A western version of Odin Sphere and Dragon’s Crown developer Vanillaware’s adventure/real-time-strategy epic,
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is coming to
PS4 on September 8.Fans
of director George Kamitani had been eagerly anticipating a Western
release, which was finally announced by publisher Atlus today as part of
today's IGN Expo event. When the game released in Japan in November
2019, it was met with critical acclaim, including a
9.5 review from IGN Japan. You can check out a new trailer later in the story.
For
those who haven't kept up with 13 Sentinels, we spoke with Atlus ahead
of the announcement: “The game’s main setting is Japan, 1985. Giant,
mysterious colossi called kaiju suddenly appear, wreaking havoc across
the country,” Vanillaware producer Akiyasu Yamamoto explains. “Thirteen
high-school students, the main protagonists of our story, must defend
their city from these destroyers by piloting giant mechs called
Sentinels. The game is a sci-fi adventure (with elements of tower
defense games and other strategy subgenres) where players investigate,
talk, and fight to solve the deeper mysteries lurking beneath the
individual stories."
Vanillaware is a developer best known for
its stunning 2D art, which is as gorgeous as ever in 13 Sentinels: Aegis
Rim. However, a more story-focused adventure game set in Japan is a
refreshing concept for the studio, and Yamamoto calls it a new challenge
in the long-running collaboration between Atlus and Vanillaware. It
wasn’t a challenge taken lightly either, since it took the studio no
less than six years to complete development. Yamamoto recalls the
project dates back to a New Year card Vanillaware sent out to industry
friends in January 2013, which revealed the first concept art well
before the game was officially announced two years later. More than
seven years after that original tease, Western fans will finally get
their hands on Kamitani’s latest creation.
While having a uniquely Japanese setting, Yamamoto mentions that
Vanillaware was heavily inspired by Western drama series, splitting its
storytelling among its 13 lead characters. “Each episode of the
characters’ story mode can be played in about 10-15 minute segments.
Countless new mysteries emerge within each episode, and new information
is constantly discovered and updated in the battle and glossary modes,
so you continue to live your everyday life with a sustained feeling of
always getting that little bit closer to the truth.”
While
high-school life is definitely the game’s main focus, the style that
story's told in radically changes depending on the episode. This is
where the 13 main characters come in – while they all go to the same
school, their different backgrounds and characteristics allow for
different types of storytelling.
“For instance, Yuki Takamiya’s
story plays out like a Sherlock-Holmes style detective mystery, where
you and your assistant are following the trail of a student gone
missing,” says Yamamoto. “However, when you switch to Ei Sekigahara, the
story takes on the feel of a sci-fi thriller, with life-threatening
stakes and intense suspense. Meanwhile, Iori Fuyusaka’s story feels like
playing as the heroine of a classic 1980s shoujo manga, with a focus on
romance and self-discovery. This variation in storytelling styles is an
aspect of the game I really hope our Western players can enjoy.”
The
Western version of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim will be fully voiced in
English, with the option to switch back to the original Japanese audio.
Subtitles include English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.
While
games with a Japanese setting are sometimes adjusted to appeal to a
Western audience, the localized version of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
remains unapologetically Japanese. If you enjoyed Japanese high-school
life in the Persona series as much as we did, that can only be a good
thing.The biggest
difference in setting between the Persona series is the era, as 13
Sentinels: Aegis Rim mostly takes place in the 1980s. While nostalgia
towards the ’80s is very much present in the West as well, and video
games like Crossing Souls have depicted the unique retro atmosphere of
those times, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim takes you back to Japan’s slightly
different version of that time period. For players in the West, this
should result in a setting that is partly recognizable, partly
refreshing.
“While we did aim to evoke a certain nostalgia that
would hopefully resonate with people who actually lived during that
time, we’ve also seen that even Japanese players who never experienced
this period could still get a sense of what it was like to live in that
era, and immerse themselves in that world as a form of empathic
fantasy,” says Yamamoto. “For Western players, the perspective will
probably be even more foreign, so I’d love for them to experience the
game both as an exploration of a different culture, and as a trip into a
wholly new and fantastical world altogether.”
That being said,
there are plenty of references towards Western movies and culture as
well, and recognizing all sorts of different homages is part of 13
Sentinels: Aegis Rim’s appeal.
Uncommonly for a Japanese game,
battles play out as real-time strategy. Kamitani is a huge Starcraft
fan, and wanted to create a simplified tower-defense game that could be
enjoyed casually along with story-focused adventure parts. The concept
for 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim’s battle system was to refine and improve on
GrimGrimoire, the 2007 real-time-strategy game Vanillaware co-developed
with Nippon Ichi Software.
