Hiroshi Takeuchi (Cowboy Bebop and Mai Hime), it does help ease the mind when wonder just how the story will unfold on the DS.
As was mentioned earlier, streamlining of the narrative will be necessary. Expecting to be able to document every event of the PS2 versions of the game is wishful thinking to say the least. That much content just wouldn’t fit on the DS game cards. As |
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such, Namco plans to address this by telling the story through the eyes of Shion’s point of view instead, while also tossing in a few new characters for variety. Not only will this help to address the need to ensure that there isn’t too much content in this DS game, but it gives fans a chance to see Xenosaga from a completely different perspective.
There is a certain amount of information available regarding gameplay in this game so far. From what we know, the action will take place on the DS’ top screen, where dungeons are displayed in a ¾ overhead view, while players control the game through the touch screen and standard controls. There will even be some mini-games that make use of the touch screen.
Outside of the occasional discussion with the Japanese press, Namco has been extremely quiet about Xenosaga I & II on the DS. Given how poorly the PS2 games did in America, it wouldn’t be surprising if this game stayed in Japan, but who knows maybe Namco will decide to throw North American gamers a bit of a curve ball and release the game over here.
Mr. Nash (March 3, 2006) |
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