Cyberpank, Furs, postmodernism. 13 Sentinels: AEGIS RIM – development and reference history

For the seventh time we are talking about Vanillaware games and in the eighth, if you include in this list of Princess Crown from George Kamitani. All these games have something in common (And I’m not even about the corporate visual style of Vanillaware) – all of them, with the exception of Kumatanchi, use fantasy setting.

After the release of the Dragon’s Crown, it becomes clear that Vanillaware is good in 2D-explosions on fantasy themes and, it would seem, why change something here? But the founder of the studio, George Kamitani, wanted to change, and this desire grew into an ambitious game.

It all started at the end of 2012. VanillaWare has a tradition – to release congratulatory cards in honor of the New Year. In honor of the onset of 2013, Kamitani releases a new congratulatory picture, which depicts three girls against the background of three huge robots.

This is a common thing-such postcards were with multi-armed goddesses, and with some chibiks. That is, it makes no sense to expect a hidden announcement in the picture, because the postcards are stably released every New Year, starting from the New Year 2008, and before that the new Vanillaware games were not encrypted. And there was no at that time in the development of no game.

George Kamitani felt nostalgia for the times of his childhood-in Japan of the 80s, and he had the idea of ​​a fantastic setting in his head, tied in this time period. But Kamitani was tired of large -scale games and just wanted to sell the idea for a line of toys. No ambitions, only the implementation of images from the head. These images were tied on a science fiction action movie “Boys robots“1989, but with elements of Shodze-Manga. Shydze -Genre of manga and anime for girls, where the plot is built around the romantic relationship of the main character with some handsome man, and sometimes the girl suffers from the choice between several handsome men.

George does not reveal the name of the company, to which he proposed the idea, but does not hide that he received a refusal. At the same time, Kamitani was afraid to go to Atlus with this concept, but there were no other options, because after the success of the Dragon’s Crown Vanillaware, she concluded a contract with Atlus, under the terms of which Vanillaware appeals to another publishing house only in case of ATLUS refusal, that is, first you need to show the ATLUS game and get a refusal. And George was sure that Atlus would refuse. After all, he shared these ideas with Vanillaware employees – showed the designer Coichi Maeno, what he also worked on Grimgrimoire and Grand Knights History. Maeno honestly admitted that the Kamitani universe seems to him very complicated, albeit interesting.

George did not know about this, but the ATLUS leadership just wanted to see a new franchise for entering the international market. And then Kamitani comes to them with his idea to develop a line of toys. Not a video game, namely what toys, but with his universe. Naturally, the ATLUS leadership explained to George that he is an adult and what toys can be discussed? We need to make a game, we will give money – go ahead. But it was not possible to start the development at once.

Vanillaware first completed Muramasa Rebirth, Port Muramasa for PS Vita, and then Odin Sphere Lefthrasir . And after that, the whole team was at the disposal of Jord and his extraordinary idea, which he himself calls “recklessly ambitious”. It was even reckless the name.

Initially, Kamitani had 7-8 characters in the head. But since he received approval to create a game in 2013, he called the project 13 Sentinels: AEGIS RIM. And Aegis Rim, which can be roughly translated as “protection of the edge”, designated the genre of the game – Tower Defense. Although in the Japanese name there are no “Ides” and “Rome”. “BEE Ken” is used there, that is, the “protection zone”. I think Atlus in the title for the world market wanted associations with the film Pacific Rim (“Pacific Rim“), Nevertheless, fantasy about robots after all. The fact that the name plays an important role for Kamitani is important to us – it hides the idea, the main idea of ​​the game. And with the choice of the name, a full -fledged development of “Guardians” began.

Someone probably drew attention to the phrase Tower Defense. Do not be afraid, Vanillaware did not decide to make their Plants vs. Zombies or kingdom rush . I remind you that George did not have a concept in the head Games. There was a setting, history, but it was not a game, otherwise he would not be afraid to go to Altus. “Guardians” and did not eventually become a full -fledged Tower Defense’om because the gameplay faded into the background.

A meat grinder of Japanese postmodernism

An amazing transformation occurred with George Kamitani. Either by virtue of age, or by virtue of some events in his life, firstly, he decided to make a game with the maximum focus on the plot, and secondly, he was drawn to Japanese postmodernism.

