Enix officially announces Dragon Quest 8 and Dragon Quest Monsters III.

[Decado]

- Enix has officially revealed the latest installment of their flagship RPG Dragon Quest VIII for PlayStation 2, in the latest V-Jump manga magazine in Japan. The game is being co-developed by Enix and Level 5, the developer of Sony's Dark Chronicles and Microsoft's True Fantasy Live Online. Dragon Quest VIII will have full 3D, toon-shaded graphics in battle and fields.

- Enix has also announced Dragon Quest Monsters III for GameBoy Advance, the 3rd installment of the popular monster breeding and battle RPG. This time the game features characters and monsters from Dragon Quest VII, there are over 20 kinds of job classes, and the game will use Mode 7 (pseudo 3D) graphics in the field maps.

The most interesting thing, to me, is that this means that Nintendo's December annoucement is pretty much up in the air. What can it be?

BTW, is anyone else disappointed with Enix's choice of art style? Really not liking it

[typoEDR]

True that, December, I predict.... Pokemon Gamecube Online...

[Christberg]

I don't like the art style either.

Plus Level 5 (Dark Cloud) is developing it??? WTF??? That's like Mario without Miyamoto.

I don't know what to think about it yet. I think we're going to see it here in the US thanks to this merger though. Odd stuff.

[Decado]

The game is being co-developed by Enix and Level 5

Enix is still developing it. I'd expect to see it in N. America, ala DQ7. Not really big news over here, though. I'm much more interested in Star Ocean 3, and am hoping for a Grandia 3 announcement next year.

[Misfit410]

I king of figured Nintendos announcement wasnt an Enix game, thats not very megaton...

[pushtun]

I think the announcement will be that Nintendo has bought MS. Yeah, that's it...

[Misfit410]

I am thinking it is more along the lines of quite a few things, its beefed up relationship with Capcom/Namco and hopefully some others, and a lot of online games coming(Mario Kart/AC/etc..)
I still dont know how MEGATON that all is..only time will tell.
(and just because DQ8 is on PS2, doesnt mean ENix isnt working on one...I mean, FFX didnt stop FFCC)

[Decado]

Originally posted by Misfit410
I am thinking it is more along the lines of quite a few things, its beefed up relationship with Capcom/Namco and hopefully some others, and a lot of online games coming(Mario Kart/AC/etc..)

I don't think it would be their relationship w/ Capcom/Namco, since that would be old news, right? Would make a pretty lame "megaton" announcement...announcing something that is obvious to almost everyone who follows videogames. Online support/games is sounding more and more likely. It could also be Nintendo's purchase of a company...

(and just because DQ8 is on PS2, doesnt mean ENix isnt working on one...I mean, FFX didnt stop FFCC)

Well, no. It just means that DQ8 isn't going to the GC. That *would* have been a "megaton" announcement...in Japan. As for Enix making GC games...I thought that was already confirmed quite some time ago...?

[_leech_]

Well i never really got into the DQ series for some reason or another, but it's nice to hear of another sure fire A+ RPG coming to the current system i own. Maybe i'll pick up DQ7 or one of the earlier SNES games.

[Misfit410]

are Dragon Quest related to Dragon Warrior games? I was big into those in the NES era.

[_leech_]

Dragon Quest == Dragon Warrior.

[Decado]

This is interesting:

Enix mentioned that 80% of their development force is devoted to PlayStation 2, 10% to GameBoy Advance and 10% are for network games.

Maybe there aren't any GC games in development over at Enix.

[Christberg]

Originally posted by Decado
This is interesting:



Maybe there aren't any GC games in development over at Enix.

Yeah, saw that earlier. I'm kind of disappointed about it too. Now that there's DivX for cube there's no reason for there not to be RPGs in development for cube.

Seems like they're running the risk of cutting into their own sales if they release everything on one console in a single year, especially now that the GC is rapidly becoming a relevant (read:actually somewhat profitable) platform in Japan. Maybe that's just me. Between Square and Enix, that's like 15-20 console titles in one year and all of them are pretty much going to be RPGs. Add this into the already ridiculous amount of RPGs coming out next year from Namco, Sega, Capcom and other great companies and it just seems kinda stupid to me.

It just doesn't make much sense to me to have 85% of all console style RPGs made under one roof and put them all on one platform.

At least Namco still has a couple RPGs in the pipe and they have their 3 Fund Q houses all working on RPGs too. Looks like the GC is going to actually have a few decent ones without them.

[Decado]

Originally posted by Christberg
Between Square and Enix, that's like 15-20 console titles in one year and all of them are pretty much going to be RPGs.

It is hard to say, particularly with Enix (Japanese only titles), but I'd say half that, max. No more than 8, certainly, and not all of those would be big titles. Their non-rpg projects tend to be insignificant.

Add this into the already ridiculous amount of RPGs coming out next year from Namco, Sega, Capcom and other great companies and it just seems kinda stupid to me.

How would this be any different than it has been in previous years and with the PSX?

It just doesn't make much sense to me to have 85% of all console style RPGs made under one roof and put them all on one platform.

It does when you take into consideration the cost/risk of developing RPGs and just how much that is alleviated by having almost the entire market under one console.

Not that I think it is 100% good, just that there are significant upsides to it, as well.

Nintendo is doing the right thing on their side, though. They really don't have any chance of getting big RPG style games w/o dolling out some funds, which is what they're doing. We'll just have to see how they turn out. I'm curious as to why Nintendo themself hasn't announced a new RPG, though (assume they can make them).