Yuri Lowenthal and Liam O'Brien confirmed. More interestingly, the actress that voiced Mitsuru from Persona 3 is Zero! Pleasantly surprised about that. I don't really hear her in much. :|

Anyway, the story and characters look about as great/weird as I've come to expect from a Cavia game (even though this is not technically a Cavia game), but the gameplay also looks about as crappy as I've come to expect from a Cavia game....Kind of, anyway. I doubt anyone is gonna play one of these games for its gameplay anyway. Here's the trailer!

And yeah, I know this is days old now, but I didn't see anyone talking about it on here, so yeah.....Is anyone here besides me even looking forward to this? :P

I dunno, judging from the trailer the story/characters all look like pretty average JRPG affair. I'm really liking what I've heard of the soundtrack, though, specifically the boss battle themes.

Hmm, Nier was an interesting game with great designs and music, but also an infuriatingly stupid one at times. I wonder how this one compares... the trailer was way to disjointed to give me a solid impression of it. Ah, well, I'm a sucker for weird stuff, I'll buy it regardless, though with my PS3 backlog I'll probably wait for a sale.

@blacklagoon: You probably already know this, but the game's only like 40 bucks. Also, Square really loves discounting their game's quickly, so you probably won't have to wait long. :P

Well of the series I've only played part of Nier. I found those 15 hours or so to be a mix of fascinating, weird, and terrible. Eventually the boring and at times frustrating gameplay won out over the strange story and characters and I stopped playing. It didn't help that I hated the art direction for the characters and the environments were mostly just big empty green fields or smaller empty brown dungeons. Nothing visually interesting to me at all. Music was great and I felt like the story was probably going to go to some interesting places, but since I wasn't enjoying the gameplay and the visuals weren't doing anything for me I just couldn't force myself to keep playing it for the story alone. If it was a 5 hour game maybe, but if I'm going to play something that is going to take more than a weekend to beat it has to interest me on multiple levels.

The art in this trailer makes this new game look just as unappealing to me visually, and I'm not entirely sure they have even mentioned the gameplay in any of the videos or announcements up to this point. For something that is being sold almost entirely on its story, it makes no sense to me, but I've not played the first two games or finished Nier. I would hope that trailer makes a lot more sense to people who have actually played the rest of the series and excites them because as a relative newcomer I have no interest whatsoever in playing it after watching that trailer.

@raven10: Yep, no one is going to defend the gameplay in this series. I don't think any of them are terrible, they just never even attempt to be " great. " It's a real shame too, because if these games had a higher budget and also more thought put into the gameplay, I think they would be something really special. I do recommend sticking with Nier though, the story really does go places.

This game is a prequel to all of them, by the way. I have heard that the game is super unfriendly to people who don't know anything about the stories from the other ones, but I dunno how much of that is true.

Definitely excited for this, thanks for posting. I haven't seen this yet :) So is it confirmed that Weiss is in this game if Liam O'Brien is in it?

I'm getting a huge Last Story vibe from the character design as well.

@xyzygy: I thiiiiiiiiiiiink Liam is voicing that dude on the ground towards the end of the trailer? Cent I think his name is? It'd be pretty cool to see Weiss, though!

@steadyingmeat: I seem to recall the Drakengard / Nier connection being really tenuous though, like one of the Drakengard endings has the main characters being sent to another world, which is far in the past of the Neir world (before even Weiss was created). There is however apparently some connection in the story between this game and Nier according to the producer, so who knows.

When you mentioned Yuri and Liam, I immediately went to "Yuri is the sadist kid, Liam is the masochist "

Also I'm pretty sure that other adherent or whatever that's not the big dicked old man is Travis Willingham. Also that one who speaks in the middle is Laura Bailey.

btw I am insanely excited for this.

*Chortles. Cackles. Laughs maniacally*

Out of context, snippets of Drakengard and Nier don't seem particularly noteworthy, either. But then you play them in full and everything about the world is fucked. Everything.

