Edit: They have confirmed it is in fact not happening.
Yesterday was Capcom’s TGS show, and it was basically just a quick overview of their recently-released games (including the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection) followed by a ton of Monster Hunter Wilds information.
But near the end of the presentation, after talking about their current sales, they moved on to “an announcement from the Ace Attorney series,” and I had a moment of shock realizing we might actually be getting a new game announced at TGS after all. Instead, they announced a “product introduction trailer” for September 29.
Now, the way it’s described, it sounds like it could just be an overview of the series to let everyone know what games are available and how to play them.
But if that’s all it is, this is a very strange way to do it.
Why would you announce and schedule a simple overview video instead of showing it at the end of the TGS show? It’s also been announced that it will go live on September 28 at 11 PM PT / September 29 at 2 AM ET. That means this video is premiering at the same time in all regions. For regular videos, they have no problem uploading a Japanese video first and then an English trailer hours later.
Moreover, don’t forget how Dragon’s Dogma 2 was announced. Fans’ hopes were crushed when Capcom’s 2022 showcase brought up Dragon’s Dogma only to announce a “10 Years of Dragon’s Dogma” video instead of a sequel, but then the video a few days later ended with Dragon’s Dogma 2 being announced.
It feels like this means something.
Now, I remember the “unmissable” TGS showcase. I remember the Ace Attorney social media accounts changing their profile pictures. I remember the out-of-context Earth screenshot. Yes, I remember all the times we’ve gotten our hopes up for no reason, but that’s not going to stop me from doing it again.
What will be announced this Sunday? Will it be the long-awaited Ace Attorney 7? The Great Ace Attorney Investigations to explain the mysterious misplaced Van Zieks captions? A new anime? Or will there be no announcement at all and it’s simply a scheduled series overview trailer?
I know what I’m hoping for, but what do you think?
Yesterday was the Level-5 Vision 2024 showcase, and it was a mix of highs and lows.
They started with Fantasy Life i. We already knew it had been delayed from its October 10 release date, and it sounds like that was done to make it even bigger (and hopefully better). I have mixed feelings about that, but fortunately the game looks great!
I do find it amusing that they’re marketing it as having “the largest open world in the history of Fantasy Life,” considering that as far as most people are concerned, this is only the second game. It’s technically the third, because of the mobile game, but still.
Anyway, Fantasy Life i has been delayed all the way to April 2025. Well, at least that gives me time to catch up (hah) on my backlog.
The next game they showed was Professor Layton and the New World of Steam.
As a huge Professor Layton fan, this is the one I’m the most excited about, and I loved what I saw. The town being menaced by a ghostly gunslinger named Gunman King Joe is the sort of insanity I look for in my Professor Layton plots. On top of that, the gameplay looks like exactly what I’d expect from the series – with even a glimpse of the map used for traversal – now in a 3D world.
Some of the characters looked a little off to me, especially Luke, but overall I’m really excited for New World of Steam.
It still only has a general 2025 release window, but at least it hasn’t been delayed yet.
The next trailer was for Decapolice, showing off the theme song and several of the characters (why are these characters named things like Harvard and Cambridge?), and it all looks pretty neat. I started to think that maybe Decapolice wasn’t delayed even farther out after all.
But it is. Decapolice is now set for 2026.
They didn’t give specific reasons for the delay, only that they’re evolving it into a better experience, which has that same “bigger and better” impression I got from Fantasy Life i.
After that, they finally showcased Megaton Musashi W: Wired, to announce a new mode and other additional content being added in November.
Next up was the long-delayed Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. The new trailer introduced a ton of stuff, such as a new mode with a customizable character and town-building, and ended by saying it “will evolve into a game that can be played infinitely.” It’s now set for June 2025.
This speaks to the same thing that has me worried about Fantasy Life i and Decapolice. It’s good that they want their games to have a lot of content, but it feels like they’re pushing that so hard that they can’t actually finish them.
After that, they revealed a remake of the first Inazuma Eleven, set for 2026. That was the first of their two new games.
The second was, as expected, the Yokai Watch spiritual successor that was teased last year. Now, this is the game behind the “Ghost Craft RPG” trademark, but apparently that is actually what they’re calling the genre. The game itself is called Holy Horror Mansion, which I’m not crazy about as a title.
You use a camera to interact with ghosts, and while there is definitely some Yokai Watch DNA here, it looks very different. Its release date is “Who knows?” so at least they’re self-aware when it comes to the delays.
The announcement of Holy Horror Mansion made a lot of Yokai Watch fans lose their minds. With the game being teased as the next concept for Yokai Watch, a lot of people expected it to look and play like a new Yokai Watch. I don’t share those complaints. While I’d love to see more Yokai Watch, Holy Horror Mansion looks like it could be a fun game in its own right.
Unfortunately, my impressions were tarnished by the concerns that the backgrounds used in the teaser trailer were made with generative AI. I don’t support the use of generative AI in creative works, so that was disheartening to see. Now, I can’t actually tell if art is AI or not unless there’s something blatantly wrong with it. Maybe it’s just concept art with some oddities. But you can take a look at the evidence and see what you think.
The more concerning part is that this controversy led to people bringing up a report from Level-5 last year about how they were using AI in their work, which includes using ChatGPT to come up with concepts/details for side quests in Decapolice. Now that’s disheartening. Experiencing stories thought up by AI just isn’t what I want to do. At all. Even aside from all the other AI concerns, that makes it feel like those side quests are just filler, nothing that really matters to the world, since their concepts could just be generated.
So yes. I love Level-5’s games, and I think their upcoming games look great, but between the constant delays, the apparent scope creep, and now the AI concerns, I ended up with mixed feelings about the whole thing. Maybe the long delay to 2026 is enough time for them to change their minds about using AI?
How do you feel about the games shown in yesterday’s Level-5 showcase?
When we discussed the newly-released Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii on Friday, I had mixed feelings about the game’s premise.
One of my criticisms was that everything has the trappings of classic historical pirates even though the game is set in the present day, which contributes to the sense of it being too silly compared to the rest of the series.
But now I’ve seen a few fans toss around a theory that could explain everything – and it makes a lot of sense.
The start of the trailer implies that this is a frame story in which Majima is telling someone else about what happened to him. In that case, we need to take into account the possibility that Majima is an unreliable narrator. And if he is, these anachronisms and sillier aspects could be considered his embellishments to the actual events.
(It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done something like this. Notably, the enemy transformations in Yakuza: Like a Dragon are just Ichiban’s imagination because he’s a big JRPG fan.)
So I’m calling it now – the first time we see that pirate ship, it’s going to cut back to the frame story to have someone object that pirates don’t use galleons anymore, and Majima will tell them to shut up because it’s his story and he’s going to tell it the way he wants.
If that’s actually what’s happening here, I’m much less critical of it. Realistic modern-day pirates, while more suitable for a serious story, probably wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas. Choosing the fun option for the player to experience while having it actually be an embellished version of the “real” events would actually be a great way to do it.
Meanwhile, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was confirmed to be much longer than Gaiden, with the main story stated to be around 1.3 to 1.5 times longer. That would explain the higher price point ($60 compared to Gaiden’s $50), especially if it has a sizable amount of side content.
All in all, I’m feeling more positive toward the idea of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii than I was on Friday, especially since there are ways it could all make sense. Of course, this theory could be wrong and they just actually have pirates in galleons firing cannons at each other and fighting with cutlasses in 2024. What do you think about the unreliable narrator theory?
Is it finally happening?