It is precisely what with the “Japanese” posted, because the Western/European postmodernism is characterized by the contrast between the art of the era of modernism. In Japan, the historical period for which the world era of modernism fell (That is, from the end XIX in the middle XX century) was extremely harsh. The country came out of the era of Edo (during which Sakoku took place, a policy of self -isolation) in the Meiji era. For two centuries, the borders of Japan were limited, and leaving the country was allowed only to special trading ships. Therefore, Japan missed the period of the revolution in world science, which took place until the 18th century, and at the same time, cultural trends characteristic of this time passed, but who immediately went to study representatives of Japanese art.

The question of the presence of modernism in Japanese culture is usually caused by thoughts about that, Did you manage to In the country, the same modernism form? But is it worth arguing about this, if “postmodernism” is a discussion concept. Under it sometimes suggested culture historical the post -industrial period, and already in this sense, postmodernism in Japan cannot be denied, like the shifts that occurred in the culture.

For centuries, Japanese art has calmly existed within the framework of Confucian-Buddhist themes: Kami (That is, translating rudely, deities), nature, romantic relations, and later brave samurai were added there. Before the start of the Japanese-Chinese war in 1937, and then the Second World War, works with military subtext appeared, created as part of the country’s militarization. In the future, Japan not only lost the war, but also felt the nuclear warheads at first, and then the occupation by American troops.

In the post -war period, an important breakdown occurred both Japanese society and Japanese culture. And usually the birth of Japanese postmodernism is attributed to this time.

Japanese postmodernism originated from several factors. On the one hand, American films, music and comics were imported into the country. On the other hand, already after The seven -year -old occupation, Japan became open to the whole world and not only accepted what the Americans bring, but absorbed the elements of the culture of any countries, at least communist. For example, the cult director of Akira Kurosava shot one of his films at the Mosfilm film studio with a team of Soviet actors, operators and other filmmakers.

Why am I all that? Japanese postmodernism is not about the rethinking of the works of the culture of modernism, but about rethinking the whole life in general before and after a certain historical period. The country of the rising sun absorbed the elements of world art, mixed with its culture and grinded into something new. As a result, the world knew the warriors in the sailor, and the terrible Japanese horror, and giant humanoid robots, and Hentai.

Furs and cyberpunk – derivatives of Japanese postmodernism

Before returning specifically to the “guards”, you need to clarify one more point. From this meat grinder of Japanese postmodernism, two genre important for modern Japanese art appeared: fur and cyberpunk. Both are closely related to decadent moods after defeat in the war. In Japan, which sensed two nuclear warheads on themselves, artists thought not just about death as something personal. They thought about the death of all mankind and whether our life is real. Moreover, the death of mankind was considered not as something tragic, but as something inevitable.

Mexho and cyberpunk are sometimes intertwined, but initially, in the first half of the 80s, I would divide them into two different views into the future. Mexhoes are positive, with the theme of Japan’s technological progress. The country of the rising sun in the future saves the world at the expense of its own breakthrough. Huge humanoid robots, often even without analogues in the world, or these analogues are not so good, save the world from death in the form of alien invaders. That is, the end of the world could happen, but, firstly, due to the invaders from the outside, and secondly, Japan helps humanity escape from the threat.

Cyberpank shows another future. Humanity is again under threat, but it is already guilty. The technological breakthrough does not protect people from the threat of alien invasion, but puts everything upside down. In this world of the future or artificial intelligence, it prevails over people and makes leather bags suffer, or the resources of our native planet are exhausted, and we, people, become a resource. Technological capabilities work not for the good, but lead to the end of humanity.

At the same time, there is often no antagonist character in cyberpanca. Digitalization came and became the end. All of her wanted her, but did not think about the consequences, so the conditional general director of the corporation or terrible artificial intelligence can be shown by a bad character, but he is not a lever of the end of the world. It’s just that he is on the top of this digital food chain. And the main thing here, unlike fur, is reasoning about the nature of the human soul. Is there anything to die at all? Or we are really only leather bags for the consumption of the planet resources?

And where is 13 sentinels: aegis rim?