Sure, I've heard plenty about Nier already to know it's most certainly not what anyone could call 'ordinary'. I never knew it existed within the same universe as Drakengard though. Still, I've always wanted to give Nier a go, and I already own it at that, but hearing about its poor gameplay has always pushed me away and it feels like there's always something else I'm in the mood for. Oh well, one of these days...

Nier's gameplay really isn't that poor, honestly.

So you play as an asshole villain?

I'm guessing there will be plenty of twists and turns.

This is one of the games I'm most excited for for this year. The soundtrack alone is amazing, I would dare to say its on par with the Nier OST for me. I pre-ordered the CE as soon as it was available. I just recently played through Drakengard 2 and enjoyed it. Enough so that I want to play through Drakengard 1 before Drakengard 3 comes out so I can know more about Caim's story (yes I know the events of Drakengard 3 take place before 1). I didn't really care for Nowe much in Drakengard 2. Caim seems infinitely more interesting from the brief role he played in Drakengard 2. Also, his name is a lot cooler.

I'm not sure sure which voice option I will roll with come release. Not really crazy about how ENG Zero and ENG Mikhail sound. Thought their JP VO sounded much better. That may just be because I'm attached to the JP VO cause I listened to the Silence is Mine trailer about a thousand times on youtube for that song. Although, I typically don't play my games in JP VO if ENG is an option. This might be the first.

Nevertheless, pretty freakin' hyped for this game.

Apparently, yes.

This is all I've ever heard about the series. I don't have a problem with a game taking place in a world that's fucked up, but what purpose does that serve? What do they do with that? Everything I've heard about this series comes across as "darkness for darkness's sake", and that just doesn't sound all that interesting. Combine that with the fact that you're supposedly playing as someone psychotic and downright evil for no reason and I just don't see it. I don't like shitty people, I didn't like it in Grand Theft Auto and I didn't care to play the latter two God of War games either.

I guess it is worth mentioning that nothing about it sounds particularly generic, either, so there's that.

I am listening to the soundtrack right now and that does sound great, but I'm not buying a game for its soundtrack. I guess I'll get around to it someday just so I can see for myself, but so far I'm not sold on a game that makes you play as an asshole without any hint as to a reason for that.

There is very likely a reason for Zero to go around doing what she does in Drakengard 3. Not evil for the sake of dickery, but something is driving her to do what she does. In the original Drakengard, Caim starts off fighting in a war between two nations and forms a pact with a dragon in order to exact revenge on the enemy after he's left wounded and bleeding to death. Caim is always kind of psychotic, but the fact is that everything else about the world is fucked up, too. Not in the poorly written, satirical manner of GTA, but in the way that people are ruled by their selfishness, or harbor lusts that would ruin their lives if they were shared. It's not so much "dark for the sake of darkness" as it is just a story about fucked up people that live in a cruel, unfair world.

Seriously. The gameplay is brilliant if you have half an eye for what they're actually trying to do with it. Sure, the controls and feel aren't the best thing ever; this isn't a Platinum game or something. But people act like it plays like Pryzm or something. And that's just not the case. Hell, the gameplay is at least orders of magnitude better than Deadly Premonition's. And everyone here loves that game. And if people can be bothered to think something as dull as Assassin's Creed has decent combat, then there's nothing wrong with Nier's.

Let me start by saying that this doesn't sound like the series for you. But for what it's worth, Drakengard at least did grotesquely horrible awful with enough charisma and originality that it justifies it's shittiness. Nier, on the other hand, isn't just about horrible shitty people. It's about people who have horribly fucked up lives, and who sometimes do fucked up things, but there isn't the same sense of senselessness and hatefulness in Nier as there was in Drakengard. Hell, I would even call Nier a really awesome twist on the whole JRPG 'gang of weird unlikely heroes become friends and save the world through love and friendship' trope.

Wow, cool to see peeps on this site are looking forward to this! Also I just noticed they call the Grotesquerie head " giant baby head. " XD I mean, I guess that's far more to the point. :P

I can't listen to the full soundtrack yet (it wouldn't be right), and I SO WANT TO.

