TGS: Phantasy Star Online gameplay details

[03.31.00] » MMRPG? Traditional RPG? Sonic Team sets the record straight.

   Although the title has been public for quite some time, Phantasy Star Online has been shrouded in secrecy, with only a handful of screenshots to give hints at what lies ahead for the Algol system. However, this secrecy ended as Sega & Sonic Team rolled out PSO for the Tokyo Game Show Spring 2000. Seen in video form on the floor, Sega presented a special show with game director Yuji Naka, complete with a the game's first online realtime demonstration, and the GIA was there to bring you all of the details that were revealed.

   The plot of the game is simple: an unnamed planet is in the process of being developed, and before the player can land on it, the planet explodes. The goal of the game is to find out why this happened. This is done in 4-character parties. However, unlike a typical role-playing game where one player controls four characters, PSO allows a player to control only one character. This means that four different people, be them human or AI, must team up and play the game together, each of them controlling a single character. PSO allows each player to create their character, and has control over stats, skills, and even physical appearance.

   In designing the game, Sonic Team has taken advantage of the fact that the game will capitalise on an online co-operative party. Many parts of PSO will require multiple players to concentrate their forces to continue on. This can be anywhere from a door that requires three or more people to open to the item and information exchange that will be part of the game. Players must seek out other characters, as well as interact with those in their own party, to succeed in the game. This even comes down to the point of resurrection - as it is impossible for a dead character to revive himself, another party member must do so. If the dead player has ignored the rest of his party, they may choose not to come back for him, leaving him helpless, as well as quite dead.

   One part that Sega wanted to impress on people at the show was the title's worldwide playablility. With a prospective user base of "over 6,000,000,000 people," Sega has provided tools to help players interact with people in other countries. As first seen in the Sonic Team puzzler ChuChu Rocket, players in PSO can select different phrases that can be sent in one of five languages: Japanese, English, French, Spanish, or German. Thus, while the American chooses "Hello," the Japanese player reads "Konnichiwa." This fits in with the theme of "live entertainment" and "communication with others," which Sega has branded the title with.

   In order to show off this 'live entertainment,' Mr. Naka, along with two other members of the design team, logged online to play a bit of the game with a person who was still back in Sega's head office, and not at the show. Aside from being the first public demonstration of the online capibilities of the game, this short demo gave a good idea of what the communication aspect of the game will be like. The person at Sega headquarters was even able to cause some commotion in the crowd when he announced, via the game's chat system, that a volcano that had been brewing for a while in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido had finally erupted. Aside from giving the crowd a bit of a stir, it proved that the game was truly online and was not pre-recorded in any way (we later did confirm that the volcano did erupt while the demo took place).

   While Sega was able to prove that the online gameplay worked, there were more questions that needed to be answered. One of the biggest obstacles to clear was the issue of progress. If Kelvin and Larissa are playing together, and Larissa goes to bed while Kelvin continues playing, what happens tomorrow when Larissa goes to play the dungeon that Kelvin has already completed? While Larissa can't continue on in the company of Kelvin, the PSO system uses a 'matching' system, so that Larissa can find other players who are wanting to do the same thing that she wishes to do. While it may not be the ideal solution, it is one that should work fairly well.

   Although Sega is pushing PSO as a primarily multi-player, online game, players who don't want to play online don't have to. As mentioned previously, the computer can control any characters that the player wishes. While this does cut back on the amount of interaction that a player can do with his teammates, it does provide welcome news for those who wish to play the game by themselves.

   Many Phantasy Star fans will be curious to see how the game compares to the previous installments. Many of the creatures seen in the demo were familiar faces from the Genesis versions, and the character designs shown were fairly reminiscent of past games. The world itself seems to fit in with past worlds, although given the Dreamcast's power, the world is much more lush and vast than earlier ones. The biggest difference in this installment is the battle system. Gone are the menu driven fights, replaced with an action-RPG style that is similar to Square's Mana series. How this will affect the feel of the game exactly is yet to be seen, but this news is sure to give a few fans second thoughts about the title. It can be said that the battles presented at the show flowed nicely, and did not suffer from slowdown or other problems, and in the end this action-driven system may just prove to have been the best way to go.

   While many have had their doubts on how an online console RPG would actually work, Sonic Team seems to have done a good job putting together theirs. The real test for the title will come this summer, when Sega's prospective 6,000,000,000 person user base gets a chance to try the title out for themselves.