Lost Soul Aside

Meanwhile, in indie land...     

It's always a little cool to see another 'little game that could' take the spotlight and come into it's own in an incredibly special way. I'm talking a game that was borne from the mind of a single developer who simply fell in love with an old trailer, and now is getting it's own E3 spots and is hiring for a full team; truly inspiring stuff. But then, we're not just talking about 'any' old guy rocking up and making a game- even at basic inception this title was oozing talent and style to a significant degree and so maybe this was a project always destined for greatness. Heck, if one guy working on his lonesome can even approximate the quality of a Square Enix product, he's got to have something special up in the ol' noggin. That's unfair levels of talented. Like- Anime protagonist levels of genetic unbalancing. But the spectacle revolving the story around the game is but a taste of the whole meal, and I want a balanced look at the full feast that Lost Soul Aside has to offer.

First of all, you may look at the game and say; "huh, Noctis from Final Fantasy XV looks different." And there is a reason for that. As the legend goes, all the way back when Final Fantasy was proposing to make a 'Versus XIII' video game, (Which would then become XV) one guy called Yang Bing was very interested in the project and specifically how it looked. He would follow the first full action Final Fantasy game with bated breath, and when gameplay dropped with it's flashy, particle strewn style to it, he found himself rather inspired. The Final Fantasy game would obviously continue to move on and shift from there, eventually becoming FFXV and changing the very focus of the game to be less deliberately edgy and dark, but Yang Bing would remain fixated on that first vision for the game that originally swept him away and would eventually go to Unreal Engine 4 to recreate it. Now, 9 out of 10 times this would result in an amateurish clone that isn't really worth showing off to anyone, but 2016 saw the showcase of easily one of the most impressive looking projects I've ever seen, at least from one man.

It looked almost identical to the work that FFXV was going for, with that surreal realistic looking skin pores and general realistic fantasy world features atop the general anime shape to the aesthetic, to the point it was actually wild to consider this wasn't even on the same engine. The animation job was a little jumpy, but still incredibly well done and flashy, perfectly imitating what would go on to become the warping particle effect that Noctis favors; though in this version of the game it was clear that our designer went a tad overboard from the garishly opaque wake with each sword swing. (That would have made combat very frustrating in the bigger encounters; something that even 'professional' games with budgets and studios like Godfall get wrong.) Our man here even went above and beyond what FF would do and put a decent amount of launching and vertical follow-ups to combat, more reminiscent of Devil May Cry and enemy juggling moves you'd see in that series. Though it was clear the thing was more of a showcase than a project; it was a damn impressive showcase.

I remember seeing glimpses of this back in the day and thinking; oh, that's incredible, but it's not a real game right? But it seems I just wasn't paying attention because Yang Bing has been working to realise this project on Playstation consoles for a while now. Whether born out of a desire to bring back the Final Fantasy XV that he loved, or simply to pursue a career he has absolute potential in, Bing has working on this project for the past 5 years at least and is slowly expanding it in scope to be worthy of selling on the largest gaming storefront in the world, (not including mobile) and it's definitely coming together! I don't know how long this game was worked on in it's entirety, but it's at least edging close to the development time that FFXV proper went on, only with a seemingly clearer vision behind it guiding the ship. I, for one, am pleased we're getting the chance to finally see the fruits of his labours as the project steadily comes to now the next generation of consoles.

Earlier this year Lost Soul Aside resurfaced with a hefty trailer to show off all that had been worked on in that time, and now we can truly see the bones of a game really coming together. Animation for one seems just that hair's breadth smoother, whilst retaining the pace of a Dragon Ball Z anime fight; although speaking of DBZ, I did notice a certain similarity to the sound of sword swings in this new trailer and the iconic DB Instant Transmission sound effect. (It's not identical, but I wouldn't be surprised if the there wasn't a send-up in mind when the SE was mixed) The Opaque wake to attacks still exists, but it seems less universal this time around and reserved for special attacks thus making the screen less needlessly messy. (I'm still not a fan of the effect in general, but I will say this a better approach) And the general graphical quality might have improved, but it's still mostly similar to the reveal which just goes to demonstrate how much legs this look is proving to have. It's still impressive even now.

And yet the game still isn't near done yet, in fact our Developer Creator man hasn't even provided a prospective release date; demonstrating rather handily that our man certainly has a bit more professional pride to him than, say, the Activision Blizzard team in recent years. (I have my views on the whole Warcraft III report coming later) You can sort of see why in the recent footage; one scene in which the protagonist slides down an impressive array of explosions in a set piece display clearly demonstrates a lack of animation on the Avatar's part, with him just sort of gliding still-as-a-statue and not responding to turns or drops or the laws of physics. And yet even that is overshadowed by just the speed with which this game moves from one place to another, almost bringing to mind fond memories of the Metal Gear Rising Revengence days. (Although to be honest I might be rose-tinting my own memories there, this could easily be faster paced than that)

But is this title worthy of the PS5? I think that remains to be seen quite yet. I mean sure, a PS5 port would work fine for this game provided it's built for, and releases on PS4 simultaneously; but when comparing this to PS5 exemplars like Demon Souls there isn't really a competition. (Which there shouldn't be; Bluepoint are an entire team of experienced professionals after all.) Questions of pure quality are pretty moot at this point, Lost Soul Aside has a demon heading it's production and he's no slacker when it comes to feeding his baby. Who can say what sort of polish this game needs to undergo before it's deemed worthy of release, taking into account the level it was at 5 years ago, all we can say is that when it does release, it'll be the gold standard of independent projects everywhere.

Typically games like this aren't really my cup of tea, I'll admit; hack and slashers only speak to me when there's a solid story or a great world behind it, and from the little I've seen I'm getting the impression that our developer here isn't much of a writer. But that's beside the point, on it's own the Lost Soul Aside game is a must follow for what it represents, a video game free of the corporate bull that's descended on all the mainstays of the industry, a hope that high quality gorgeous traditional genre games can still be made by smaller teams and a promise that the talented and driven out there can make a success story out of nothing through sheer will. So maybe Yang Bing is an Anime protagonist and we're all just side characters in his arc, I just hope the eventual release (whatever decade that's scheduled for) doesn't become a prototypical betrayal too.