This Silence is Mine and Kuroi Uta are both so goddamn good

ugh:(

Words can't adequately express how excited I am for this fucking game.

I just hope the story is easy enough to follow; I haven't played the other two Drakengard games.

@jocund: It's a prequel, so you'll prooooobably be fine. Probably.

I may be remembering this wrong, but doesn't the Drakengard series have some pretty weird story related stuff? Weird stuff like incest.

Yowza!! That's wonderful, wow.

drakengard 1:

Caim (MC): Bloodthirsty mute

Furiae: Caim's sister, wants to bone him

Inuart: well okay he's just a big fuckup but he does turn evil

Arioch: elf lady whose hobbies include eating children

Leonard: human bro whose hobbies includes diddling children

Verdelet: the most annoying old man

so to answer your question, no

Oh man! That sounds leagues more interesting than any of the Drakengard 2 characters. Time to find a copy of Drakengard 1!

One thing to note is that, unfortunately, the English localization is toned down in an awkward way, and a lot of the characters'...eccentricities, aren't directly referenced or an attempt is made at writing them out. When Furiae's incestuous desire is revealed in the Japanese version, the English version just sort of tiptoes around it and doesn't directly explain why she kills herself out of utter shame and humiliation.

@hailinel: Boooooooooo

Tell me about it. Even so, the story is still a lot better than Drakengard 2, which very tellingly was not directed by the director of the original or Nier. It's not a terrible game, and gameplay-wise is much more refined than the original, but the story just doesn't have that same edge of insanity to it. Still, I was actually curious to try the original again and ordered a copy off of Amazon for myself for about $20 today.

@hailinel: I'm actually looking to do the same thing myself today. :P

@hailinel: Cool! I think I will do the same.

It's a game about a singing lady wanting to kill her sisters, all of whom are promiscuous dominatrices. You have a dragon who is practicaly a 6 year old and you're entire "team" consists of guys who are essentially your sex slaves. The main character has a flower sprouting from her eye.

Agreed. It's bland and has interesting systems that should have been used much, much better, but it doesn't hinder one's enjoyment of the game. It's average, if anything.

@believer258: Didn't we have this conversation before?

The primary theme to Drakengard/Nier is this: The fact that you're the protagonist, have a good goal or noble intentions does not make you automatically in the right. You can have a sympathetic reason for being a fucked up person, but that in no way justifies what the fuck you're doing. You deal with it and accept the consequences. Caim may be saving the world and may have a sympathetic backstory, but he's along for the ride because it allows him to murder things with a convenient excuse. Nier fucks up the world so hard because he's so blinded by his task that he never stops for a moment to ponder his actions or study the behavior of his enemies.

This is extended to the player, who accepts his goals as good at face value, because he's used to these sort of stories and because he lacks context, either because he can't know it or because he's not interested in knowing it. It's elegantly shown through Drakengard's endings: the player receives a pretty bittersweet ending, so he tries to 100% the game in hope of getting the "golden" ending, as is the custom in most games, only to receive bleaker and more depressing ones.

Drakengard 3 is an interesting inversion of all this: you play as a character who does not have an immediate excuse for her actions and who does not do things that could be mistaken for good, only for the game to reveal that there is a very good reason for what she does and how she does it.

I haven't played the second game, but I loved the first Drakengard. I really liked the way the story branches out, where different paths give you different perspectives of the story (a bit like a visual novel). I've been wanting to play Drakengard 2 for a while, but never got around to it.

However, that Drakengard 3 trailer doesn't really grab my interest much. I hope there's more substance to it than what's been shown in the trailer.

How is Nier connected to all of this? Because while the trailer didn't do that much for me I think the story sounds really interesting. So is it worth it to pickup Nier and play it before this game - let me just be clear I don't mean "is Nier worth playing" I specifically am asking if it's worth playing in relation to this game.