Both of these genres (Furs and cyberpunk) were at the peak of popularity in Japan of the 80s, in the school years of George Kamitani. And, suddenly, in the “Guards” George decided to rethink his whole childhood and create his work from this. 13 Sentinels: AEGIS RIM – this is not even a game. This is a work through which George Kamitani reveals to the whole world through the films, games, manga and anime through it through it. In a sense, this is the same postmodernism where media, on which Kamitani grew up, performed “modernism”. That is, it is not just citation of works (Although quoting is found in “Guards”), and, according to George himself, modernization of the “fur” genre within the framework of a nostalgic work.

What and how Kamitani inspired

If we talk more specifically about the sources, then the “guards” were influenced by two early works from the “fur” and cyberpunk, respectively. This is a space opera “Hyperproductal fortress of Macro“And one of the first cyberpank anime – Megazone 23. “Macross” is a cult anime, where the emphasis was placed not only on the battles of huge robots, but also on the relationship of people. Both the pilots of these robots and the civilian population, which the pilots protect. The influence of Macross spread even to the Top Gun film, and the design of Macross robots and the Mobile Suit Gundam Mehov gave rise to American “transformers”. The “Guards” have a literal citation of the 27th Macross series, when Ideol Lynn Minmei, a character from anime, sings during an important and dramatic battle.

Megazone 23 – One of the first anime, where cyberspace and independent artificial intelligence appear, and the climax for the viewer is that the world shown was only a virtual copy of the destroyed land. I note that Mexholes also occasionally flash in Megazone 23, but it is precisely what “flicker”, that is, how element what is happening, not its basis. Bikers, characters in the spirit of raiders from Fallout and futuristic computers are much more common.

The influence of Megazone 23 is attributed to films “Dark city“,”Existence” And “Matrix“. And if Vachovski at one time denied the influence of Megazone, then in the case of the “guards”, Kamitani speaks of this directly. He took not only the basic idea of ​​anime, but also specific episodes, where a girl-Ayol girl speaks through the TV.

Far less cult work – manga Please Save My Earth (Boku No Chikyu Wo Mamotte), who was released from 1986 to 1994. This uses the idea of ​​collective dreams that are actually memories of a past life. And this also was reflected in “Guards”.

Another cult work is the novel “Girl who conquered time“, Published in Japan from 1965 to 1966. The novel has several adaptations, but he gained mass popularity in the form of the 2006 anime of the same name, which is not an adaptation of the book, but an alternative continuation. And for the work of Kamitani it is the anime adaptation that is important. George really liked the school laboratory in one of the scenes, and as a result, a similar laboratory appeared in the game.

Girl who conquered time

13 Sentinels: AEGIS RIM

Some works that influenced Kamitani would not have noticed if he himself had not disclosed details. So, he says that the love line of one of the heroines, Fuusaki Yori, began with an attempt to adapt the feelings of the main character of manga Tokimeki Tonight. This is not very characteristic of the Japanese, but it is again about the manga in the shodze genre, that is, the work is focused on girls 12-18 years old. In Tokimeki Tonight, the heroine fights with a rival for the heart of a young man.

There were no direct references in the game, so it remains only to believe George – not just he decided to tell in an interview that he loved to read Shodze. In general, in an interview, Kamitani calls Mangaku Akira Kagami as an ideological inspirer, but this author died in 1984 at the age of 27, and his career ended two and a half years after the beginning. Perhaps because of this, information about this mangak is even problematic to find in English.

Sometimes Kamitani took a small idea, such as the contrast of the hair color of the heroine and villain in anime Majokko megu-chan 74th year, and such an idea was reflected in “Guards”. True, there are no heroes and villains in the usual sense in the “Guards”, but there are two heroines associated with romantic feelings with one boyfriend. And to additionally emphasize the difference in characters, George uses visual.

Majokko megu-chan

13 Sentinels: AEGIS RIM

Not all 13 heroes were originally in the head of George. For example, three mangs were used for one hero: Tottemo Hijikata-Kun, Stop!! Hibari-Kun And Igano Kabamaru. In the character of the hero of the first manga, the cumeness of the heroes of the other two was added. In Stop!! Hibari-Kun one of the characters falls in love with, as he thinks, a girl, but in fact it turns out to be a guy with feminine features.

