Author: Trafficblast

Like many mystery-driven adventure games, AI: The Somnium Files is a little tough to talk about. It’s not exactly action-packed in its moment-to-moment gameplay, and most of the intrigue in games like it comes from the ways in which they challenge your investigative skills and decision-making–plot twists and character dialogue are often at the heart of it all. This is very much the case when it comes to games under the direction of developer Kotaro Uchikoshi, best known for the Zero Escape series.

Since AI: The Somnium Files was first revealed, we knew that it would channel similar gameplay elements from Zero Escape, but it’s aiming to be an evolution of that. As special agent Kaname Date, you travel between reality and a dream world to unravel the truth behind a series of murders. Its overarching theme revolves around a pun for the word eye: “eye” as in your sight, “ai” the Japanese word for love, and A.I. as in artificial intelligence. Not to mention all the murder victims have one eye gouged out as well. Date himself has one eye that’s actually an A.I. companion named Aiba (a Japanese-English pun for eyeball). And the real name of A-set, the virtual influencer/idol behind music videos and promotional materials, is Iris.

Last time we spoke with Uchikoshi-san, he talked about love, story details, and the dream world’s Psync mechanic, but there’s still more than meets the eye. To get further insight into what’s going on, we corresponded again via email and dug into the game’s direction. We were also able to loop in the English localization team lead Alex Flagg for additional perspective on what it’s like to deliver a dialogue-heavy Japanese game to a Western audience.

If you’re not caught up on AI: The Somnium Files, check out our interview with Iris “A-set/Tesa” Sagan or our hands-on preview with the game from GDC 2019. The game launches for PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch on September 17 this year.

Can you explain the “Somnium” world? It’s the key to solving mysteries, but are these people’s secrets, true feelings, dreams? How does Kaname Date use that information throughout the game?

Kotaro Uchikoshi: Somnium means “dream” in Latin. So a Somnium world would mean “dream world.” Dreams are made from fragments of memory stitched together like patchwork. Hidden inside are people’s secrets and suppressed feelings. It’s Kaname Date’s job to interpret what he sees in the dream to solve mysteries and move forward in the investigation. For example, there’s something like this: A girl was alone at the scene of the crime. However, she suffered mental trauma and now has aphonia, so she can’t talk. So, Date will dive into the girl’s dream world and find a lead: she heard a phone ring. Then, Date will return to reality, go back to the scene to investigate and look for a cellphone somewhere. Something like that.

We’ve seen AI being both dead serious, cheery, and sometimes outright absurd. How do you strike a tone that comes together?

Alex Flagg: Through a lot of hard work! Uchikoshi has this amazing ability to blend Wikipedia-diving information dumps, absurdist theater, and sex jokes into a gripping and touching story. What I’ve discovered by playing and localizing his work is that you can get away with a lot that seems narratively inconsistent as long as you’ve already captured the audience’s attention with an intriguing plot and interesting characters. Uchikoshi taught me that tone can fluctuate wildly, as long as the heart is centered and steady. Because if your heart is fluctuating wildly, you’re probably having a heart attack and are about to die. You know, narratively speaking.

KU: This is a hard question. All I can say is…by watching the balance. If I were to compare it, it’s like a barista or a mixologist. Their jobs are very sensuous, and it’s hard to put into words how they balance the ingredients. Or maybe it’s similar to hitting on someone. You can’t always be serious and cool and you can’t always be energetic and carefree. They’ll just brush you off, won’t they? It’s important to understand when to be serious and when to be energetic… What I’m trying to say is that everything is balanced out by things and you can’t just explain it away with words. Having said that, my pick-up techniques have never been very successful. I bet Alex is really good at it, so next time I’m in LA, maybe he can teach me a few tricks!

There’s some body horror, light gore, and morbid imagery in your games, AI especially. Do you ever have ideas then stop yourself from going too far?

KU: When I was writing the scenario for AI, the character designs weren’t finalized yet. That meant that I only had a general idea of the characters while writing. That’s why I didn’t feel much guilt putting the characters through some really tough times. When the designs came in, I thought, “OMG, so cute!” That’s when the characters started to really exist. But then it crossed my mind. “Ah, why did I do that to them…?” I didn’t want to have a guilty conscience about it, so I thought, “Could I at least try not to put them through the darkest of my ideas?” Because of that, some scenes are now milder than the original idea. But this isn’t censorship, this is love. Love for my characters. I decided to tone down some things, but the story isn’t any less interesting or fun because of it. Please don’t worry about that.