@humanity: The connection Nier has to Drakengard is realllllly vague and most people will probably completely miss it their first time through, or take it as a simple easter egg and nothing more. That said, I have no idea how much this game is actually going to reference Nier, or any of the other games in the series, so there's no telling if you should play Nier before this or not. But dude you should play Nier.

I hear it is a really interesting game that doesn't play all that amazing - a situation I'm no stranger to. As long as the story keeps my attention I'm willing to plod through medicore story, and lord knows I've been desperately searching for something to play (I played through Assassins Creed 3 and Blacklist recently, and I mean AC3..not Black Flag..although at least I cared about some stuff in that game whereas in Blacklist I felt like I put myself on Auto-Pilot and scarcely remember even playing the thing)

Where does the mediocrity of the gameplay lie exactly? It kind of looks like an action game from the few snippets of gameplay I saw. You actively have to dodge and attack. I assume there are some stats? Is it the combat that is boring?

@humanity: Yeah, it's an RPG with weapons and stuff to equip, etc. There's no skill points or anything, though. The gameplay is just running around and attacking/dodging and occasionally casting a spell. It works totally okay and you're never going to be fighting the controls, so don't worry about that. It's not great and super varied, but it's never bad. The only time I started getting kinda annoyed with the game is during fishing sidequest that goes on for a while. The fishing isn't hard or anything, it just takes a while. Oh yeah, the gardening side quests is really fucking boring too, but you can get through it with a guide really easily. If you even decide to do it in the first place, you don't have to to beat the game. :P

Overall, it's a totally okay game with a fantastic story, and really great music all the way through. It's definitely worth whatever price they're asking for it nowadays, which can't be more than 20 bucks at the store.

@steadyingmeat: Oooh, well, that's a relief. I think. Maybe.

Should I play the first Drakengard?

Holy shit this is a thing? I friggen loved drakengard 1. god now I want to play it again. I think it was one of the first games that I played for so long that I fell asleep while playing.

And whats this about "bad gameplay"? the gameplay is the thing I liked about the first game.

FUCKING YES!

Is her dragon's name Michael? And is anyone else getting very The Last Story vibes from the way the characters look, particularly the hair, eyes, and facial shape?

Also the girl saying "This is a story of 6 sisters..." is Estelle from Vesperia. Man, voice actors are really re-used in everything. Must be a field dying for new talent? Though I do admit, Liam O'Brien is amazing.

@xyzygy: From what little I've actually seen of the Last Story, you're right, the character models in this actually kinda do look like the ones in that game.

Also, his name's Mikhail. Not sure why she pronounces it " Micheal " early in the trailer and then pronounces it the correct way later. Hopefully that's intentional and not just a weird oversight.

EDIT: Also also, thanks for reminding me that this is coming out on the 20th. Can't wait!

It makes sense that you get a vibe from The Last Story. The Drakengard character designer worked on The Last Story. :)

@hailinel: Ah, well there ya go!

I...didn't know this was coming out so soon.

I might just hafta buy it.

@deadpancakes: You should! Even though they're not fantastic games, Drakengard is still a very cool/weird series that more people should play. It's also only 40 dollars. :P

@steadyingmeat: Yeah, I never played the first two, but I did read up on them after recently playing Nier for the first time. I really like the idea that the series seems to evoke feelings of discomfort, but not to an overbearing extent. It's just not something I've really seen in games besides horror ones, and even then, those're all about the extremity. Also the 40 dollar-thing is really selling me on it.

So would this be worth getting if I've never played Drakengard 1? Anyone know how closely it's related to the rest of the series?

I liked Nier enough to play it twice, which is something I rarely do even with games I really love. So I'd be interested in checking out something that's even remotely related to it.

Drakengard 3 is set before the events of the rest of the series. Story-wise, you don't need to play the other games first, though it likely has some references for those that have played them.

So I just realized this is PS3 only - man what a weird move.. This late in the generation and they're releasing a niche exclusive? It's a real bummer since I've all but boxed up my PS3 and put it in the attic.