Pages

Friday 30 March 2012

Bravely Default is Starting to Look Interesting


As details begin to come to light about Bravely Default Flying Fairy, I'm actually starting to get pretty interested in the game.  When I first heard about it I raised an eyebrow simply because the name sounded like random words pulled from a hat, but I think that I'm not the only one who felt that way.  Thankfully there seems to be some meat getting applied to the game's bones, which is causing me to get a bit excited out it.

First, the visuals look pretty darn nice.  The game looks like a painting, and I really love that aesthetic.  Going all the way back to Saga Frontier 2, and how it looked like water colors, then all the way to the present with games like Ni no Kuni I absolutely adore games that feel like they were drawn or painted.  It's such a nice change of pace from all of the other games out there that constantly chase after photo realism, dragging along their space marines, and zombies for the ride.  But yeah, the graphics in Bravely Default are looking amazing so far.  Really loving the art direction.

Then it recently became known that Squeenix have tapped Naotaka Hayashi of Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate fame to handle the story for the game.  I really liked those anime (never read the visual novels or played the games though), so learning that he's involved with this project is good news indeed.  Apparently the theme of the game is examining when it's okay for someone to abandon duty in order to fulfill their promises, which should prove interesting.  The notion does come up occasionally in games, but it's more something I've seen in anime series, so I'm happy to see that this game will be trying to tackle some meatier issues rather than clinging too much to tropes.  Or at least I sure hope so!

Even how Bravely Default will hark back to more classic RPG elements like random, turn-based battles, and incorporating a job system are most welcome.  I just like that retro throwback.  There's not much more to it than that.  I actually find those sorts of experiences kind of relaxing, especially if the battle system itself is fairly robust.  As long as the random battles aren't obnoxiously frequent or anything, I don't see myself having any problems with that set up.  As far as job systems go, I can never get enough of those.  The more jobs the better, I say!  I'll probably just grind them all up to max level anyway at some point (I can get strangely obsessed with that sort of thing...). :p

About the only thing I'm not so sure of is the whole augmented reality thing.  This is probably mostly due to my not being familiar with the technology anyway.  Some of my friends with Vitas have had nothing but good things to say about it from their experiences with Uncharted there, so I'll give the tech the benefit of the doubt for now, and see how it goes with this game.

Anywho, things are looking pretty darn snazzy with Bravely Default Flying Fairy right now.  I'm really looking forward to the game, and it's certainly one that will get me more interested in picking up a 3DS down the road.  Anyone else looking forward to this game?