This Week in Games

Gamescom-ing... But Who's Buying?

Welcome back, folks! Sadly, I did not get a chance to chip away at my The Legend of Zelda manga yet. I'm still running a Mage: The Ascension campaign for some buddies. Recent highlight: a fight against an ersatz Akuma. Turns out, the Raging Demon isn't very practical as a move during turn-based combat. Who would've thought.

Terranigma Gets Port to Modern Platforms

I usually start work on my columns on Sunday evenings, and this usually comes with a brief bit of anxiety when there isn't anything worth reporting on. So thank goodness for Monday mornings because we actually had news the following morning. And it was a very welcome tiny miracle! Put another one on the board! Terranigma is back!

Terranigma was originally released on the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo back in 1995. It hailed from Quintet, a beloved studio of creators who had originally cut their teeth on the Ys games. Fittingly, Quintet's best-known games, known as the "Gaia Trilogy," are all action-RPGs. Originally released by Enix (long before the Squaresoft merger), this trilogy is known for its grandiose scope, usually involving a broader view of civilization or humanity at large. There also tend to be moments in the games that posit grand moral questions without easy answers. The first two games, Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, are cult classics for this reason.

And then there's Terranigma. This one is an old white whale for fans in North America; while Terranigma was promoted in Nintendo Power, it was only released in PAL regions. It's okay; they earned it; plenty of other major RPGs were never released in PAL regions. This has only added to Terranigma's appeal, anyway.

The story revolves around Ark, a young man who lives in what appears to be a world inside of a world. After accidentally unleashing a strange creature from a box, he's tasked with reviving his fellow villagers—and reconstructing the world. Not his world, mind—our world. Terranigma establishes that the "surface world" (the Lightworld) and the "under-world" (the Darkworld) exist in constant balance; the progress and development of one comes at the expense of the other. Ark's journey will take him through the birth of the Earth and all of its myriad creatures.

For better or worse, Terranigma is a straight port of the original; the game is still in the old 4:3 aspect ratio, for example. To accommodate that, the actual game footage is in a window on the full screen with a wallpaper behind it. The extra space gets some use with a box showing your items and experience. The translation is unchanged from the old PAL script, too. Terranigma's Steam page also doesn't show Square Enix's copyright info, only Clear River Games. It's possible they licensed the game from Square Enix, and as such aren't allowed to make any changes.

News of the game's re-release prompted a comment from Kamui Fujiwara, the original artist for Terranigma (you might also recognize their work from Grandia Extreme or the manga Dragon Quest: The Mark of Erdrick). According to machine translation, he said, "I hope that current players can feel the air of that world—God and humanity, destruction and creation—not as something outdated, but as a work that still lives and breathes today." He also hopes folks can enjoy the game.

Of course, the release of Terranigma has folks wondering if the other members of the Quintet trilogy will be re-released soon. I don't blame folks for wondering, but considering Terranigma was only just announced, I'd wait a bit after actually getting my hands on it before wondering what else is gonna get shoveled onto my plate. Granted, Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia are great, and it's been a dog's age since they were last available. I think starting with a Terranigma port is the smart move; it's a highly sought-after game, and one that didn't have the benefit of a worldwide release in the first place. They might as well start with the big-ticket name and move on to the other games. Make sure there's a demand in the first place, y'know?

Terranigma is slated for release next year, 2027. It'll launch on PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, GOG and Steam.

Some Thoughts on Opening Night Live

As part of Gamescom's opening ceremonies this week, we had... a game showcase hosted by Geoff Keighley. And while there are a lot of cynics in the gaming world, this showcase garnered a surprisingly negative reception from folks. And for a lot of reasons!

