News: Front Mission Evolved Characters
Posted on : 12-04-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Hardware: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
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Over at Gpara there’s some new coverage for Front Mission Evolved and what’s interesting about this little nugget of PR, is that it focuses a lot more on the characters of the game. What’s most striking to me is that the characters themselves look a lot more anime inspired than I was expecting (especially from a Western studio). Considering that the original Front Mission’s characters were penned by Yoshitaka Amano, you’d expect a nod to this kind of artistic heritage but seeing it nonetheless warms the cockles of our merciless robot heart. Naturally, the update over at Gpara also goes into lots of nice nerdy detail on the garage as well as displaying more pictures of the wanzers in action. Still no word on an actual release date though.
Update: Here’s also a fascinating insight into the mecha design behind Front Mission Evolved, as its primary designer Skan Srisuwan at Imaginary Friends is penning the new wanzers. What’s reassuring, despite the man’s obvious talent, is that he’s quite open about his influences. Such as Hajime Katoki for one and not to mention the Yutaka Izubuchi designed Hygogg kit on his disk, all of which clearly shows in terms of the game’s overall aesthetic for the mecha. Thanks to LegaiaRules for the heads up.
Is it really strange? The art style at a glance looks the same to me as the one Square’s been using since FM4, and that never looked too Japanese to begin with. I suppose you could question why they might use 2D portraits in-game at all when western gaming journalism is so fond of bashing “talking head cut-scenes” after being spoiled rotten by the last few WRPGs, but that’s another matter.
And is Amano really such an important figure in the franchise’s history? He did the characters for all of one main game and a spin off and that’s it.
The big difference is that FME is being handled by a Western studio, so the anime-esque characters are surprising (although they fit the series’ heritage obviously).
As for Amano’s style not being relevant anymore for FM in general, I disagree. His characters were the foil to Kow Yokoyama’s mecha and equally defined the series’ core identity.
Gotta second what Cacophanus said. Amano’s style was definitely relevent to FM. The fact that the company developing the new game went with a style closer to his is a good thing.
The art direction wasn’t actually done by Double Helix, but Imaginary Friends Studio in Singapore. The lead designer, Skan Srisuwan, talks a bit about the design in the official developer blog. However, in his personal blog, he cites influences such as Katoki Hajime for mecha design. Character design resembles the more realistic artwork from FM2 and above. It’s not Jun Suemi (2), Akihiro Yamada (3), or Yusuke Naora’s (1 DS, 4, 5, Online), but it’s a good fit for FM nevertheless.
As for the whole “Who represents FM?” thing, the series has had so many artists and composers that there’s no clear representative of the series. Yusuke Naora and Hidenori Iwasaki would be the closest in representing FM’s art and music respectively. FM Evolved having Imaginary Friends Studio and Garry Schyman, who is doing the music, just follows the trend of the series using different artists and composers.
The point with the stylistic representation, from the mecha standpoint at least, is that the functional parameters of the wanzers themselves were set out by Kow Yokoyama – mecha are functional entities really (which is why they translate so well to games!).
It’s nice that Katoki Hajime was used as a reference though, as he was very much inspired by the work of Yokoyama after all.
I knew about Imaginary Friends though but I wasn’t sure on how far their stylistic influence extended. It definitely explains how a Western developed game could look so spot on in terms of the overall aesthetic though.
Forgot to add the link to Skan’s personal blog where he talks about Evolved, but it’s in here:
http://textfiend.net/zerohero/?p=1052
And yes, Kow Yokoyama definitely set the tone for wanzers in the series. The backstory behind them is well documented in the games, but having recently bought and read the FM1 game manga, it’s amazing how detailed it gets. I’d scan the pages detailing his work (and beautiful concept art!), but the FM1 game manga is a real hard catch. Luckily, there’s an FM artbook that I believe also rehashes the details I’ve read in the FM1 game manga.
I think I have that manga in a box somewhere. Yokoyama is a very talented artist though and his attention to detail is suitably fastidious.
The artbook you mention may be Front Mission World Historica. As it’s very comprehensive in terms of the tech (at 555 pages you’d expect that!).
Looks good. I’m really looking forward to this game. I think it’s the ability to get out of the Wanzers that appeals to me, actually. I know that everyone here is enamored with the AC games, but they always kinda blew the sense of scale for me particularly because there were no human faces to match with the mechs, let alone bodies to see a sense of scale. This looks better and better, IMO. We’ll see.
Upcoming fail game is failing which actually makes me kinda sad. had hopes for this game till Square handed it off to another studio who in turn handed off (some of) their work to a third company who’s redesigns are horrendous.