What are your thoughts on canonical endings in games with branching storylines? How does AI handle that?

KU: I remember watching a Hayao Miyazaki documentary, and he said something like, “I’m over this, I don’t want to do this” while drawing original cels. Branching routes are like that to me. It’s so much work. I scream, “Augh! I’m over this, too much work!” while writing the story too. In AI, the story splits from the decisions you make in the Somnia. To put it simply, picking either the “A” lead or “B” lead changes how the story unfolds. Branching stories are a pain in the ass for the creator, but to the player, there’s nothing better. There’s a lot of interesting elements in this game due to the branching paths, so please look forward to it!

What are some important things Akira Okada (assistant director) has brought this time around for AI that you didn’t think of?

KU: Of course Okada-kun was a huge contributor, but AI was created from multiple ideas from all the staff members. For example, Aiba turning into a cute girl in Somnium, the video game inspiration behind a certain action scene, one of the stages from one of the Somnia. All of those were ideas from the staff. I mean, the Somnium parts, from the setting to the structure, was mainly done by Okada-kun and Yamada-san. I have nothing but respect and appreciation for the staff.

Are there any particular difficulties that come out of having to do a simultaneous Japanese and Western release?

AF: Oh, absolutely. Working side-by-side with the Japanese creative team is a totally different experience than picking up a completed project and adapting it.

KU: Thanks to the hard work from Alex, Kazu [Okura], the other Spike Chunsoft Inc. team members, and [community manager] Dave Kracker, I didn’t really have any trouble with simultaneous shipping. So, to the Spike Chunsoft Inc. team of course, the development staff in Japan, and the Chinese localization staff: I thank you very, very much, from the bottom of my heart!

You get to control Aiba in the Somnium world, but you only get a limited time to investigate.

What are some Japanese- or English-only quirks you get to put in the game? Are there some unique things players will get out of either language option?

AF: The Japanese and English are largely the same, script and presentation-wise. There are a few times here and there that, say, a joke was intentionally not localized, or a character’s voice performance in the English has a slightly different feel than the Japanese performance, but for the most part they are two versions of the same game.

Some jokes or one-liners might come across differently in either language. And one thing that we’re very proud of is that A-set’s debut single, “Invincible Rainbow Arrow,” is fully localized, right down to matching the Japanese rhyme scheme and poetic meter. So if you are playing in Japanese, you will hear the Japanese version of the song; if you are playing in English, you will hear the English version.

How involved are you with the performances of the voice cast?

AF: The translator for this project, Kazu Okura, and I were either there at Bang Zoom! studios or listening in over voice call every single day of recording. While we offered feedback and direction, especially during particularly intricate or complicated scenes, we can only take a little bit of the credit: it was our audio engineer JP Aller and voice director Chris Faiella that really helped the words come off the page and become something incredible in the performance.

What’s the toughest aspect for localizing AI that folks might not realize?

AF: I would say the humor is by far the most challenging aspect of localization, especially “dad joke” humor, jokes that are intentionally bad. If you localize that joke to make it genuinely funny, you aren’t exactly matching the tone of the Japanese. If you localize the joke to make it unfunny, you run the risk of the audience not realizing that the joke is supposed to be bad, it’s supposed to make you roll your eyes and groan. AI is full of these kinds of jokes, so my translator and I worked very hard to make them funny…but not too funny.

“Tesa, aka A-set, you bet.” was totally the localization team’s idea, huh?

AF: Yes, it was. Her slogan cheer is different in the Japanese and the English. In the Japanese, it goes something like “volatile solvent of the net world, Aseton, aka A-set!” It’s a wordplay on the honorific “ton” added to her stage name “A-set,” making it sound like “acetone,” the chemical solvent. Keeping it “Aseton” in English would be clunky, invite mispronunciation, and lose the cuteness factor of the Japanese wordplay. So we decided to go with “Tesa,” a cute, easy-to-say nickname that utilizes the game’s prevalent motif of reflection (“Tesa” is of course “A-set” backwards). There was a time we briefly considered making her nickname “Ace,” but Zero Escape fans will know why we decided against that.

