Tokitowa - Time and Eternity (third person 2D/3D RPG, imageepoch, PS3) announced

[Lard]

STOP CRUSHING MY DREAMS

[Cyril]

The story turns me away immediately, but who knows, maybe they'll do something interesting with it. Like. . .He's married to another woman in every dimension and has to, er, dimension travel with a harem of women who claims to be his wives.
. . .Or something beyond "innocent young man gets molested by strong-willed girl who just so happens to be his wife."
Given one of the themes is time, there might be an interesting "romance over the course of a lifetime" thing going on.  I can hope, can't I?

This is probably nitpicking, but those 3D backgrounds look worse than Atelier Rorona's from the second screen.  We'll see.

I know I sound negative here, but I am actually curious to see on where this goes.

[Lazlowe1984]

I'm all for it and I will most likely enjoy it.

[Kevadu]

The story turns me away immediately, but who knows, maybe they'll do something interesting with it. Like. . .He's married to another woman in every dimension and has to, er, dimension travel with a harem of women who claims to be his wives.
. . .Or something beyond "innocent young man gets molested by strong-willed girl who just so happens to be his wife."

Er...neither of those sounds better to me...

[Cyril]

Er...neither of those sounds better to me...

I was actually being sarcastic with the first two, but I suppose my point didn't come across. Oh well.

I really would like to see the third though.  We don't often see romance develop over years and years. Japan seems averse to aging characters sometimes, just look what happened with Rorona in Atelier Meruru.

[Kevadu]

Er...neither of those sounds better to me...

I was actually being sarcastic with the first two, but I suppose my point didn't come across. Oh well.

It occured to me after the fact that might have been the case.  Makes me feel a little better :)

I really would like to see the third though.  We don't often see romance develop over years and years. Japan seems averse to aging characters sometimes, just look what happened with Rorona in Atelier Meruru.

I don't think that's really a fair characterization of Japan.  Sure younger characters are popular, but there are plenty of examples in anime and manga where characters get older.  You might even saw that's part of the appeal of younger characters (unless you're just a lolicon...).  It doesn't happen so much in games, perhaps, but that's more because most games don't take place over a period of years (recent Atelier games notwithstanding...).

The whole Rorona thing was kind of bizarre.  Didn't Gust do a poll (after it was too late to change anything) that showed that most people would actually have preferred to see the older Rorona?  I wouldn't jump to conclusions from one example.

[Aeolus]

The story turns me away immediately, but who knows, maybe they'll do something interesting with it. Like. . .He's married to another woman in every dimension and has to, er, dimension travel with a harem of women who claims to be his wives.
. . .Or something beyond "innocent young man gets molested by strong-willed girl who just so happens to be his wife."
Given one of the themes is time, there might be an interesting "romance over the course of a lifetime" thing going on.  I can hope, can't I?

This is probably nitpicking, but those 3D backgrounds look worse than Atelier Rorona's from the second screen.  We'll see.

I know I sound negative here, but I am actually curious to see on where this goes.

Yeah. I basically lost all interest as soon as I heard the synopsis.

Besides I know for a fact that if Image Epoch can't do anything interesting with a game like this, there's no way this one is going to do any better than 'groan worthy'.

Clarification: If the best the could do with a game that's set up to perma kill your party members was a brutal first person dungeon crawler with a Chinese Fire Drill button that you could press for instant win but will eventually kill you (think BoF V's D-Counter) with production values that made Radiant Historia look like it got a full budget and the only endings include one where everybody lives, only the main characters live, and the other one then I doubt they're capable of anything meaningful with a game featuring harem building and Thousand Arms style combat (assuming that's what they're going for).

[Kevadu]

game featuring harem building and Thousand Arms style combat (assuming that's what they're going for).

Um...what?  Are we just making up stuff to criticize the game for now?  How did we get from a married couple to harem building?  There haven't even been any other female characters mentioned yet.  And they haven't said a word about how combat works, just the visual style they're going for.

[Dincrest]

The game is definitely pretty.  Pretty enough to catch my interest.  I'm getting a bit of a Thousand Arms meets Vay vibe from it.  I dug both of those games.  We'll see if there is depth behind the pretty face.  Of course, it's Bandai-Namco, so we'll be lucky if we get this or Tales of Xillia in the US.  

It's like with dating- a super hot girl with a vapid personality gets boring after an hour or two.  Of course, thinking positively, this game is about marriage rather than dating.  I can dig how they flipped the script where marrying the princess isn't the ending (ugh to "happily ever after") but rather the beginning.  It's not often you get married protagonists.    

So in Dincrest's stupid little fantasy world where the clouds are made of bubblegum and unicorns fart glitter, the strongest theme writing would be harbored around married relationships, betrothals, fidelity, and the conflict of own-choice vs. arranged marriages: both have benefits and drawbacks.  

...shyeah right!  Fat chance!  We're more likely to get the interdimensional harem plots people have been talking about here.  

[Cyril]

Um...what?  Are we just making up stuff to criticize the game for now?  How did we get from a married couple to harem building?  There haven't even been any other female characters mentioned yet.  And they haven't said a word about how combat works, just the visual style they're going for.

Well, in his defense, the very first teaser was only four different females.

[Aeolus]

Um...what?  Are we just making up stuff to criticize the game for now?  How did we get from a married couple to harem building?  There haven't even been any other female characters mentioned yet.  And they haven't said a word about how combat works, just the visual style they're going for.

Well, in his defense, the very first teaser was only four different females.

That, and the whole never been kissed thing. The only times I've ever heard of that used in a setup was in harem animes; bad harem animes. The marriage thing just means that the girl in question has 'first girl' status (i.e. she's going to be "the sausage's" OTP unless a 'Tenchi solution' is reached (i.e. gotta date them all)).

[cj_iwakura]

Maybe they'll actually play the story at face value.

Not likely, but there's a chance.

[Dincrest]

If you were to have the girl he's betrothed to (who we assume is happy with this arrangement), a girl from an "own choice" marriage culture who thinks betrothals are a violation of free will, a madam who's not really the committed relationship type, and a divorcee with child, then you'd have a cast of characters with myriad views on marriage and relationships.  Obviously different ages too, to contrast the youthful fairy tale idealism of marriage to someone who's there/been there and knows that it ain't happily ever after.

But that's too cerebral and deep and stuff.  Scripting relationships well is difficult and more people would buy cosmic harem #5 than a treatise on the myriad views of marriage.  We'll probably have the betrothed wifey (good girl), the childhood "friend-zone" girl (probably the clumsy girl), the alluring mentor (mysterious woman), and the tsundere (aka tough girl with a soft side); or whatever permutation of anime or love-adventure archetypes exist.  All in an interdimensional harem comedy of errors with plenty of teeheehee double entendres and panty shots.    

Whatever, we'll see what becomes of it.  If it's a cotton candy RPG, hey, at least let it be the cottoniest candied RPG.  

[Yggdrasil]

The last thing I want to see from this is a dark and serious story. I had enough of those already...

[Cyril]

It doesn't necessarily need to be dark and serious, but I would like it to be shown as a mature take on marriage that's not filled with every anime cliche possible.

Too much to ask?
Probably.