And in Igano Kabamaru there was a character observed on the same type of food – yakisoba, fried noodles.

True, it was problematic to reflect love for such food and the noodles were replaced by the Yakisoba-Pan, that is, a bun in which the noodles were stuffed. So the eating scenes looked organically in the 2D format of the game.

By the way, about 2D format. In past materials about Vanillaware Games, I already mentioned Kamitani’s love for paintings. IN Muramasa The inspiration was felt by Japanese engravings, and Dragon’s Crown Imitated the paintings of Frank Phrasetta. In “Guards” the visual style sets William Turner -English painter of the XVIII-XIX century.

Riga Mountain: View of Lake Lake. 1842.

A ship with slaves. 1840.

His landscapes created using watercolors became a prototype of the background of locations in “Guards”, and the color scheme of the game is rarely different from the gamut that Turner used in his paintings.

This is not the last use of Western sources, but perhaps the most unusual. After all, something surprising is that one of the plot branches was the retelling of the film “Source code“, No, like nothing bad. Here are just direct and short references to “The war of the worlds“Herbert Wells and”To the terminator»They look more concise.

The story of one of the characters is the loop of the time where it should prevent disaster

“War of Worlds” as a book exists in the world of game

But the “Terminator” in the game is not. But there is an “exterinator” and robots from the future.

By the way, about a character inspired by several sources at once. There is this for Western sources: the story of a girl obsessed with aliens, who made friends with the robot. Here we have a friendship of a person with an alien from E.T., and comic part from the film “Short circuit“1986.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Short Circuit (1986)

Natsuno Minami – a girl in the history of which both films are intertwined

“Guardians” contained countless works. George’s nostalgia mixed with the present, which is logical for writing an actual story. Kaizu, the name of the monsters from the universe “Godzilla“And other films in the Tokusatsu genre, became enemies in this game. At the same time, Kamitani quotes the film here “The island of the damned»2010, creating a detective story about a character with a confusion in my head.

Return of Godzilla (1984)

Godzilla itself is not in the game, but Kaizu is part of the game universe

Cursed Island (2010)

Ryoko Shinonoma – almost DiCaprio

George takes the speaker with the character of the character “Voice” of 2014, but does not forget to reflect the life of the Japanese couples in the 80s, using the memories of the Japanese film Tonda Couple.

By the way, the character of the cats is similar

Tonda Couple (1980)

The characters have a little time for life, but you can catch the atmosphere

And next to the already classical story from the film “Remember everything»The image from the manga Sukeban deka is adjacent.

Remember everything (1990)

Sukeban Deka has even a series of films. The image of a hooligan girl for the Japanese media is quite a “mainstream”

Lady of 13 Sentinels, even on courts, sits clearly

After all, Kamitani wanted to show a unique Japanese criminal subculture. Sukeban is the girls who really existed in Japan who created their gangs. At first they simply smoked in school toilets, but over the years it came to robberies and violence, and the sunset of this subculture happened just in the 80s.

Such an abundance of references eventually led to the difficulties of interpretation, for contemporaries saw schoolchildren inside the robot and said: “Oh, Evangelion!”, And a cute robot from the future was associated rather with Wall-E, and not some kind of film from the late 80s. But the interpretation of references is not important. It is important that from all this Vanillaware managed to do something at the same time complex and complex, but at the same time fascinating and understandable. All this cultural luggage was needed by the author of the script, George, to write a story and captivate the watchman.

And yes, I specifically say the “watchman”, because out of 35-40 hours of passage, most of the various dialogs and plot scenes occupy the majority. Moreover, the same Tower Defense was allocated in a separate regime. And, this is unlikely to surprise you, and then there have been your references. The gameplay with minimalistic graphics is a tribute to the niche Japanese game Gunparade march, Where is the study of the world in 3D and the narrative in the form of a visual novel was combined with very unusual battles. But it is much more amazing that Kamitani took the vivid effects of Kamitani shots from the game Fantavision With PS2, where the player literally explodes the fertures.