A-set has been a huge part of AI’s lead up. Besides being a major character and idol, what was the idea behind breaking the fourth wall with A-set’s YouTube channel?

KU: One of the themes of this game is dreams and reality. So by linking the real world that we live in with the artificial world of AI, I tried to express the analogy (or is it a metaphor?) of “dreams and reality,” or something like that. Iris (A-set’s real name) is the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology. She is said to be the messenger girl that delivers the words of the gods. Rainbows are also sometimes called the “bridge of heaven,” so you could say that A-set is the “bridge” between fiction and reality.

With all the lead up to AI and A-set at the forefront, how involved are you in her video content?

AF: Very involved! Our team and the creative team in Japan were sharing ideas for videos and story beats for months, coming up with the general “plot” of her YouTube channel together. Once that was more or less in place, we localized and recorded each video based on Japan’s video, which was incredibly difficult because of the fast pace they had to be produced. Often times we didn’t even have a final video render to look at while we were recording, so we had to feel it out by the script alone. But it came together beautifully.

How’s she been as a promotional partner?

KU: She was amazing! I know there were times I pushed her, but she didn’t make a face and took everything very seriously. I thank her from the bottom of my heart. Also, she smells really nice. A sweet scent that tickles a person’s heart… If she comes on screen while playing AI, please put your nose up to the screen. I’m sure you’ll start to smell irises…

Will A-set’s presence in our real world play into events in AI?

AF: “Our real world”? What a peculiar way of phrasing it. You can see her, hear her; she is information in the universe and she occupies space in your mind at this very moment. She exists in this world the same way I do right now, typing away at my computer, communicating with you only through ones and zeros. One and the same.

KU: I already kind of answered this, but Iris is the bridge that connects our world to their world. As long as she exists, both worlds will continue to be linked.

How much tequila have you drank since the A-set interview we did?

KU: The situation has changed. Currently, rather than me drinking tequila, it’s more of tequila drinking me. My office is always full of it. That’s where I wrote the game’s story. Just like one of those caterpillars in the bottles of tequila.

Despite previous reports of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare not having a battle royale mode, developers Infinity Ward have hinted that the upcoming first-person shooter may include the popular mode. In fact, there are “many” unnannounced multiplayer modes for the Modern Warfare reboot.

In a rapid-fire interview with Game Informer, art director Joel Emslie did not confirm or deny whether Modern Warfare will have a battle royale mode. However, after being asked if the game will feature the mode, Emslie said, “We’ll have to wait and see.” Emslie then noted that he’s a fan of both the battle royale genre and larger player counts, with his personal favorite game mode being Ground War.

Game Informer also asked if there are any multiplayer modes that have yet to be announced. “There are many,” Emslie confirmed. He did not specify what “many” amounts to. There are plenty modes that we know of thus far: the gritty single-player campaign, Gunfight, Ground War, Spec Ops, and a swath of traditional multiplayer modes (including the likes of Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, and more).

Also out of Game Informer is a new addition to the Modern Warfare experience. Tamagunchis, a virtual pet similar to the Tamagotchis from the ’90s, add a lighthearted touch to the game’s multiplayer experience. And Gunsmithing also introduces deeper weapon customization tools to multiplayer when it launches on October 25 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Fortnite: Battle Royale has entered its second week of Season X, and there’s a new batch of challenges for Battle Pass holders to complete. The latest set of missions is called Spray and Pray, and as its name suggests, many of the tasks revolve around finding spray cans or spraying certain objects around the map.

Unlike past seasons, which gave Battle Pass holders access to all of a week’s challenges at once, only three of these Spray and Pray challenges will initially be available, with additional tasks unlocking as you complete them. The first asks you to deal damage to opponents with SMGs; the second has you spray a fountain, a junkyard crane, and a vending machine; and the third tasks you with spraying three different gas stations. You can see the full list of Spray and Pray challenges we’ve unlocked below.

As previously mentioned, you’ll need to own a Battle Pass in order to access the Spray and Pray challenges. Whereas past seasons gave all players a selection of missions to complete each week (with additional ones available exclusively to Battle Pass holders), Season X gates most of its challenges behind the pass, so you’ll need to purchase one if you’re hoping to get the most out of the season.

