TGS: Sega Showing Valkyria Chronicles 2

It may still be four weeks until GDC/Games Com in Cologne and another five weeks after that until the Tokyo Game Show, which is on from the 24th to the 27th September, but already small snippets about what we can expect to hear about at TGS are becoming known.

Just last week we told you that Sony Computer Entertainment’s CEO, Kazuo Hirai, would be delivering a keynote at the TGS Forum.  Now Sega have already started talking up their TGS line-up by revealing on the Valkyria Chronicles blog that Valkyria Chronicles 2 will be on show there.

Not particularly surprising given the game’s scheduled winter release but we are always eager for any Valkyria Chronicles news here at the Towers and the blog also a little more info about the game.    We already knew that the game is set two years after the events in Valkyria Chronicles, in 1937, and that the central character is one Aban Hadens who following the death of his brother has joined the Ranseal Royal Military Academy.

Also that the BLiTZ combat system makes a return, that we can expect more vehicle and troop customization options and interestingly that the game will support ad-hoc play, though we do not know whether that will be competitive, co-operative or both.

The new post on the blog talks some more about the game’s BLiTZ system, with the game’s chief producer Shuntaro Tanaka saying how important it was to retain the system for the PSP version, “as long as it’s Valkyria, we have to properly replicate it”.

As well as making changes to fit the system to the PSP’s different control layout they have added new features.  One of those new features is that some of the maps you fight on may be divided into a number of areas, with the PSP’s L and R buttons switching between them when you are in the game’s Command Mode.

The different areas of the map all co-exist and are connected at “base points” so you can think of these separate areas as combining to form one larger map.  The base points connecting the different areas are where some of the hardest fighting will take place, even surpassing the original in intensity.

It is interesting that with the PSP’s new higher profile, something that’s taken Sony four years, that it is attracting “true sequels” to PS3 titles in the shape of Valkyria Chronicles 2 and MGS: Peace Walker rather than the side stories and addenda it normally plays host to like the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines.

Sega say that they are taking VC2 to the PSP in an attempt to introduce the game to a greater variety of users, possibly as a result of the original’s undeservedly low sales.  Hopefully the move will be successful and this will not be the last VC game we see.

Source: andriasang