Phantasy Star Universe *NEW* Sonic Team Interview - Page 2

SEGA
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Assume what? I said “I’m curious as to whether you’ve even played one.” Star Wars Galaxies and Dark Age of Camelot eh? Heard nothing but bad things about the former, and I played about 3 hours of the latter before signing off forever, so… yeah.

I’m going to be paying for a game that’s fun. I don’t need to justify things any further. When the game stops being fun, I stop subscribing, just as I did with Phantasy Star Online.

Quest-wise I can agree with, just not at the pace they say they’ll go. Story-wise, I don’t… three years and Phantasy Star Online barely went anywhere with the storyline through added online quests, and there’s still gigantic, gaping holes left to fill.

You’re trying to say that they’re going to continue the plot in the online mode when I honestly think they won’t, or at the very least, do very little in that regard. The offline and online modes of Phantasy Star Universe are seperate from each other. Offline mode is meant to be your casual console RPG romp, and online is meant for some quick, enjoyable multiplayer gaming.

Irrelevant that you specifically didn’t say that, because that’s precisely what PSO was lacking, a large part of why people don’t like the offline mode. You claimed it’s not story driven when offline mode is precisely just that. It’s not just a random romp through dungeons, no more so than any other RPG where you can elect to ignore all the dialogue. The Hunter’s Guild quests are there for a mixture of fun, and to further the game’s storyline. It just happens to not be character-driven, so in quests like “The Grave’s Butler”, you don’t exactly feel moved… an NPC you were introduced to fifteen minutes prior to your completing the quest and finding out he’s dead garners a “meh” at best. There are some useless quests, sure… but most of them pointed you in some direction and gave a piece, even if it was a small piece, for a puzzle you had to build.

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Maybe because PSO was never intended to have that kind of support regarding the storyline while they keep claiming that PSU will have a lot more complex quests and a lot more frequent updates?

If that’s attempting to say that I thought they would continue the single player plot online then, no, I never suggested anything of the sort. Yes I’m aware the sp and mp will be very different experiences in regards to the story, thanks.

How is it irrelevant when I did actually explain what I thought it was lacking? A real involving storyline. Involving storylines don’t have to have a main character with a sweet, cute, quiet, idiotic, heroic, whatever personality. If anything the storyline can come accross more with the situations (quests) you find yourself in and NPC interaction (what they say, what goals they set on you, whatever NPCs usually do in RPGs) rather than the main character’s personality…

My previous post also has examples of how a real involving progressing storyline CAN work online if they want it to.

I don’t think they will go that far with PSU (but you never know really) but I do think that they will do (and are able to do) a lot more/better than they did with the PSO games.

I also don’t expect every weekly quest to be very complex or some great landmark in the storyline they will be writing. I’d say that could happen once a month maybe. Still, the weekly new quests will surely add much needed variety to the game.

Quests are more than adequate means of telling a story if done right and I do have hope that the added complexity claimed about them will not just involve the goals but also the setting and reasoning of each.

The inclusion of the single player adventure will also help greatly in that aspect since the team will have a lot of distinct already established NPCs to use in the quests (even if practicaly it will just be a mission briefing or whatever) and also a lot of animations for them. Though perhaps their use will not be that important, decent writing is more important than that.

The PSO quest example that you gave after that statement of yours I quoted last is a good example of why the story wasn’t that great and didn’t show any real effort in that aspect. Which, again, wasn’t the goal of the team on first place with the PSO games. Imo.

PS: Who voted the last option?! Care to explain the reasoning behind it? I’m just curious :anjou_happy:

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phantasystaruniverse.com/

The official website has been updated with many more new Phantasy Star Universe screenshots, the ones included in that magazine article I think. They do look much nicer than even in the high quality scans though :anjou_love:

After selecting a picture and viewing it in the flash window you can actually click on it for a larger view. Just saying it because others might not have noticed that, as I hadn’t realised either until now.

/me goes back to drooling and waiting for more of it :anjou_love:

Edit:
phantasystaruniverse.com/image/s … rse_20.jpg
I think you will be able to ride this Oo (note what’s on its big horn)!

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Done debating, since we’re argueing stupid semantics at this point. As far as the screens go, some of them were in EGM, but several are new ones never published anywhere else.

