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Square Enix wraps up Concerto Gate's US closed beta
Concerto Gate is being developed by Ponsibic and Square Enix. The Concerto Gate trailer debuted last month which showed no in-game footage and was somewhat unusual. The game will be a sequel and is a successor to Crossgate, which has had a run of seven years in various regions in East Asia but unfortunately shutdown in Japan late 2007. The embedded video above displays actual combat gameplay from the beta. The battle system is similar to other JRPG attack time battle systems that feature random battles. An even more interesting concept in Concerto Gate is the 'terra-generating' system. Depending on certain player actions the world landscape will morph and deform. This includes the ramifications from activities like mining and deforestation. If the world is non-instanced and persistent such dynamisms would bring a world uniqueness not experienced in many other MMOs. OnNet USA will be publishing the title in the States, and the beta wraps up tomorrow. Concerto Gate will be free-to-play title and sustain development costs off an alternative business model. The open beta date still has not been announced yet.
An argument for random battles
After writing about the upcoming Concerto Gate here, I started thinking about the random battle aspect, and how my first reaction was to deride it. Then I started thinking about the current state of pre-planned, visible enemy encounters, and what that does to player expectation. When you wander around in, say, WoW, with the possible exception of PvP areas, there's almost no such thing as a surprise attack. You can see your opponents, attack them first, even avoid enemies you know will trounce you. This lends itself to a more planned, bloodless approach to combat. Sure, it's still fun, but think for a moment of the challenge of being suddenly beset by a hidden enemy.
In Development: Square-Enix's Concerto Gate
As seen here, Square-Enix will be releasing a new, free-to-play MMO that's currently running only in Asia, called Concerto Gate. What makes this MMO different are two features. First, something called 'terra-generating', which means that the landscape itself will be deformable by player actions, such as mining and deforestation. It's unknown at this time exactly how that will affect gameplay, but it's interesting, if it's persistent and non-instanced.Second, Concerto Gate will have random enemy battles, something new to MMOs, where typically you can see your opponents wandering around. This has the potential to radically alter the way you play, as you'll never know what's lurking about until you've already begun fighting. This is something most RPGs feature, where you also have the option to flee the battle. This could be a great way to track honor -- do you stand and fight an overmatched foe, knowing you'll probably die? Or do you run away, a move likely to be interpreted as cowardice?Finally, an incidental feature: looks like we'll be in the land of the Superdeformed, where character heads are bigger, proportionally, than they ought to be, a Japanese manga staple. I'm looking forward to this, and of course it'll get the First Impressions treatment when it hits. Concerto Gate will release an open beta sometime early this year.
