Thanks to Mr. McWhertor I managed to score a ticket to the Square Enix Closed Mega Theater presentation which I mainly went to so I could check out the footage from the new Kingdom Hearts games. Upon arrival I passed up quite a large group of people waiting in line and was ushered over to the press area. Everyone looked to major Square fans and quite excited to be there.
Once we went in we sat on these rather odd long cushioned bar things, giving me the feeling of being a bird perched i a cage. Guys holding signs that said "No Photography" patrolled the aisles throughout the entire presentation making sure no one was recording the presentation. It was a little awkward and hard to ignore considering there were so many of them.
Finally, the lights went down and the presentation started. I wasn't quite sure what to expect but what it ended up being was a long line of trailer after trailer for all of Squares various upcoming games. It started off with a bang with a Final Fantasy XIII trailer that was truly a sight to behold. It was one of the most beautifully crafted pieces I'd seen in a while and actually made me excited for this game to come out. I will note here that from here on out, all the trailers were in Japanese so I did what could to glean as much info as I could gather from the visuals.
From there we moved to an onslaught of Final Fantasy VII trailers for games every platform including the kitchen sink. FF VII Snowboarding, FF VII Dirge of Cerberus Lost Episode, FF VII Crisis Core, FF VII Before Crisis and last but not least FF VII Advent Children Complete to come out on Blu-Ray in 2008. But still no straight FF VII remake, go figure. Final Fantasy Dissidia for the PSP made an appearance.
Mobile phone games were up next with the rather unexplainable Monotone, the mysterious gun toting bride game, Third Birthday (actually a Parasite Eve Game) and Final Fantasy XIII Agito. Mobile phone games are hugely popular in Japan and cell phone games had a huge presence at TGS, but more on that in a later post.
Then came the moment I was waiting for, the Kingdom Hearts titles, kicked off by the KH mobile game, Kingdom Hearts: Coded, which oddly was the only of the three titles announced that starred KH mainstay, Sora. The other two titles, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep featured Roxas for some inexplicable reason as he seems to be the Jar-Jar Binks of the KH series.
KH: 358/2 Days has you taking on the role of Roxas and features the mysterious Organization XIII characters as your playable team including Axel and takes place in the interim between KH 1 & 2. The title will have single and multiplayer modes and will be available on the DS.
KH: Birth by Sleep will be for the PSP and is a prequel to the original game, following the story of the original keyblade masters. New characters and familiar settings were seen in this one and I immediately recognized Sleeping Beauty's castle and Hercules' Stadium as locations, but it was unclear who exactly the playable characters were.
The forty five minute presentation finished up with a trailer for the breathtaking Final Fantasy XIII Versus which looked extremely polished and every bit as in depth and interesting as the one for FF XIII. Once it was over, the lights came back on and we were ushered back out into the bright lights, booth babes and shouting crush of TGS leaving us all wishing we could go to some quiet place and reminisce about what we just saw but alas, it was not to be.
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