Also, I see they’ve introduced a new font. It’s more readable than Phantasy Star Online’s, so it’s back to searching for more subliminal messages in another Sonic Team game. The sign on screenshot 18 seems to say “Green Green Farm” or something to that effect… the third word is difficult. Screen 20 has that same weird symbol and the first two letters that represent “G”, the third letter being indistinguishable at this point. In screen 22 where you see Ethan in his room, the first word on the floor very clearly says “Guardian”. Don’t know the second word since the seal is viewed with the first half easily viewed. “Guardians” is repeated endlessly in that circle above the booth in that last screen as well.

25

Very weird font… Looks like DEEEN at first lol.
I think it’s GREEEN GREEEN FARM like you said… And I think that creature is a GREEEN GREEEN lol. And what’s on it’s thingie seems to be GGF to me. Ie GREEEN GREEEN FARM again. Or something along those lines. Which reinforces what I’m thinking about it being ridable :anjou_love:

And yeah that’s propably Guardian. I think I read somewhere that the main characters will belong to some “guardian” group or something…

26

NEVER pay for online gaming no matter what game it is. I don’t care how good it is. (They already ripped you off at the outset! Now your letting them rob you blind every month so you can thwump on bland enemies for months on end to buy that new suit of armor, only to be punked and lose everything and start the whole process all over again. That’s my definition of SHEER HELL.) Yes, ‘no matter what game it is’ includes Panzer Dragoon Online…and most astoundingly a variant of the same game I got for free a few years ago.

IMHO.

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NEVER pay for [any game] no matter what game it is. I don’t care how good it is. (They already ripped you off [with their last game]! Now you’re letting them rob you blind [again] so you can thwump on bland enemies for months on end to buy that new suit of armor, only to [finish the game] and start the whole process all over ago. That’s my definition of SHEER HELL.) Yes, ‘no matter what game it is’ includes Panzer Dragoon Online…and most astoundingly a variant of the same game I got for free a few years ago.

IMHO.

As I did above, apply that mentality to any hobby, and it really makes you question the purpose of it all, don’t it? :slight_smile:

That being said, online RPGs simply aren’t for anyone. Personally, I get more enjoyment out of World of Warcraft than just about any other game out right now. I’ve spent $50 on a game I only partly enjoyed for a few days, yet for around $10/month, I get hours and hours of enjoyment.

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…agreed. (might wanna edit that post Abadd)

29

Well, this may be old news for some, but after the mention of PSU in another thread I remembered that I hadn’t visited its website in quite a while. So I checked it out once more and I saw it’s been updated with a new design and much more information and images showing the characters, the world, special attacks and more. All in Japanese of course. Take a look.

phantasystaruniverse.com/

The website appears quite buggy though, atleast on Firefox so if you get a weird yellow screen or whatever, try going back to an item you had selected before (and it worked) and then trying the new selection once again.

Anyway, I still look forward to seeing how this will turn out. It certainly looks great still and in many cases better than all the previously available images made it look.

30

Noone here cares about PSU anymore? :anjou_wow:

31

New preview of the game on CVG.

computerandvideogames.com/pr … ?id=123722

Just for hype I guess though, there’s absolutely no new information or screenshots in it. In fact the screenshots seem to be the ancient ones released ages ago and seen even in those old magazine scans we had seen here.

The official website has a lot of actual new screens as I said in the previous replies.

On second thought maybe there is a rather important new bit of information. They say the game is “nine months away”. Neat.

32

Well, this is right…

33

Wth are those invisible images you use in all your posts…

34

The PSU official website has been updated again with a more organised world section and some interesting new entries in it (ie it now shows all the races…)
phantasystaruniverse.com/

35

Still highly anticipating this game, as always. According to a recent interview by Game Informer, this game’s soundtrack is supposed to be the largest ever for a Phantasy Star game, which has me excited. Apparently they utilized TWO orchestras, which is interesting. This’ll definitely be a soundtrack that I’ll have imported, alongside the game, naturally.

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ps2.ign.com/articles/650/650101p1.html
A new Sonic Team interview about PSU by IGN. They have lots of photos of Sega’s HQ too. Also, this may explain why only the producers of games are mentioned rather than the actual teams in recent game announcements (Like a Dragon’s for example):