Когда Джордж называет 20 источников вдохновения в виде фильмов, книг, сериалов и манга, а игровое вдохновение описывается двумя играми, уже понимаешь, что игра будет опираться на сюжет. But the prerequisites of the plot of the emphasis were felt in advance. No wonder Kamitani wanted to make just a series of toys. And take a closer look at the chronology of Vanillaware games. Grimgrimoire and Odin Sphere, published in 2007, were undoubtedly plot games. In the development of kumatanchi and Grand Knights History George did not take part. But in Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Dragon’s Crown, the strengths are gameplay and visual design. The plot is lost against this background.

Difficulties in development

Kamitani did not write strong stories for a long time, although the first works of Vanillaware show that he can do it. And so he does it. Without the help of a team, this could not work. The fact is that Kamitani acted as a sole screenwriter in Kamitani’s “Guards”, and Koichi Maeno and two new designers helped him with the design: Yukiko Hirai and Emika Kid. Both girls came to the studio while developing Dragon’s Crown. George described the heroes to them, after which the artists showed him a design, which was either coordinated or remade. For example, one of the heroines was originally planned by a girl from a family of Buddhist monks. George’s design arranged, but when he put a similar image in his plot, he understood that something was wrong. In the end, he rewrote the heroine (She became the same girl Sukeban), and designers painted a new image.

By the way, Yukiko Hirai was also a member of one of the interviews and said that Kamitani at some point said that he intended to make a hundred characters, to which George kindly noted that he no longer remembered what he had said there for a long time.

And this is true, Kamitani changed a lot of ideas during the embodiment of history within the framework of the game. The fact is that Atlus decided to make a world release and were ready to finance Vanillaware. George surprised this, because it seemed to him that the plot in his head was a purely Japanese topic that no one would understand abroad. But since the publishing house is ready, then why not?

And the readiness of Atlus to support financially played a very important role. Vanillaware rushed with implementation. There were ideas to make adventure episodes in the open world in the spirit of Shenmue, initially the game was not divided into modes “Battle“,”Adventure” And “Archive“, But tried to make one. And within the framework of the “Adventure” mode there were many questions – from the interface to animations.

It would seem, and here is atlus? The publishing house financed the team of testers, and they were supposed to give feedback to the developer. Not those testers who check the preliminary version for errors, but those who checked the test builds of the game and talked about what they liked in the build and that they would like to change. After that, Vanillaware made changes, developed a new build, it was tested again, and so on until the final state of the game.

For example, the developers came up with an idea with a stage where a player of 30 seconds was waiting in the room of the appearance of another character. Testers gave a negative reaction, and the scene changed. I note that in the end, the game was generally added to the rewind.

The main thing is that the testers did not like the construction of the game where the plot episodes were suddenly interrupted by battles, so that the game was divided into battles, plot and intra -game encyclopedia. For this, I had to shove the game in order to harmoniously write out the planned plot battles from a single plot to a separate regime.

The testers were Japanese, as you know, and this influenced the complexity of the game. RTS genre in Japan is extremely unpopular and is considered difficult, which at one time has changed Grimgrimoire. Vanillaware remembered this, but thought that if it was not quite a strategy, but for the most part Tower Defense, then everything will be different and eventually comes out the perfect balance for players around the world. Spoiler: the ideal balance did not work out and the combat gameplay still skewed towards lightness.

Since the budget went to such tests, it was not possible to draw full -fledged robots in battle. But, as Employees of Vanillaware say after the release, no one in the studio knew how to draw huge robots, and if still had to, then the development could drag out more. Or do not end at all. Fortunately, no one was going to jump above his head.

Another cap of the process of revealing plot ups and downs turned out to be another. The story turned out to be very large -scale and it was divided into 13 characters, whose stories do not always directly continue the general narrative, but only complement the picture. For the convenience of players, an archive was made. More precisely, two archives. Text, where you can read all the collected information about the characters, events, brands and even food from the game world. And video archive of events that happened in the game built in chronological order.

This turned out to be important not only for the players, but also for Vanillaware, because building all the events in chronology made it possible to identify minor mistakes and inconsistencies, which, after the creation of the archive, were fixed.

And of course, the visual component also encountered a number of barriers. 13 Guardians is the first game Vanillaware, using the real world as a setting, not fantasy as a setting. Well, or the second, if we attribute to the real world Loli Medveditsa from Kumatanchi. The bottom line is that now Vanillaware artists painted landscapes of realistic and futuristic Japan. If in Dragon’s Crown and Muramasa it was possible to use a re -forest background so that the player did not feel this repetition, then with a city landscape, and even in the game without active gameplay, repetitions would be caught in the eye.

