Datura Official Trailer Released

Forgive me for the lack of Youtube link, but I can only find the official version on Vimeo at the moment and rather than wait for a Youtube version, I'll roll with it and probably strike this out.  Anyways...

So, Datura, 'that floating hand game' has an official trailer (what is this, friggin' trailer week?) now that is quite different from all the teasers we've seen so far and I'm....not quite sure what to think about it.  I'm just going to preface the whole post with that fact because I mean, the entirety of the reason I -liked- Datura from the start was because it seemed so different.  But now that we kind of have a clearer picture, I'm getting a little concerned at just how different the game appears to be, though from the group who made Linger in Shadows being involved probably should have tipped me off a little and a little earlier than now.  The trailer is more or less all over the place both literally and figuratively as one moment we see our floating hand protagonist in the back of an ambulance, and the next they're handcuffed in what I can assume is the back of a police van.  From there, the trailer goes on to take us to to the forest we've seen time and time before, the arctic, a hospital and a battlefield straight out of one of the world wars, perhaps.

Of course, that is apparently the whole point of the game, or at least that's what the GDC Footage taken a little while back would suggest.  In the video, it's explained that the Forest is sort of a 'hub' world from which the player will go to the different 'stages' after finding items of import.  After ripping the face off of a statue, the player finds a pickaxe that, when grabbed, transports them to the arctic area wherein the player has to choose between digging out a literal trophy (that I imagine grants a trophy in the final game) or a human being trapped under the ice.  It seems pretty black and white, and I don't know if the game is going to be static or if things will change based on your decisions, but in the video, choosing the person leads to the ice breaking and the player being submerged in the icy waters.  So it's quite possible that Black and White are not quite what they seem, which I would certainly hope is the case, as well as it being touched up with randomness or, again, developmental impact from choices.

Still, as the game gets nearer and nearer, I start to wonder if it's going to be a game that you can play with both hands, or if the (seemingly cumbersome) single Move Wand control scheme (barring using a dualshock) will be the only way to go.  With it saying you can 'explore', that's precisely what I want to do; I want to be able to use a Nav Controller to walk around like normal instead of looking in a direction and pressing Triangle to advance or whatever wonky sort of movement scheme shown off there.  Beyond that, the game doesn't look quite as tight as I would hope for, having a second or so lag between movement of the Wand and movement on the screen.  I suppose I just feel like I can feel all my excitement draining away for the game because it's not seeming like it's going to be what I expected or, perhaps, what I hoped.  Instead, it might simply be a really artsy game that uses the Move Wand to try and justify the peripheral.

I guess we'll find out soon enough, though, as the game is rumored to release on May 9th in the UK.  Of course this doesn't mean a lot, as SCEE and SCEA aren't quite the best at coordinating things between each other so SCEE stores sometimes see games come out weeks or even months after the SCEA folks have played it, beaten it and moved on.  Similarly, SCEE has had a couple games (not many, just a couple) come out without so much as a word for an SCEA release.  So while the ideal scenario would be that it comes out on May 9th in PAL regions, with May 8th or the following Tuesday being NA's release date (with a demo), I can't say that's going to be the case for sure, nor should Joystiq.  But, eh, they kind of do that a lot and oh well.  We'll just see what happens because there's not that much time between then and now, and I expect to see details relatively soon!

Datura Officially Announced, Exactly What You Remember

Remember all the way back in September when a game, affectionately known as the "Floating Hand Game", was first teased with a video and then two others?  No?  Because it was about six months ago?  Well, no worries, because I have ever-so-conveniently linked both the posts I made about the game so you can catch up on it again.  If you saw them or anything about this at all in the first place, of course.  If not, everything's cool because I'm going to reiterate with a little quick refresher about the game so we're all up to speed on it.  Mostly because I completely forgot about the game myself until I saw the Playstation Blog post while I was not-so-patiently waiting for the Store Update post.  Which took forever to go up, but it's up and I'm downloading my free MotorStorm RC, so all is well.

Datura was first shown off in a fairly artsy trailer that showed a disembodied hand stroking things in a forest while being controlled by a Playstation Move wand.  No really, that's pretty much the first taste of the game that anyone ever got, and only after did it start to make a little more sense.  The whole basis of the game is confusion, really, as it might in fact start you off in a forest that you have no idea how you got into, and then, in classic adventure game style, have you look around, solving puzzles so you can try and figure out just what's going on.  Touch and such things play a key element here and by running your imaginary hand along things you'll find clues and key items (perhaps even keys) that you'll use to further yourself along.  At least, I think that's the idea.

