The PS Vita is starting to settle into this underground spotlight. It hasn’t had the most promising news in the last few weeks, as it’s been listed as more of an extension of the PS4 rather than a standalone, premier console. It may explain for the lack of 1st party frontrunners but that doesn’t mean it has some surprises in the future. Looking forward, one particular gem arises and fights for freedom, Freedom Wars.
The game has been making waves beneath the radar. It just launched in Japan last week and has already been a big success for Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony’s Japan Studio. The game is an action RPG with a heavy emphasis co-op combat and big battles set in a dystopic Earth-based future.
On the PlayStation Blog, the team released a story trailer to give more details on this captivating new world and what its characters are fighting for. Japan Studio Producer, Junichi Yoshizawa, gives a nice detailed message to those eagerly anticipating the game’s release here in North America. You can read his message below:
Last week, we were finally able to release Freedom Wars in Japan. To celebrate the successful launch, I wanted to take a moment to write a message to our eager fans in North America.
Freedom Wars is a title I created to realize a dream of mine. My vision was to develop a PS Vita game that took advantage of the handheld system’s unique features, enabling gamers to come together via ad-hoc and Wi-Fi to overcome terrifying enemies. PlayStation has a storied legacy of creating innovative experiences and our collective goal was to create a Vita game that brought gamers together in a socially connected, location-based, co-op experience.
In order to do that, I gathered a number of well-known developers with an impressive pedigree for creating some of Japan’s most beloved titles – developers Shift and Dimps. These two developers both produce high-quality, interesting titles, but in this case I wanted to utilize both of their strengths, so I asked Shift to be in charge of game design, character design and story, while Dimps handled programming, graphics and direction.
The collaboration between these two developers has been wonderful and the “Freedom Wars” that they have helped create has three distinct strengths:
The first is the outrageous world and story, where prisoners are bound by 1 million years of penal servitude for the sin of “living” and need to fight for their freedom.
The second is a new game where the goal isn’t to just defeat your enemy, but to save people from your defeated enemies and create a multiplayer experience where you can clearly divide up responsibilities among your teammates.
The third is a ranked competition where players can contribute to the areas they actually live in and battle on behalf of their own “city state.”
With the coordination of each of these pillars, we created Freedom Wars – a testament to our collective vision of delivering a frenetic, co-op action game that we believe will please the Western community when it launches later this year.
Take care!
Junichi Yoshizawa
Still no word yet on a release date here in the United States. But when the time comes, like the characters, you will fight for Freedom very soon.
