Monday, February 13, 2012

Drakerider Trademark Filed by Squeenix


So, Siliconera has informed me (and everyone else that visits them, of course) that Squeenix has put in a trademark for two things:  Drakerider and Blood of Chaos which might be for the same thing or for two different things, it's not really certain.  Now, more or less, you see stuff like that, and have no idea what to expect since it's obviously not the same name of an existing IP or anything, but Squeenix -has- published two games that deal with riding dragons before (as is inferred by the title of Drakerider, literally rider of drakes aka dragons) and as you know by now, I am all over that shit.  The above pictured Drakengard is something I've gone on and on about for several posts, so obviously I am very very excited for what this might bring.  Yet, at the same time, I am also very very worried at the prospect of it all since if it were the fabled continuation of the Drakengard series in some fashion, who knows what the quality is going to be like?

Drakengard the first was a terribly flawed game as far as actual gameplay goes, but the story was absolutely fantastic for as far as it was willing to go, which was likely a lot farther than most people wanted to go while playing it.  Drakengard 2 was absolutely terrible because it was a by-the-numbers anime-RPG-bullshit-wannabe that had one single good thing going for it that they proceeded to piss away over the course of the actual game itself.  Then you have Nier which is included in the franchise despite a notable lack of dragons and the riding thereof which was absolutely fantastic.  It's sporadic, is the point I'm trying to make and while I'm not trying to point fingers here, Drakengard and Nier both had the same Director in Yoko Taro where Drakengard 2's director was Akira Yasui whose involvement in Drakengard prior to being the director of the sequel was being the Chief Designer of Drakengard.  Quite a big jump he got to make and I'm kind of prepared to say that maybe he wasn't quite ready for it.  Just possibly.

I do think Yoko Taro is still with Squeenix, even after the whole of the nonsense that happened with Cavia in being absorbed by this developer who became this one where some of the team scattered or somesuch, but I also believe he's fairly busy with a Dragon Quest related project.  So whether they'd be willing to pull him off that and give him the reigns to yet another installment of insanity is in question, and even if they do, it's hard telling if that will indicate success right off.  Yet in the perfect scenario I've got going in my mind here is that this is what's going to happen, and a PS3 and/or Vita project will come of it and it will be awesome and Caim will be in it and kill a ton of dudes and and and....

Of course, perfect scenarios pretty much never happen, so I'm forced to look at the other theory in play here.  Blood of Bahamut is apparently a thing, which I have never heard of, and it's an Action RPG that was also published by Squeenix for the DS in 2009.  I probably didn't know of it because it never made its way over here in the states, despite Ignition Software offering to localize it for Squeenix because Squeenix is just dumb, I guess.  Were it a Wii game, I could understand, but the DS doesn't have the sort of exaggerated split between First and Third party purchases that I know of, so it's not like the game didn't have a chance of doing well, but I guess they didn't think it did.  Regardless, Blood of Bahamut, understandably, had dragons in it as well, so assuming that both Drakerider and Blood of Chaos are Trademarked for a sequel to Blood of Bahamut is not only possible, it's likely the -more- possible option here.  I'd imagine this project would be for the 3DS rather than the DS, obviously, and a lot of emphasis would be put on the giant monsters popping out in Threeeee Deeeeee and such, and a localization could apparently be questionable.

Still, there's a chance that the two terms could be for separate things and even if they're not I guess that wouldn't be such a bad thing.  I'd prefer no more Drakengard series games over another terrible one any day, and the worry of whether another game would come out terrible would likely drive me mad, but with that way lies the possibility of yet another fantastic game.  Which is the other part that would drive me batty; sitting by through the entire development, fervently scanning for any such update on its progress or indication of quality and micro-analyzing it all....Yeah.  We'll just have to see what turns up out of all this.  It could be one game, could be two, and said games could be terrible, amazing, and/or not even released over here, so it's a bit silly trying to work up a whole lot of excitement or speculation either way.

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