It'd be easy to just say that Geoff Keighley is the problem. A lot of people like pinning everything wrong with the industry on one scapegoat and claim that if they were excised, then everything would be better. But that's just not the case with Keighley. His problems as a self-styled spokesperson for the AAA gaming industry are numerous, from the high price tag for getting a game showcased (usually many times an entire dev's budget), to the emphasis of trailers towards recognizing actual games released, to the shutdown of The Game Awards' Future Class, a program intended to help smaller devs and studios, to the obvious conflicts of interest between the games Kighley gives spotlights to and the backers to his shows. And let's not forget 2023's "Please Wrap It Up" debacle, where award winners were encouraged to cut their acceptance speeches short to make room for... more trailers. At an awards show. A lot of this gets excused as "the price of doing business," that these are all things that need to be done in the name of what Keighley does. But what does he do? Gallavant on stage to hawk games that aren't out yet, won't see release for years, might not even release in the first place, and are likely all made with generative AI? Can we say this guy is just "really, really passionate" about games when he's cashing in US$250,000 to hawk AI-powered cat games supported by Web3 spokespersons? The phrase "talking out of both sides of their mouth" is a strong one, but it was arguably made for moments like Keighley taking the time to discuss how runaway RAM prices are making things harder for gamers while promoting a game that uses Generative AI, the technology directly responsible for those runaway RAM prices. Especially when Hoyoverse, one of the studios with multiple games revealed at ONL, is all-in on investing in generative AI, just like folks were all-in on crypto just a few years ago. (Folks counted; 23% of the games presented were powered by generative AI.) You can't have it both ways: you can't pretend to be the biggest mover-and-shaker in the industry and then suddenly insist he's helplessly at the whims of the studios and events that pay him. But also, this isn't stuff we can all pin on Keighley; his absence from the industry won't cure its ills. Smoke and mirrors has been a part of the industry since E3 was in its early years.

The selection of games also wasn't the best. I've already made an offhand allusion to Like or Die, the upcoming live-service shooter promoted by Keighley's Opening Night Live event that also utilized generative AI in its development process. (Countdown to "placeholder assets" being found post-launch in three... two...) Hoyoverse's Nodusfall promises to be a departure from their house style as a four-player Monster Hunter-esque co-op game... that also bites Elden Ring's aesthetic super hard. Like "we recolored Malenia's second phase"-hard. We can do better than this, can't we? We don't have to make games that just wholesale lift aesthetics from more popular ones just to sell something. Halo and Doom 3 only look like each other in the vaguest sense. Sure, Saint's Row was a Grand Theft Auto rip-off, but Deep Silver managed to carve a unique identity for those games. It's a harsh line, but one thing I learned from Seanbaby years ago in the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly was "don't remind me of a better game I could be playing."

And it's not like the rest of the selection at Opening Night Live were much better; there were lots of trailers for stuff we're still waiting for (Silent Hill: Townfall, Crazy Taxi: World Tour, Final Fantasy VII: Revelation). And there were plenty of live-service shooters and mobile games. I get that most profits in the game industry as it stands come from in-game purchases. That's just how the money is made. And with consoles costing more than ever, people find their dollars better put into investing the price of a full AAA game and then some into an ostensibly-free-to-play game that'll likely see end-of-service within a year or two. Far be it from me to tell people how to spend their money; I just think people's time and money should be valued more.

I'm a terrible judge for these kinds of trade-shows-turned-spectacle; while I was very much a contrarian by nature as a kid, I was also the kind who just didn't find himself all that interested in the big hits of the day. I was indifferent to Halo, I was indifferent to Grand Theft Auto, it took a while for me to actually get into Metroid Prime. The closest thing to a mainstream game I was actively into was Final Fantasy, and I still missed Final Fantasy XI and XII for years. A combination of me being really passionate about handhelds (plus it simply being more feasible for me to play them) meant that I was all-in on a section of gaming that was otherwise deemed obsolete by the mainstream industry at large. Boktai didn't hook me in because of Hideo Kojima's name; it hooked me in because I thought Django looked cool and I loved the idea of a solar-powered game. Yeah, sure, promise me the keys to the kingdom with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I'm just here for Riviera: The Promised Land screenshots. One major factor that kept me into these games is they weren't trying to impress me. They were just trying to look fun. You could sit me down to talk about how great the next Medal of Honor was going to be, how it used Havok engine physics and the Unreal engine and how the Blast Processing allowed them to reticulate so many splines with Mode 7. My eyes would glaze over, and the whole thing would go in one ear and out the other. Seeing another kid playing Mega Man Battle Network three feet away from me at a Home Depot in the early 2000s was enough to get me hooked on the Battle Network games for life; it's Mega Man, but he's in a real-time RPG, and now all of the characters look like tokusatsu heroes. Sold. I don't know how much money Atlus and Sting spent on promoting Knights in the Nightmare; I don't even remember how I learned about it. I just knew that a strategy game with a bullet-hell shooter as its interface made by the guys that created Riviera was the sickest idea ever and I wanted it in my hands post-haste.

