Game producer Yoshinori Kitase talks to eu.playstation.com about the upcoming action RPG title on PSP as well as answering questions submitted by the PlayStation community.
Released on the original PlayStation, Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve II introduced the world to Aya Brea, a troubled young policewoman turned private detective who takes on a series of chilling foes in a variety of locations across the United States.
In early 2011, gamers will be able to take control of Aya Brea once again in The 3rd Birthday, a title developed exclusively for the PSP system by Square Enix. “We took the main character of Aya Brea together with the timeline and created a completely new story,” explains game producer Yoshinori Kitase, a veteran of the FINAL FANTASY series, during a presentation of the title at gamescom.
“The story is set in New York which has been overrun by lots of funny looking monsters and creatures called Twisted. The people know very little about them and think they have travelled from another dimension and so a special organisation has been set up to fight against them. It’s called Counter Twisted Investigation and that’s who Aya Brea works for.”
Although the title features a number of role-playing game elements, it plays very much as an action title as Aya explores New York on her quest to eradicate the Twisted and other enemies. “It has all the features you’d expect in a shooting game,” says Kitase-san, “such as taking cover behind walls and other objects, and you can switch between different weapons such as shotguns, handguns and machine guns, even grenades. There are lots of RPG elements too; for example, Aya collects experience points and learn new abilities as the game unfolds.”
Perhaps the biggest innovation is the introduction of the OverDive system, which replaces Parasite Energy as Aya's principal weapon against the advancing waves of enemies. “Aya Brea has got special DNA which means she can do what normal human beings can’t,” explains Kitate-san. “In this particular game, she has the ability to hijack another person’s body and play as him or her.
“There are several benefits attached to this system: firstly, when you are about to die, if you find a computer-controlled character with very high health, you can dive into him and take over that high health, thus avoiding a very dangerous situation; secondly, when you see another character with a very powerful weapon, you can OverDive into him to take over the weapon he’s carrying as well; and finally there is a strategic advantage, as when you are taking on a monster who is very well guarded from the front, you can OverDive into a character who is behind the monster and attack him from there.”
What’s more, Kitase-san reveals an additional and intriguing twist to the OverDive system which comes in particularly handy when the action really heats up on the streets of New York: “As well as OverDiving into computer-controlled characters, you can OverDive into a monster when certain conditions are met. This means you can get inside the monster and inflict enormous damage, and this is called an OverDive Kill.”
Following the presentation, Kitase-san answered questions submitted by the official PlayStation community via community.eu.playstation.com.
Is The 3rd Birthday the sequel to Parasite Eve? (fortieTHief, Italy)
It is true that Aya Brea is the main character and you will also see some other characters from Parasite Eve 1 and 2. However, we’d rather you didn’t look at The 3rd Birthday as a sequel to the previous titles.
Will Aya have more combat options this time, not just limited to gun and magic; for example, can she do close combat or have melee weapons? (Rendor, United Kingdom)
There won’t be melee attacks as such, like kicking or fighting, although there will be different types of attack, both melee and distance attacks. For example, for the distance ones, if you manage to enhance your guns you can shoot from even further away. For melee, you can OverDive into a monster and take control of him.
How did the developers come up with the idea for the new OverDive system? (chungkingAngeL/kall-heinz, Germany)
I am not quite sure where the idea originally came from but there are so many first person shooters and we felt we had to come up with an idea to differentiate the game from those titles.
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