It's definitely something interesting as a concept, and as I've mentioned before, if the game has areas that you can actually move around in (with the use of the Navigation Wand/Dualshock 3) and explore, it'll catch my attention all the more.  We're really beginning to lack games that encourage and/or reward exploration like that, and it's really a shame since something that simple can be infinitely rewarding if you use it right.  Of course, there's a case to be made with the previous generations (specifically 16-bit to early CD Sprites) that they took that theory a little too literally and loosely, rendering you unable to do anything without pixel hunting or going to somewhere to arbitrarily set off an event flag.  Still, we're in the future now; I have faith that we can get back into it and do it right.  Regardless, they're likely going to make a comeback in some fashion thanks to the whole DoubleFine Kickstarter bringing them back into the limelight.

Something I do wonder about, however, is just what all to the game there's going to be aside from moving around, stroking things and being confused.  The two almost the exact same teasers show you driving, but I'm not sure if that's going to be a recurring thing or more just a "This is how you got here" type of thing as it seems, whether you hit the pig or not, you spin-out anyways.  I hope that matters in another way down the road since, while the possibility of things being different is cool, it's much cooler if it actually means something, which is something that Alpha Protocol taught us all in spades.  I think it's going to be hard to play other choice-based games in the future because I'll be micro-analyzing just how much impact they really had, and I'm not sure anyone else is going to take it to the level they tried, at least not for a little while.  Which is really a shame because it really really works.

So really, the only thing we've learned about Datura that we haven't known for a while is that it is actually called Datura and will release sometime this year.  It's going to be a PSN game, not a retail one, and will make extensive use of the Move wand.  With any luck, it'll almost require the Nav Wand or a Dualshock 3 for exploration rather than just being on-rails or gesture-based or something.  But seeing as 'mystery' is something of the core of the game itself, I doubt we'll find out a whole lot more until the game gets closer to release.  Honestly, that's fine by me since there is just entirely too much game around and about and until we hit a dry spot and I have time to catch up, I'm not sure I want to hear about any more -new- games.  ...aside from the ones being announced at the Vita Game Heaven event.  Mostly because now I'm really hoping for a new Phantasy Star game.

More on This Floating Hand Game

I posted about this strange, new game for Playstation Move earlier this month, mentioning that it was a rather neat looking title from Plastic and Sony Santa Monica and that I am utterly and completely fascinated with it, on that one video alone.  Sure, I sort of made it out to be something it likely won't be, but this is something that's so new, so different that it sends my mind into overdrive just trying to process what I'm seeing, let alone what could come from it.  I bring it up now, of course, because there's new news about it, directly from Eurogamer who has a brand new teaser video for it.

Well....two videos.  Kind of.  It's a little hard to explain, so you'll just have to see the videos for yourself here and here.  I assure you, despite what you might think, it is imperative that you watch both if you watch one; it's apparently a very vital clue to the overall idea or theme of the game.  I'll let you do that before continuing...

...

Alright, watched them?  Good.  So you see the slight difference there with the whole pig thing.  Well, the whole mystery of just what to call this game might've already been cracked.  The folks over at iWaggle3D think there's a very strong possibility the game might be called "Datura" and their reasoning is, well....fairly sound, I have to admit.  First off, we have the cryptic clue from Plastic about the two videos, "Comparing them will give you all the answers about our upcoming title," which can be taken two ways:  First the obvious one in that the part with the pig shows deviations that might just be important.  Secondly, and this is the more difficult one, you have to take a look once again at those two videos.  The first one was published by "aautdr", while the second was published by "trdaua" which, well, are basically gibberish words that you could sit down and try and make something out of for hours.

I'll make it easy for you:  iWaggle3D surmises the word of import here is "Datura", specifically Datura Stramonium which is a flower that creates a rather familiar outline.

Yeah?  Yeah?  I'm pretty convinced.  The fact that Datura plants have hallucinogenic properties is yet another fact that lends itself to the game.  Whatever it's going to be called, I cannot wait for more information on it.

Update!:  After checking my post that I linked to here, that embedded the first video of this game, I noticed the title has been changed to "Datura - First Teaser".  I guess this theory is spreading rather quickly.