We're tired of the grift, man. We know we're being sold stuff. We know it's all loaded with the sneaky buck—alternate costumes and "optional" content and whatnot. But, to paraphrase Cuba Gooding Jr., we've seen the puppet show, we've seen the strings. At least give us something to genuinely care about. Speak honestly to us. Don't speak to us in buzzwords and industry terms. Don't try to wow us with CG trailers. We are not your stockholders. Give me something to care about. Epic tossed a lot of money to make a ton of trailers for Quake 4, and I don't remember a damn thing about that game. But I remember how it felt the first time I saw AirMan.EXE.

Marvelous Shares Teasers for Upcoming Story of Seasons and Rune Factory

Marvelous also had a busy week, sharing a few special streams commemorating anniversaries for their two big farming franchises: Story of Seasons and its fantasy spin-off Rune Factory. Story of Seasons celebrates its 30th anniversary, while Rune Factory is celebrating its 20th. I wrote quite a bit about the franchise's history back in March. In the meantime, we got a few glimpses at the franchise's future...

... Unfortunately, they weren't very in-depth. While Marvelous of America made a very cute video collecting speeches from various voice actors and streamers regarding their affection towards Story of Seasons (they even included vtubers like Laimu and Vexoria), the real draw was a 30-second teaser of an upcoming Story of Seasons. Sadly, it didn't give us much to go off of. We have a nice coastal town, we have our iconic bubble cows and curly-tailed chickens, and... that's about it. Folks are a bit antsy about an upcoming game; while Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar was widely well-received, it was nevertheless a remake of an older title from the Nintendo DS. So folks are looking forward to a new game. We unfortunately don't have much to go off of, not even a hint at when the game will drop. Not much to do but wait for further updates.

Similarly, Marvelous put together an anniversary video for Rune Factory featuring a number of voice actors from throughout the games (though mostly from Rune Factory 5 and Guardians of Azuma, the most recent titles). And we also got a thirty-second teaser of the future, which... also isn't terribly illuminating. We see a Wooly meeting up with other Wooly-friends in front of a large castle town, and... that's it. We also see some glimpses of a farm raising some radishes. The castle town could easily be a major capital in Norad or the newly-formed Tagesanbruch (the remnants of the evil Sechs Empire), but it's too soon to tell. It will be interesting to see what they go with, however. Rune Factory 5 was something of a Hail Mary for the franchise; while it did all right, it also made it rather evident that the Rune Factory series needed a shot in the arm. Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma was a great effort on that front; a spin-off of the main series that also allowed for greater experimentation with the Rune Factory formula through village-sim elements, and by doubling down on all of your farming being done by relics that also served major functions in battle. It needed a bit of fine-tuning, particularly regarding villager behavior, but it was a fun effort. Hopefully, lessons learned from Guardians of Azuma serve to help the greater Rune Factory series.

Marvelous has always striven to put their best foot forward with their landmark farming games, and even with the recent Guardians of Azuma, they did everything possible to offer fans what they felt was appropriate value—especially since Guardians of Azuma's special edition set released during President Trump's tariffs, which complicated the prospect of several feelies for the game. They also strive to give players actual physical copies of their games on proper disks and cartridges. They've stood by their fanbase for these long years, and have earned every bit of goodwill towards them. So it'll be a bit before we have something ready for market, but we can rest assured Rune Factory and Story of Seasons will come out strong.

Let's wrap up with some quick tidbits:

That'll do it for this week, I think. As I write this, the news of both Dolly Parton and Tim Curry's passing is still exceedingly fresh. Their talents were absolutely inescapable for people of a certain age, and theirs is a great loss. We can only hope they rest easy after having brought joy to so many. I once again urge my readers to share their affection and support with their loved ones and the creatives they enjoy. Be good to each other; I'll see you in seven.