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

[Kevadu]

Most people think the prince became the dragon.

You said the same thing on Andriasang a while back and I didn't believe you then either!  In fact I've never heard this theory from anyone besides you.  Who are these 'most people'?

[cj_iwakura]

Most people think the prince became the dragon.

You said the same thing on Andriasang a while back and I didn't believe you then either!  In fact I've never heard this theory from anyone besides you.  Who are these 'most people'?

Mostly in Andriasang's comment thread! It makes sense, really.

[Kevadu]

Well, I was looking at the official Tokitowa website to find something to disprove you but I ended up changing my tune instead.  See Exhibit A.  That's the character info page on the 'player'.  In the background behind him is clearly the head of the dragon Draeke (that's how they write it, though the katakana is clearly like 'Drake').  See Exhibit B.  So there must be some sort of connection.  Also Draeke's description is kept pretty vague, translating to something like, "The pet Draeke who is never apart from Toki even for a moment.  How did this creature become involved in the story?"  Which doesn't really answer anything, but all the other characters have reasonable explanations.

[cj_iwakura]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66WTWmT3aQ8

Finally. Not as bad as I feared, not quite as good as I was hoping.

[Dice]

The battles were actually a lot cooler looking than I thought they'd be, some parts looked pretty seamless too.
Didn't dig the awkward third person running around though.

[Zendervai]

Framerate seems kind of low, but that's to be expected. Although the battle system looks a little like the one from Thousand Arms. Actually, a lot of stuff from this reminds me of Thousand Arms and I'm not really sure why.

[Aeolus]

A couple of things I noticed during the video.

First; the 2D art looks good. Nice, clean, and crisp.
Second; the 2D art on the 3D backgrounds look jarring as hell. Seriously, dat running animation. 0_o
Third; I still can't figure out if Launch is/are the only playable character(s) or not. It looks like she gets ganked in one cycle and I'd put money on somebody else taking over for gimmick/party building purposes.
Fourth; the plot. With the game borrowing the X day cycle mechanic from Majora's Mask, this leaves a couple of questions. Does the 'you're fucked' hour of every loop occur during the wedding? If so, how are they going to justify needing multiple X day cycles to solve the problem? Will that evil looking fortune teller/witch be the root of the conspiracy and if so just how oblivious are they going to make the lead and/or Launch to her plot, or will they cycle through protagonists who all have to figure out that she's behind it before they travel back and get ganked thus passing on the protagonist's cap on to the next character? If not, then how many levels of inception deep will they need to go before they fight the ultimate evil emperor's right hand man's evil twin's ancient evil spirit's reflection of the protagonist's long lost brother's son' ancestor's descendant's possessed lover back from the dead and summoned from the bad guy realm (i.e. the fortune teller/witch).
And finally; if they're really trying to make this Two Thousand Arms then they REALLY need to get a voice actor who can make country ham out the game's equivalent to the phrase "The DAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!".

[Kevadu]

Framerate seems kind of low, but that's to be expected.

Not the framerate but rather the number of frames of animation.  Not really the same thing.

The running is awkward as heck at least in part because the way she runs is awkward as heck (i.e., artistic rather than technical problem).

They continue to refer to the guy as the protagonist, which is especially weird when they say (quite literally) that the protagonist is suddenly killed.  OK, so after that they talk about going back in time to prevent it, but it still seems to be entirely from Toki/Towa's perspective.

Battle is pretty much what I expected, which wasn't really high expectations.  Not really impressed.

Third; I still can't figure out if Launch is/are the only playable character(s) or not. It looks like she gets ganked in one cycle and I'd put money on somebody else taking over for gimmick/party building purposes.
Fourth; the plot. With the game borrowing the X day cycle mechanic from Majora's Mask, this leaves a couple of questions.

I have no idea what you're talking about with any of that.  First of all, who is Launch?  What's this about cycles?  They only mention going back in time once.

[Logick]

I was impressed at first when I saw screenshots, but now looking at the game in action...well...guys remember those TG16 CD and Sega CD games telenet released?

[cj_iwakura]

Considering it shows the prince dying while the dragon watches, so much for that theory.

[Aeolus]

Third; I still can't figure out if Launch is/are the only playable character(s) or not. It looks like she gets ganked in one cycle and I'd put money on somebody else taking over for gimmick/party building purposes.
Fourth; the plot. With the game borrowing the X day cycle mechanic from Majora's Mask, this leaves a couple of questions.

I have no idea what you're talking about with any of that.  First of all, who is Launch?  What's this about cycles?  They only mention going back in time once.

Launch is the name of the character from Dragon Ball who operates under almost the exact same gimmick that the female lead does in this game (and I'm referring to her as such because I can't be arsed to figure out which one is Toki and which one's Towa).

I'm calling it cycles because there's definitely going to be more than one trip into the past. Hell the trailer itself had two separate time traveling montages (one from the first where the prince got ganked and a second under less specific circumstances). And like in Majora's Mask, each time you see the phrase "Dawn of the First Day: 72 hr remaining." you're starting a new 3 day cycle. Seriously, this isn't moon logic here.

[Kevadu]

I'm calling it cycles because there's definitely going to be more than one trip into the past. Hell the trailer itself had two separate time traveling montages (one from the first where the prince got ganked and a second under less specific circumstances). And like in Majora's Mask, each time you see the phrase "Dawn of the First Day: 72 hr remaining." you're starting a new 3 day cycle. Seriously, this isn't moon logic here.

