Tokyo Game Show 2020 kicked off last night (for Australians), with a couple of shows from Microsoft, Square Enix, and Lightning Games. There are a few full-day schedules of streams ahead now, so rather than trying to cover these announcements or interesting tidbits separately, I’m going to do a morning wrap each day. There’s not much to this one (on account of there being all of two major streams), but look forward to plenty more from the events of today and the weekend.
To start with, Microsoft didn’t actually do much. Other than Phil Spencer making the world’s worst effort at saying a couple of Japanese pleasantries (seriously, the arrogance of a seven-figure salaried guy just not bothering with even that tiny bit of a foreign language), the Microsoft show was really just highlighting that Microsoft will launch in Japan and it will have games that come out of Asia on it. There was nothing there that we didn’t already know was happening, but it was a good reminder that Scarlet Nexus looks good and Puyo Puyo Tetris will forever be a wildly good time.
The good bits of news from last night all came from Square Enix and the NieR stream. Here we got the news that NieR Replicant Ver.1.22474487139 (the remake of NieR) would be getting a release April 22 in Japan, April 23 for the rest of the world. They played a little bit of it, too. It looks amazing. There’s a special edition as well, which has all kinds of goodies and looks like one of the few special editions I’ll be investing in.
Then there was a spectacular ultra-high quality NieR Automata statue unveiled. This thing is massive and will cost well over $1,000 Australian (price not confirmed at this point, but it absolutely will), and… I really want that statue. Square Enix also announced a special Blu-Ray recording of a NieR music symphony which is brilliant because the music is one of the best bits about the NieR series.
Finally, the big bit of news is a mobile NieR game is in development. It is called NieR Re[in]carnation, and while it will be a free-to-play game supported by gacha microtransactions, it also looks really gorgeous and has a turn-based combat system, which is enough to get me very, very interested. Turn-based NieR? Do dreams come true or what? That game will come west, but for now, the energy’s going into the domestic release, with pre-registrations now open for a late-year release in Japan.
The final stream last night was by Lightning Games, a new publisher out of China that had three games to show off. Of those three, the one you really want to pay attention to is ANNO: Mutationem. It’s a cyberpunk action/RPG thing with lots of neon and a really cool-looking protagonist and concept. It’s being developed by a new Beijing-based studio that has pulled in talent from Japan, Italy, and elsewhere around the world, and very much looks like one of the developers from the exploding Chinese scene to watch.
That’s it for the first wrap – like I mentioned, there were only a couple of evening streams. The even proper starts today with wall-to-wall stuff. I can’t wait.
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