Beyond that, the Battle Pass works the same as before. Completing challenges will net you Battle Stars, which in turn will help you level your Battle Pass up and unlock skins and other cosmetic rewards. If you need help completing any of this season’s missions, you can find all of our tips and guides in our full Season X challenges roundup, which we’ll continue to update as the season rolls on. You can see all the new cosmetics that are up for grabs in our Season X Battle Pass rewards gallery.

In other Fortnite news, developer Epic Games’ recently rolled out the title’s 10.00 content update, which introduced another new gun to the mix: the automatic sniper rifle. Additionally, a Rift Zone has transformed Neo Tilted into the Wild West-themed Titled Town, and a limited-time Arsenal mode is now underway. You can read the full patch notes for the content update on Epic’s website.

Fortnite Season X, Week 2 Spray And Pray Challenges

• Deal damage with SMGs to opponents (500) — 10 Battle Stars
• Spray a Fountain, a Junkyard Crane, and a Vending Machine — 10 Battle Stars
• Spray different Gas Stations (3) — 10 Battle Stars

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A lovely purple-and-pink Nintendo Switch branded to match Disney’s upcoming Tsum Tsum Festival game is now available for pre-order, and if you want to get your hands on one, you’ll be glad to know it ships to the US and UK.

The product is a Japanese exclusive, so you’ll have to go through Amazon Japan or other similar sites to order it. It costs ￥39,688, or roughly $375 USD / £310. That makes it a premium price, but it’s also a unique model. The Joy-Cons and dock are decorated with tiny Mickey Mouse and card suit icons, and the Home button sports little Mickey ears. It’s adorbs. This is also one of the new models that boasts longer battery life to boot. Its planned release date is October 10, 2019.

See Disney Tsum Tsum Switch on Amazon Japan

Even if you already have an Amazon account, you may need to create an Amazon Japan account in order to proceed to checkout, and you’ll need Google Translate or another tool to make this process easier. On the shipping page during checkout, click “Register a Foreign Address” for international shipping. Note that an import tax might be applied to your order.

We had previously seen the special edition console announced, but it was unclear if it would be coming to the west. It still appears to be Japanese-only for the time being, but Nintendo Switch consoles aren’t region-locked, so you could import the hardware and play all your games as usual.

Nintendo has quite a bit of new hardware coming out over the next several months. Those include new Joy-Con colors and, more significantly, the Switch Lite. The budget-priced redesign of the Nintendo Switch will cost a bit less than the original model, at the expense of the docking functionality. If you’re holding out for a battery-boosted Nintendo Switch but you want the standard blue/red or gray versions, make sure you know how to tell the old models from the new ones.

The Neo Geo Mini proved to be a fun way to play SNK’s classic arcade games on a small screen with its on-board controls. However, many of its titles, including series like The King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and Metal Slug, are multiplayer-focused, which makes the omission of extra controllers disappointing.

That’s why this discounted bundle from Wal-Mart and Amazon is so compelling. Normally costing $140 USD, the bundle’s price has been discounted to $100. For that, you get the Neo Geo Mini, two controllers, and an HDMI cable. The controllers are based on the Neo Geo AES’s pads, with one coming in classic black and the other in white. In addition to its own, built-in screen, you can also output the microconsole to a TV with the included HDMI cable.

Neo Geo Mini Pro Player Pack – $100 ($140)

See it at Amazon See it at Wal-Mart

You can see a full list of the games in the gallery above, including a selection of screenshots. I’m particularly fond of the Samurai Shodown series, but with certified bangers like Metal Slug 3, Shock Troopers, and The King of Fighters ’98, there are plenty of great games in the Neo Geo Mini’s selection. I’ve always been rather fond of SNK’s sports games, so the inclusions of Super Sidekicks and Top Player’s Golf are appreciated (however, I am partial to Neo Turf Masters, which is sadly not included).

Our Neo Geo Mini review praised the microconsole’s small form factor and how much fun it is to play these games on its 3.5-inch screen. However, GameSpot’s Peter Brown was disappointed when outputting to a TV. He praised the emulation but lamented the image quality, scaling, and lack of options.

Superhero comics, as a genre, tend to be full of bombast. Between the spandex, the capes, and the universe-ending perils that plague our favorite characters every month, being way over-the-top is just the name of the game. So, naturally, when a specific comic is promoted as having “the most important” or “most shocking” or “most impactful” scene in the history of any given character or team, it’s only natural to assume some level of hyperbole.