I'll grant you that there are two time travelling sequences in the trailer, the first with Toki in the bloody wedding dress and the second in plain clothes.  I still have no idea where you're getting cycles from.  In fact given that they apparenly take place under different cirumstances doesn't that speak against simple cycles?

And when you say "like in Majora's Mask"...what is like Majora's Mask?  Where is the common phrase here?  There's nothing like that.


Another aspect of the trailer that nobody seems to be mentioning is how it's pushing the romance aspect and talks about having to choose between Toki and Towa (wait, aren't they basically the same person...).  That seems like a weird direction to take things in.  There was one brief segment in the trailer (though I remember something similar from earlier screenshots) that almost looked like a dating sim.  But since the rest of the game seems to be from Toki/Towa's perspective...what's up with that?

[Dincrest]

Maybe when the prince dies, his soul goes into the dragon, making for that kind of Akana x P-Chan/Ryoga thing. 

And is Launch the Dragon Ball character who looks like Ayla from Chrono Trigger?  I always thought her name was Lunch.  Made sense since many characters are/were named after food. 

[Aeolus]

I'm calling it cycles because there's definitely going to be more than one trip into the past. Hell the trailer itself had two separate time traveling montages (one from the first where the prince got ganked and a second under less specific circumstances). And like in Majora's Mask, each time you see the phrase "Dawn of the First Day: 72 hr remaining." you're starting a new 3 day cycle. Seriously, this isn't moon logic here.

I'll grant you that there are two time travelling sequences in the trailer, the first with Toki in the bloody wedding dress and the second in plain clothes.  I still have no idea where you're getting cycles from.  In fact given that they apparenly take place under different cirumstances doesn't that speak against simple cycles?

And when you say "like in Majora's Mask"...what is like Majora's Mask?  Where is the common phrase here?  There's nothing like that.


Another aspect of the trailer that nobody seems to be mentioning is how it's pushing the romance aspect and talks about having to choose between Toki and Towa (wait, aren't they basically the same person...).  That seems like a weird direction to take things in.  There was one brief segment in the trailer (though I remember something similar from earlier screenshots) that almost looked like a dating sim.  But since the rest of the game seems to be from Toki/Towa's perspective...what's up with that?

You're right. I probably should be trying to draw parallels to the Back to the Future Trilogy instead. I say this because now that I think about it MM was more about using time travel shenanigans to make multiple attempts at stopping a single and particularly devastating catastrophe. The trailer looks more like there are going to be multiple smaller catastrophes that occur at a particular event where using time travel shenanigans to fix one leads to the creation of another (based off of what the trailer showed, it looks like in one instance the main character dies protecting Launch/Lunch/Female Lead #1 and she ends up coming across the macguffin needed to pull off time travel shenanigans, and another instance of the same event (the wedding) but this time Female Lead #1 is the one who gets ganked and (just a guess from this point on) it's up to Female Lead #2 to take over(/guess)) much like how in the BttF trilogy when Marty McFly goes back to 1955 to escape the bad end Doc Brown met he screws around with time which winds up both saving The Doc and improving his own circumstances which leads to Doc Brown visiting the distant future of 2015 where Marty must right his kid's wrongs but this leads to Biff getting a hold of the DeLorian for his own nefarious purposes which forces Marty to retrace his steps until he fixes the damage Biff does.

The tl;dr of the parallel I've been trying to make here is that every time time travel is used to fix something, something else tends to break and requires further time travel to fix. Admittedly my initial assumption was that this was operating under a 'one problem that refuses to fix itself and needs multiple attempts to find and enact the exact requirements necessary to fix the problem once and for all' which is a time travel trope used by both the video game Majora's Mask and the movie Groundhog's Day, hence my initial references to the former.


As for the other aspect of the trailer, I blame my lack of moonspeak-foo. That said, this basically ties into the theory I stated above. There are going to be multiple instances of time travel, and in some instances the Leading Female #1 will get replaced by the other Leading Females as party members with their own gimmicks (LF#1's is multiple personalities, the others are yet to be disclosed). I'm going to bet that the game's plot will basically consist of the main character's (i.e. The Prince currently named The Protagonist) death at the wedding followed by Launch's (and other female leads') multiple attempts at going back and getting the past The Prince i.e. The Protagonist to help her save him while also showing us their relationship increases in an effort to put the beginning at the end while also giving the player total and complete agency over the relationship.

To tl;dr my theorycrafting, the reason why we never see The Prince in any screenshot is that we will almost always be in the past The Prince's PoV (at least on the time excursions where his death needs fixing, it'll be the present one for future laps for repertoire building with the other members of his eventual harem). At the end of the game, the player through The Prince gets to choose who to marry out of his potential harem.

All in all, I almost think this game is taking not only the idea of hand drawn characters on 3D environments from Thousand Arms but its sudo-date sim nature and its combat system with alterations made to make the rearguard support the PoV and always The Prince named The Protagonist.


Holy shit, that's a lot of words for my pessimistic take on an almost assuredly disappointing game that I'll never play

Code:

due to it never leaving Japan

.

[Kevadu]

I don't even know where to begin...I could say more, but here's a couple points:

First of all, there's no sign of a harem here.  The narration specifically says choosing between Toki and Towa, which is a love triangle at most (assuming they even count as different people...).  The other girls are barely even in the trailer and seem to be minor characters, so I don't know how you reached that conclusion.

Second, why do you keep going on about Toki/Towa being 'ganked'?  When does that happen?  Did I watch the same trailer as you...


Also, in regard to your last comment there's actually a very good chance this game is getting localized (my money's on NISA), though nothing has been announced officially.