Work was extremely large -scale. At some point, the artists talked with Kamitani on the topic of cutting the script, and this had to be done. Everything went without significant damage to history: the scale of the movements of the heroes and the number of characters used were cut off.

I had to cut not only animations. The main action of the player in the plot mode is a choice of phrase from a cloud of thoughts. Initially, in this cloud there were 20-30 words that you use on the interlocutor, and sometimes some kind of subject, after which you move on the plot. There is nothing complicated in this, all the phrases themselves open as the game passes, so the testers came to the conclusion that the less the player will have to leaf through unnecessary information, the better the sensations from what is happening.

And in this “cloud” one could hear from the hero of thought on the topic of the chosen keyword or phrase. They did not plan to voice this text, but it looked strange. It seemed to developers that since it was a cloud thoughts, then their character seems to say to himself. As a result, the paid prologue of the game came out without voice acting thoughts, but the actors still managed to read all the lines of the script, and the developers managed to insert all this into the game. Kamitani described the moment after the Tokyo Game Show 2018 exhibition, when ATLUS representatives literally yelled at him due to the fact that he rewrites something in the script and puts off the game. He does not describe details, but perhaps this is due to the problems with the voice acting of thoughts, because Kamitani added this part of the script at the very end of the development.

But besides this, ATLUS had a reason for indignation. Just in 2018, less than a year before the game, I had to officially say that it was decided to cancel the version for PS vita. At the same time, it was announced that the game was postponed for an indefinite period. Vanillaware fans could be afraid of such a statement, but George in an interview after the release explains that this is really due to the fact that he was preparing the details of the script, although he believes that the game was still released. Initially, the release took place only in Japan – November 28, 2019. Due to the pandemic of the world release with English voice acting, he lingered until September 22, 2020.

So what is this game?

I have already used the atypical Vanillaware title for Grand Knights History. But “13 Guardians” would come better. We have a very personal project: the portal to the youth of George Kamitani, implemented in the form of a huge multilayer plot. The gameplay in the English press is called Adventure, although in my opinion, there are 80% of the visual novel and a maximum of 20% of Advencura. That is, you can walk a character in locations and choose a line in a mental cloud. Basically, we sail along the fascinating flow of the plot: we listen to the beautiful voices of the actors and admire the 2D-art. This time very soft, one might say, lamp, especially in contrast to Dragon’s Crown.

Therefore, gameplayo does not have to strain. The game tells with the help of a minimalistic interface that an important phrase is now available for further advancement in the plot, or that you need to plunge into thoughts and squeeze a reflection button there. Everything could be realized in the form of a classic visually short story, as it was, for example, in the series Sakura Wars. But the short story puts you face to face with the characters, and “13 Guardians” show you the whole world, on which a long 6 years have been working in the little Vanillaware.

The main process is in the head of the player. In parts, it is necessary to collect what is happening in a single picture, because you have to portionly play for 13 different heroes and study their life. The plot for a particular character at some point is interrupted and you need to fulfill the condition in order to go further. The condition, most often, is passing for another hero or progress in battle mode. This, of course, is not the choice of a book in Princess Crown or Odin Sphere, but still a familiar scheme.

In general, the sensations of advancement in the plot in the “Guards” are unique. Not in terms of game implementation, but in the sense that you are making some conclusion about what will happen next, you go with this thought to the script for another hero, and after you return and understand that you could not even think about the fact that everything would turn out so. What is the prologue of the game, after which it may seem that we have some next story about schoolchildren inside the robots “A la Evangelion”. But the prologue is specially created in such a way as to strengthen the surprise from the main batch.

True, to the very end, this mood will not work and closer to the final for the player will not have questions, and he will simply expect a denouement.

I have not decided to tell you about Japanese postmodernism. Rethinking Kamitani of his life in the 80s with grinding a huge number of manga, films, books and all that George lived is just an example of Japanese postmodernism. Kamitani did nothing revolutionary, but rethinking turned out to be competent. “13 Guardians” – this is not a potassium from the world of video games. Direct references to the “war of the worlds” and a little less straight to the “terminator” (He in the world of the game is called “ex-terminator”) work on the atmosphere and bring what is happening to the player.

