Habu Kazumasa: Operation Decode Gave Bandai "Strength and Confidence"

October 10th, 2015. Today American games journalism outlet Gematsu published their interview with Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth producer Habu Kazumasa, conducted Friday at Comic-Con New York. In it, Habu explains how Cyber Sleuth was designed to attract new players unfamiliar with the Digimon brand, and the type of thought that went into revamping the Digimon Story battle system. Notably, Habu made direct reference to the Operation Decode petition responsible for the games' western revival;

We knew we had a lot of fans here in the global market because of the petition for the game’s localization. The petition gave us a lot of strength and confidence that we can still bring Digimon to a lot of fans here in North America.

We picked the Digimon Story series’ game systems instead of the Digimon World systems because we wanted a simplified battle system for new players to get into. We wanted this battle system to be very simple. Instead of the positioning thing, we redesigned the battle system with different kinds of features.

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth will launch in 2016 for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. Gematsu suggested a unified release date for Cyber Sleuth between the game's North American and European releases.

Digimon World -next 0rder- Character Designer Will Appear in ILLUSTRATION 2016 Artbook

October 5th, 2015. Popular media website KAI-YOU reports that Taiki, character designer for the 2016 Vita game Digimon World -next 0rder-, will be included in the upcoming ILLUSTRATION 2016 artbook featuring the works of illustrators from around the world. Taiki's works will appear near the end of the artbook, which includes the works of 150 total artists. A followup to ILLUSTRATION 2014 and 2015, ILLUSTRATION 2016 will also feature a special interview with Taiki on his most recent works in the industry. As ILLUSTRATION 2016 primarily focuses on the original works of the illustrators, whether -next 0rder-'s character art will be featured in the artbook at all remains to be seen.

Taiki was previously interviewed about Digimon for Weekly Famitsu magazine, where he discussed how he first encountered the franchise nearly twenty years prior. ILLUSTRATION 2016 will go on sale in Japan this year on November 5th for 3024 yen (approx. $25 US).

-next 0rder-'s Dual Battle System Shown Off in Latest Batch of Screenshots

October 9th, 2015. The official Digimon World -next 0rder- title site has updated with a new batch of screenshots showing off the game's dual Digimon battle system, which allows the player to fight alongside two Digimon at once. The 10/9 batch of screenshots show male protagonist Takuto fighting alongside War Greymon and Metal Garurumon, and female protagonist Shiki with Piyomon and Palmon. While War Greymon and Metal Garurumon's Omegamon Jogress evolution was briefly teased in the most recent promotional video for the game, it's currently unclear if Shiki's Digimon can perform a similar fusion.

The previous batch of screenshots focused on environmental changes in -next 0rder-, and the Digimon's various emotional expressions.

Concerns Rise Over "Engrish" in Cyber Sleuth

October 8th, 2015. Several hours ago Bandai Namco EU streamed an early English-language build of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth to Twitch, giving a first look at its translated script and confirming the previously announced cross-buy option between the PlayStation 4 and Vita editions of the game. The English script is drawing some concern however, as the Cyber Sleuth shown during the stream wavered between professionally-edited dialogue and translation that was spotty at best. In several of the game's cutscenes character's lines were improperly represented, with core cast member Shiramine Nokia's subtitles memorably reading "I'm late" rather than what her spoken Japanese indicated--"You're late." Bandai EU stated in a response to one comment that the game would not be "early" 2016 for Europe as has been said for North America, but confirmed a physical release of the game on PlayStation 4 in select European countries in addition to the established digital download option.

Several errors in the script caught the attention of viewers. In particular, one of the main dungeons of the game Kuuron クーロン--translated in our Let's Play as "Cron" from the software utility--had no consistent name in the stream's script, which alternated between referring to Kuuron as "Coulomb" (from the unit of electrical charge) and "Kowloon." (Also used as the name for a location in Digimon Story Sunburst & Moonlight.) The area of Kuuron visited was also inconsistently referred to as either Junk Park (Garakuta Kouen) or Galacta Park, drawing from the same phonetics. (In-game Kuuron is spelled out in English as "Cool-wrong," to the derision of Cyber Sleuth's fanbase.) However, Bandai EU assured viewers that this was only an early version of the game. The stream's script most likely does not represent the finalized incarnation of Cyber Sleuth's English edition.

10/9/15 update: In response to questions regarding the script, Bandai EU has stated that the CS build streamed was not final, and is not representative of the game's commercial release.

More than six hundred people tuned into the stream, at its peak bringing in 681 live viewers. Chat comments were focused on the game's lack of an English dub, which has proved particularly controversial with the American gamers tuning in. Some would call it entitlement rather than genuine criticism, a belief that Cyber Sleuth is somehow not good enough for gamers unless it has a dub. However, the decision to retain the original Japanese voiceover has found praise elsewhere, as Cyber Sleuth has several extremely talented actors on board, with special regard to Han Megumi's rapidfire mouth-running performance as Nokia. Finding an appropriate match for this show stealer in the English dub industry would be both incredibly difficult and expensive, as would matching voices to several other characters like Duftmon (Wakamoto Norio), and tracking down a diverse cast to voice the game's numerous Digimon. A recording of Bandai EU's stream can be viewed here.

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth will launch in English in early 2016 in North America, and 2016 in Europe.

Digimon World Online in Action

Above is a test video showing two players in separate states connecting to an Emuparadise server to play Digimon World's multiplayer battle mode over the web, using ePSXe's Kaillera plugin. Complete step-by-step instructions for setting up and connecting can be found at the attached link.

Multiplayer through Kaillera is fairly simple, capable of running even over a dial-up connection, and can be done using either physical disks or a disk image. However, connection tests so far have only demonstrated functionality with Windows 7 and earlier; Windows 10 users may not be able to connect.

Bandai UK to Stream Cyber Sleuth on 10/8

October 2nd, 2015. Bandai Namco UK announced over Twitter today that they will be streaming the English localization of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth at 7PM Central European time (2PM EST) on October 8th. The stream will be conducted on Twitch, the popular video game streaming service previously used to stream Digimon All-Star Rumble.

Cyber Sleuth is slated for an "early" 2016 launch in North America according to Bandai Namco US. International editions of the game will launch simultaneously on the PlayStation Vita, PSTV, and PlayStation 4, with cross-buy and more difficulty options.

-next 0rder- Title Site Adds Jijimon's Profile

"Hmhmhm? Are you human?"

October 2nd, 2015. The Digimon World -next 0rder- title site updated this morning to add Jijimon's profile to its character page, in a separate section now reserved exclusively for the game's Digimon characters.

The elder of a certain village. A very serious Digimon with a strong sense of responsibility, but also a little senile. To call back the Digimon that Mugendramon attacked and scattered, he's working on the reconstruction of the town.

The "certain village" mentioned in his profile likely refers to the Village of Beginnings found in the original Digimon World, which was called File City in the official English-language localizations of the game. Jijimon was previously introduced in last month's issue of V Jump magazine, which also detailed the game's dual partner system, and new character Oofuchi Himari.