Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Gust Announces Atelier Rorona

Well, "teases" is maybe a better word than "announces."

With Atelier Annie coming to DS tomorrow in Japan, I guess Gust felt like it was time to show what the company is doing next. That "what" being Rorona no Atelier: Arland no Renkinjutsushi (Atelier Rorona: Alchemist of Arland) for PlayStation 3.

The scan in question (viewable below) shows off some character artwork (I would imagine that the girl with the funny hat on the second page of the first scan is the Rorona in question) along with the phrase "I'm tired of saving the world."

It might also be worth mentioning that the first page says "blu ray" under PS3, meaning this isn't being made as a downloadable title for PSN.

The pages further hint to check out the next DPS (Dengeki PlayStation) for further information.



Beyond that, we really have no information. Will the game retain the 2D graphics Gust is known for, or will it finally take the plunge into 3D? Will the game revert back to the older Atelier games which are more focused on item creation than story?

Personally, I'm a little surprised to see Gust go with PlayStation 3. Though the Atelier games started on the original PlayStation, their seeming hesitance to move away from 2D makes the Wii seem like a choice better suited to their tastes, especially since they have already made 2 DS Atelier titles.

(And frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about Gust pulling something like NIS did with Disgaea 3 - i.e. putting a PS2 game on PS3 just to say that they are "with the times.")

What do you think?

3 comments:

Billy said...

I have a hunch that this will be another Disgaea 3-- a PS3 title that looks like it could be comfortably ported to the PSX. It's bad enough that Gust and NIS' PS2 titles don't look appreciably better than Final Fantasy Tactics or Xenogears. I don't know why they don't just stick to portables if they're not even going to try to take advantage of a console's power.

Brandon said...

^
exactly.

i really have no problem with 2D games. in fact, i think a well-done 2D game can sometimes look nicer than a lot of 3D ones (see Odin Sphere, Aquaria, Oboro Muramasa, or the new A Boy and His Blob for some good examples), but stuff like Disgaea 3 is just laziness in my opinion.

exactly as you said, if they really don't want to work with the hardware, they should stick to portables or downloadable titles for PSN, XBLA, or WiiWare.

it doesn't help that Ar Tonelico II, though toting a cool story, has terrible technical problems even though the game could easily run on the original PSX.

but, hey, maybe they'll surprise us with Tales of Vesperia or Valkyria Chronicles style 3D. (not likely, but I can dream, right?)

Billy said...

Or even something like King of Fighters XII or BlazBlue where it's still completely 2D, but the sprites actually take advantage of the increased resolution and storage capacity. I would love to see an RPG like that.