I will not retell the plot, because it will take it too much time, and on YouTube there is a Russian -speaking retelling of the “guards” for three hours, or even playfuls with Russian subtitles for 30 hours. “Guardians” is the case when the game is held on YouTube without special losses, because, firstly, the game is linear (Whatever the essay of the characters for passing you chose), and secondly, Tower Defense gameplay, issued in the Destruption section, will not give you any unique emotions. This is a casual regime where you need to try very hard in order not only to lose, but in order to at least lose one of the six fighters during the mission.

Yes, there are four generations of “furs”, with different abilities and even a type of movement (fourth -generation fur fly). Both the skills of furs and the skills of pilots are pumped. The pilots remaining in the “spare” attack from the very place that we protect. There is an ultimatum ability … but there is no depth or even balance in this. The main thing is to attack terrestrial kaizu with terrestrial attacks, and air – air, and all. It is amazing how much the interface has been worked out in detail, with windows for showing attacks of attacks and detailed robots, but gameplay does not help – only pleases the eye, which simultaneously twitches from the effect of the rowan.

Everything here keeps on the story, which is for games from Vanillaware, and especially from George Kamitani, in a new product. And you already know the explanation of this – George did not initially plan the game, so the “guards” were overgrown with gameplay gradually, which is why it turned out as it is. You can open the vast majority of reviews (Both players and bloggers) And read and hear the same thing: a gorgeous story, a cool world, but some strange near-strategic intersperses of gameplay. But Tower Defense does not interfere: there are several missions that are limited to two minutes. Compared to the chronometure of the plot, it’s just a drop in the sea.

The success of the game

“13 Guardians” – the highest -valued Vanillaware game at the moment. The lowest assessment of the press on methacritic is 7/10, while 10/10 were set more often, and most put 8 and 9 points. Whether it helped sales? In fact, yes.

The first sales figures were frightening – in Japan the game debuted in fifth place in sales, and they grew up only after approving reviews. Somehow it was possible to pass for 100 thousand copies in two months, and there the world release was approaching. But before him, the Japanese edition of Famitsu awarded the “Guardians” for the “Best Scenario” and for the “Best Adventure Game”, and even the “Game of the Year” was nominated for the “Game of the Year”, but there the Japanese won Pokemon Sword & Shield, bypassing Death Stranding and Sekiro .

But among world awards – only nominations. “Best narration” on The Game Awards, “The Best Adventure” from IGN, “The Best Affitus achievements” on Dice Awards – everything is by, but for Vanillaware, even nominations are significant. “Guardians” still remained in the shade, but sales exceeded a million, which surpassed Atlus’s expectations. They again agreed to publish the next game Vanillaware, but Kamitani again steps aside.

In fact, the concept of the next game arose back in 2014. Takafumi noma, The former programmer from Nintendo came to the studio during the development of Muramasa, and by 2014 he achieved that Kamitani asked him to make the next game in fantasy setting. Takafumi helped with the remake of Odin Sphere, and with Dragon’s Crown, and even for the development of the “guards” he had to disturb him. And George in the new project is not even a producer.

A very powerful role fell on Takafumi shoulders. The new Vanillaware project is positioned as “rebirth of fantasy tactical role -playing games”, despite the fact that the studio veterans are not again involved in the development. Of course, it is interesting that Vanillaware will come out of the new game and Unicorn Overlord will definitely talk separately. But as a fan of the work of George Kamitani, the question is even more interested in whether there will be games from him?

I do not want to belittle Kumatanchi or Grand Knights History, but still for me these games are inferior to where George participated in the development. I want to believe that he still has something to say and he will make another game. It may seem that Kamitani has already done everything: Dragon’s Crown was the realization of a long -standing dream of the Princess Crown sequel, in “13 Guards” he told his largest story, and even through the prism of his own youth … But even before the release of Dragon’s Crown, George promised to develop games even in old age and talked about his old age and talked aboutthe fact that he has a dozen projects left in his head.

I am sure the announcement of the new game will be exactly after the release of Unicorn Overlord. I will wait impatiently, but today I have everything. Thank you for your attention!