Tri-Ace Mystery RPG Revealed

Tri-ace's mystery RPG project, announced on April 1st, got its full unveiling today through Famitsu. Continuing the naming tradition of Infinite Undiscovery, the next title from the company is titled End of Eternity. And in a surprise move, the publisher of this multiplatform PS3 and Xbox 360 RPG won't by Square Enix, but Sega!

End of Eternity takes place far in the future on an Earth whose environment has gotten so bad that people have moved into a giant mechanized tower called Bazel. This tower reaches far up into the sky. The upper floors house religious facilities, including the religious leader who's known as the "Cardinal," and the rich. The lower floors house the poor as well as mining areas.

Bazel's creation is far in the past as the game kicks off. We're introduced to three characters: the 17-year-old male Zaphyr, the 26-year-old male Vashyron, and the 19-year-old female Subject #20. Zaphyr, the game's main character, and Vashyron live together and work for a private military firm. Subject #20 was manufactured for an experiment which required that she be set to die at 20 years of age. Upon learning how little she has to live, she fled her research facility.

Gameplay in End of Eternity is split between fields spanning the floors of Bazel and the dungeons that are located on those floors. These two areas of the game have different movement systems. In the fields, you view the action from an overhead view and move your party about on a hexagonal grid, encountering enemies at random. During dungeons, you move your character about in third person and can see your enemies in advance, transitioning seamlessly into battle when spotted.

The battle system (this appears to be shared between both fields and dungeons) takes place in semi-realtime and gives you control of one character out of a three character party. When you're moving about on the battle field, time progresses as you engage in flashy gun fights. Once your move ends, time freezes, allowing you to strategically plan your attack.

There's still a lot of mystery surrounding the battle system, and all of End of Eternity for that matter. Details will presumably be more abundant on Friday as the game's official site opens up at eoe.sega.jp. Sega and Tri-Ace will be putting up movies and more at that site, so those who love their JRPG should definitely check it out.

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/970/970964p1.html