Square Enix Pre-E3 Press Conference Summary

The Square Enix Pre-E3 Press Conference just ended and a flurry of information has come in. There have been titles shown for the DS, GBA, PSP, PS2, Wii, and PS3. That's right. Wii and PS3.

The conference started out by showing the titles we'd heard of already. Trailers for Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, Rocket Slime, Dawn of Mana, and the mobile games. After a small speech by Square-Enix President Yoichi Wada, the other games started coming out.

The first up was Final Fantasy XII, already released in Japan. The release date for the game was announced, October in North America, before a flurry of mobile game announcements. Dirge of Cerebus: Lost Episodes is coming out for mobile systems. Obviously Square Enix is going right into the mobile market.

Now the PS2 stuff. A very long trailer for Final Fantasy XII was shown. Fully English. The new voice actors are wonderful - you aren't going to be seeing a Resident Evil type cheesefest here. No laughing scene either. Even more trailers were shown after that for games like Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. All the trailers should be hitting the world wide web in a matter of minutes.

A trailer of the fully 3D mobile game Dirge of Cerebus: Lost Episodes is shown before a trailer for Final Fantasy III. As they say, "the only Final Fantasy never to reach Western shores." After that? Final Fantasy V and VI trailers for the GBA.

The World of Mana series was the next to be shown off with a trailer for both Children of Mana and Dawn of Mana. Children of Mana has already been released in Japan, but Dawn of Mana which takes 10 years before it has not.

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is announced before Shinji Hashimoto talks about the success of the FFVII line of games. He then announces that Dirge of Cerebus would be out in North America on August 22nd before showing trailers of FFVII stuff we've seen already.

Now, for our PSP fanbase, the first FFVII Crisis Core footage is shown. Loads of Sephiroth and Zack footage. No gameplay is shown, only cutscenes in real time. It'll be up to download ASAP.

The last three game announcements are the biggest announcements of the show. First up is huge. Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors is coming out for the Wii. Not only that, it'll be a launch title! No actual footage is shown. You will be able to use your controller as a sword. This is the first Dragon Quest title on a Nintendo home console in over a decade. This alone assures that the Wii will succeed in Japan.

Next up is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. One for Wii, another for DS. The game looks absolutely amazing. Might have been CG, but if it's real time it's absolutely breathtaking. Definitely up to Square Enix standards. It's being codenamed Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers. The DS version is named Ring of Fates at the moment. The video showed four players simultaneously. Both games are WiFi compatible.

They've saved another biggie for last. Rounding out the next-gen trio is Final Fantasy XIII. Not just Final Fantasy XIII. Three titles sharing that name. Final Fantasy XIII for PS3. Final Fantasy Versus XIII for PS3. Final Fantasy Agito XIII for Mobile.

A heroine is shown in the trailer for FFXIII with a sword and gun going through a futuristic world. The director will be Motomu Toriyama. FFXIII Versus, an action-focused game, will be directed by the people who made Kingdom Hearts and FFVII: Advent Children. FFXIII Agito will feature adhoc multiplayer.

Source: GameSpot / PSPUpdates
posted on Monday, May 08, 2006 7:08 PM by Auri

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