That is unless you happen to be talking about House of X #2, which was promoted as having “the most important scene in the history of the X-Men” which, as it turns out, was not hyperbolic in the least.

House of X has completely reframed the history of the Marvel universe in just a few lovingly rendered pages–at it all comes down to a relatively simple change made to one character.

Who is Moira MacTaggert anyway?

It’s easy to be an X-Men fan and have no idea who Moira MacTaggert is–it’s not that she’s unimportant in the mythos, but she’s not exactly a character who comes up all that frequently, especially for people who’ve relied on the movies and cartoons to get their mutant fix. She’s been in both live-action and animation but never as a major featured role, and that’s largely by design. Historically, Moira’s place in the X-Men canon has been as a sort of token human, one of the closest human allies Xavier himself has ever had, so it’s not exactly difficult to forget about her when she’s stood up next to people who can read minds, shapeshift, and are covered in bright blue fur.

That said, in the world of the X-Men, nothing stays normal for very long, so over the years, Moira’s role and position within the comics has grown and changed in–well, any number of ways. From “housekeeper” of the X-Mansion to magically-empowered ghost (don’t ask), Moira’s been through a lot and has found herself at the center of some major X-related conflicts. If it helps, she could almost be related to Jarvis on the Avengers side of things–human from the comics, not the AI from the movies–or perhaps even Alfred Pennyworth if you want to hop brands. She’s not a butler or a manservant, obviously, but she traditionally occupied a similar “elevated supporting role” niche in the mythology and narrative of her team.

At least, she did. And then House Of X #2 happened.

Meet Moira X

It turns out Moira MacTaggert is anything but a normal human–she’s actually been a mutant this entire time and keeping it very, very secret. And for good reason, because her mutation is actually a doozy.

Moira’s gift is that of reincarnation–not in the way that we typically see such things play out in comics, where a character will die and then come back after being born again into a new (or perhaps a regenerated) body–but in the way we usually see in video games. When Moira dies, she completely resets back to a fetus in her mother’s womb, with all the memories of her past lives completely intact, to be born again into the same world she’s already experienced as if she’s reloading into one very specific save point over and over.

It’s a sort of cosmic Groundhog’s Day scenario, except rather than having one day repeated over and over, Moira experiences one lifetime again and again as different timelines, where she’s able to use her knowledge from her past lives to affect change and modify the course of events.

Or, well, she can try to modify the course of events. As we learn in HoX #2, Moira’s lives have been a trial and error process in which she’s gone from wanting to “cure” mutantkind to trying desperately to save it–but she has yet to get it right. She’s gone through the process ten different times, and this might actually be her last if the visions of prophetic mutant Destiny are correct. Something may or may not be about to happen to Moira that makes it impossible for her to reincarnate, so it’s critically important that she gets it right this time.

So what does this mean for the Marvel Universe?

In short? A lot.

It’s not that Marvel is necessarily a strange to alternate timelines and reincarnating heroes–in fact, those two things happen to be a staple of X-Men stories, and part of the reason they’re so notoriously complicated–but the degree to which Moira’s ability is recontextualizing X-Men history is on an entirely new level.

There are questions to be asked now about where and how these new timelines intersect with the stories we’re familiar with, what exactly Moira has learned and shared over her ten lives, and how that knowledge will play out in a world populated by people who are able to do things like see the future and read minds. It’s a major story engine that can play out all over the metaphorical map, in both the future and the past, as the X-Books continue.

Also, it’s not without its own baked-in mysteries–like why, in all of Moira’s carefully documented lives, is Timeline #6 mysteriously absent? Are we actually viewing Moira’s tenth life through House of X and Powers of X, or is there another major revelation to come? Can Moira be even be trusted at all?

Not to mention the new potential for things like time travel and timeline hopping–two things the X-Men tend to do on a semi-regular basis–to explore the new Moira centric timelines positioned here in this story, and what sort of fallout may or may not come of that. After all, what happens if you change history for a person who’s history is a built-in part of their mutation?

With any luck, we’ll find the answers to these questions–and doubtlessly be given way, way more questions to ask–as the story continues with Powers of X #2 next week.