The upcoming Front Mission Evolved is powering up for a PR overdrive, as its release is imminent. To the extent that Double Helix’s studio head, Patrick Gilmore, has been interviewed over at Gamasutra. Gilmore is the head of the studio and not at the coal face so to speak but the corollary that he asserts regarding the supposed organic development of cinematic approaches in games is a tad spurious. As one of the main elements of his view is that the development tools themselves facilitate a natural cinematic evolution in terms of a game’s creation.

Spurious in the sense that it makes a lot of assumptions as to how games are made and that this progression is somehow insidiously natural, when really it’s an enormous amount of hard work on account of the people that have to make the game. After all, an improved toolset and pipeline often only help make the already existing set of tasks easier. They don’t necessarily make them miraculously cinematic.

Thankfully, the development team have produced a foil to this rather detached viewpoint in the form of a very interesting set of development diaries. Especially fascinating in their citing of the studio, Imaginary Friends, in relation to the game’s mecha design. Admittedly, we’re still somewhat cautious about Front Mission Evolved (as the gameplay videos were pretty underwhelming not to mention our hands on report being rather scathing) but there may be hope yet. As for a release date, Square Enix are still being cagey about that one but it’s supposedly scheduled for “Q2” this year, so we’ll know more soon with any luck.