I don't typically rock up to view online game reveal events anymore, outside of the incidental reveals promised at big shows like 'Replacement E3' and The Game Awards. Not that I'm opposed to anything they represent, I just find them previously short on worthwhile games to get excited for because more often or not they exist as merely a 'catch up' on all the blockbuster games we've heard about from the last big event and a reminder that they exist. Take the surprisingly quick Playstation State of Play for example and let's add up what we saw there... Resident Evil 4 VR Mode- (a predictable update for a game that already exists), Spiderman 2 (Playstation's poster boy first party title) and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. (Still not even an ETA on the PC release. God, Sony are scumbags sometimes...) Nothing life changing or eye brow raising to speak of. But then we had this year's Nintendo conference with a little bit of a surprise which wormed right into the cold dead organ I call a heart.
Ah but what could it be? What could possible stir the slumbering beast after it was spoiled rotten gorging on the veritable feast that was Baldur's Gate 3? The game that made me giggle, weep and smile for well over the hundred hour mark as I was reminded once again what it felt like to play a game worth playing. It wasn't just a rose-tinted sensation lost to time, but a real phenom that can be account for! Games can still be fun and cool and awesome. And sometimes a game that you would never normally gravitate towards worms it's way across simply because of the property it's attached to. Even I can't hide myself away from the cuteness that is a Spy X Family game borrowing right from the anime and starring everyone's favourite telepathic girl, Anya.
'SPY X ANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES' borrows from the world of espionage and assassins to tell the story of the low key star of the entire franchise as she finds herself tasked with making a photo diary from Eden College. Honestly this sounds like the kind of game you'd expect for lovers of the Pokemon Snap series of games, those who find joy in synthetic virtues of entirely virtual photography, although to be the fairest that I can be I do have something of an addiction to in-game photo modes whenever they're available to me so perhaps a photo-centric game is just the natural next step evolution for me. (I was so upset when I found out Starfield's photo mode had a really strict limit to the amount of pictures you could take. ANYA's first game better be more forgiving because I'm the kind of freak who tries to capture everything.)
Of course this borrows from a world that is writhe international geopolitical tension of two nations on the brink of war, and part of the foil of having Anya be the key character is to remind the audience what and who it is that Loid and his organisation are fighting to protect. One might naturally assume then that a game set within this universe might touch upon the highly confidential life of Loid as he attempts to balance his duties to the state with looking after his daughter, or perhaps Yor and her mysterious assassination missions she is programmed to perform by her shady handlers. Instead we have what sounds like a life simulator from the perspective of the one person everyone else tries their hardest to appear normal around. Colour me intrigued, but I'm fascinated to see what they end up doing with this.
What we've been presented with so far seems almost deceptively straightforward, we're told the game will cover the daily musings of Anya as she lives with Loid and Yor, goes on trips to locations featured in the anime and engages in minigames opposite a decidedly dead-faced looking Damian. But anyone who has seen the show knows that these situations are typically always the public-facing lie hiding the crazy antics behind the scenes. Anya is only ever taken on a trip when the Forger family are keeping up appearances or Loid has a task from WISE and needs to perform it around the family 'ooting'. Will we be spotting Agent Twilight as he slinks after bad guys, will we stumble after him and find ourselves toe-to-toe with defusing a bomb? There's several directions a game like this could go to be more than meets the eye.
I know that bringing it up makes me seem like a little bit of an obsessive, but I can't help but compare the concept for this game with the Persona series, at least in it's procedural conceit. In that the game plays out a double life of being a normal student in the day and whatever fantastical hero you need to be during your downtime hours in the TV world, or the Dark Hour, or The Metaverse. I'm a long time lover of that special balancing act and if SPY X ANYA has anything like that up it's sleeve than I'm just gonna eat it all the way up! Afterall, I think the juxtaposition between intensity and mundanity highlights the special benefits of both and has us appreciate those moments of quiet peace all the more, which is what makes them so essential. Mountains only become more imposing when cut around by rings of deep valleys.
One aspect which I'm a little iffy on, however, is the visual choices. I mean sure, it matches the Anime at a basic glance, but only because the team went for the most obvious '3D anime model' design they could have gone for, which perhaps belies the lower budget effort going into a game like this. It's not like Dragon Ball Fighterz where the dimensional benefits of the 2D world were played upon to create a gloriously unique and true-to-life 3D style. What we have here is more akin to what those action adventure SpongeBob games did, leaving in their wake the models that would go on to be recycled by enterprising amateur blender artists for such masterpieces as 'Mister Crabs Overdoses on Ketamine and dies' and the various 'SpongeBob rapping' videos. Will we get an Anya rapping series? It could work... (Maybe when the Switch 2 comes along we'll start seeing more ambitious visual efforts.)
What excites me most about SPY X ANYA is not the game itself, but rather the potential for what it could herald in the future. The SPY X FAMILY world might seem pretty laid out, but the truth is that the long spanning comic has always been more of a side-project doodle job from the Mangaka who created it. The world, it's lore, the direction of the characters, none of that has been especially heavily worked on and even the Anime has to put in some work to extend page long stories into more developed plotlines. With games now entering into the conversation I can see the chance for real headway to be made in developing the story with games that can touch upon largely underserved sectors of the gaming market. Who else would just love to see a Loid-focused stealth game? I bet Hideo Kojima would love to see Japan try their hands at that field again! Potential brims in this one, just you wait!
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