Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

"Frontline Mission" is the machine warfare theme chess RPG launched by Skerwell (now Square Enix) since 1995. Although it is far less well-known than the same type of "Super Robot Wars", it still has a group of loyal fans around the world, supporting the series to launch five authentic and a large number of foreign biographies with different ways of playing in a decade.

Among domestic players, "Frontline Task 1st" on SFC and "Frontline Task 4" on PS2 are also the feelings of many people.

However, after 2005, the series has basically been left out in the cold, and there is little news about it. Like a large number of small and medium-sized production SRPG, it has become the "tears of the times".

Things took a turn for the better at the beginning of this year-after SE announced at the beginning of the year that it would launch a remake of the first three works of the series on NS, domestic developer Zilong also released a promotional video for its new work "2089: the Border", which will be a new derivative of the "Frontline Mission" series and is expected to launch on mobile phones, PC and mainframe platforms.

This is seen by fans as a chance to be reborn as a "frontline task", but recently, things have taken a turn for the worse.

First, after a ticket jump, the remaking version of "Frontline Task 1st" was sold almost quietly at the end of November, with the poor quality of the finished product and almost failed to attract any new players; on the other hand, the Purple Dragon announced today that it would cancel the cooperation with SE on the "frontline task", while launching a new original machine armour project "Gang Lan".

For the followers of the series, such a turning point undoubtedly once again cast a shadow over the prospect of "frontline tasks", and for SE, which has frequently "capsized" cooperative projects in recent years, this situation seems to come as no surprise to everyone.

In recent years, 1SE has made many attempts to revive its old IP, not only the main projects such as "final Fantasy 7 Remake", but also a number of projects such as "Nordic Goddess", "Ocean of the Stars" and "Legend of the Holy Sword". The form of restart varies from HD reproduction to long-lost new works.

Of the seven new games released by SE on Steam, six are old IP restarts or remake "frontline tasks" is one of these revival projects, but it is also a particularly ill-fated one.

In the past, "Frontline Mission" was the representative of "real department" in machine warfare type games.

This kind of "reality" does not refer to realistic reality in the practical sense. After all, the basic combat unit in the game is still "biped mecha", which alone is not quite in line with the "realism" in the military sense. However, on this basis, the "frontline task" has many logical self-consistent details that can highlight the "sense of reality".

For example, each machine armor in the game is divided into several parts, including "cockpit", "limbs" and "back". These parts have independent blood strips in combat, and different parts will have a corresponding impact if they are broken. Therefore, it is a common strategy in this game to unload the opponent's machine armor as a "human stick" in battle.

On the other hand, "Frontline Mission" often uses the city as a battle stage, with mechs shuttling between buildings and buildings, and combat performances are not as wild as "Super Series" works. the picture usually shows several mechs pulling close range and shooting at each other.

The official derivative cartoon "Frontline Mission DOG LIFE & DOG STYLE" spends a lot of pen and ink to express this atmosphere of "reality and fantasy interlaced", so whether it is the rhythm or picture of the battle, "Frontline Mission" often gives people a "stereotyped" feeling, but for fans of the series, it is this kind of down-to-earth feeling that is exciting. Not to mention in the preparation stage, players can also assign parts to their own armor, by collecting a wide variety of weapons and parts to match their own powerful body.

This DIY style is the main refreshing point in the game of "Frontline Mission", and it is similar to FromSoftware's "Armored Core" series. Although the latter is an action shooting game, the pair, who have also fallen into a long silence, are often compared, and there are high calls for a "restart" among veteran players.

When FromSoftware became a front-line studio with works such as the Dark Soul and the Curse of consanguinity, many speculated that the Armored Core series might also have a chance to make a comeback, but surprisingly, Panzer Core producer Toshihiro Takashima moved from FS to SE in 2015 and began to work on a new film.

The game, called "Left Alive", was eventually released in 2019 as a prequel to "Frontline Mission", which combines the setting of "Frontline Task" with the play of "Armored Core". As a result, both word-of-mouth and sales are dead, from the picture to the gameplay system is almost useless, and is seen as a "black history" that tarnishes both the reputation of "Frontline Mission" and "Armored Core".

Due to the poor reviews after the launch, the game cut its price in half just a few days after its launch. The failed test is considered to nail down the coffin board for the "Frontline Mission" series, and not many people want it to have a second chance in 2022.

2 Polish studio Forever Entertainment is responsible for the reproduction of the first three works of "Frontline Mission". In recent years, this studio has been involved in the reproduction of classic old games, including "Iron frame Flying Dragon" and "House of the Dead".

The first work of the reproduction series was released not long ago, and the development team faithfully restored the levels and settings of a generation of games with high-definition 3D models, and added a number of new features that are more in line with modern game habits, such as skipping animation and speeding up performance. unfortunately, games still give people a sense of "limited funding" everywhere, in addition to old fans who can feel the feelings of producers, it is difficult to attract new players to try such games.

The relevant personnel of SE once said bluntly in the interview that there was no plan to reproduce these works, but that the cooperation was facilitated by the very active proposal provided by Forever Entertainment.

Such a statement, of course, highlights the sincerity of the Forever Entertainment side, but in terms of the results, the SE side really does not provide any practical support, and even the publicity is only "so far".

It is conceivable that Zilong, which leads the "2089: the Border" project, is mostly in a similar situation.

"Dream Simulation War" and "Heaven and Earth robbery: the return of the City" are two previous masterpieces of Zilong, which, like Border, are authorized by IP and are developed by BlackJack Studio, which specializes in SRPG mobile games, at least in the picture and game level.

There has always been a saying that Zilong used to license unpopular old works such as "Dream Simulation War" and "Heaven and Earth robbery" not entirely out of commercial considerations, but largely to satisfy the personal feelings of its boss. and from the "frontline mission" popular era and audience, it is almost the same.

SE also didn't give Border any positive publicity, but Zilong still has more room than a small Polish studio, having previously produced a high-quality promotional film for the game.

"2089: the Border" is a mobile-based full-platform game, and its consumption mode is to improve the probability of acquiring pilots and mecha parts through krypton gold in the game, which makes it difficult for some fans of the original work to accept. But at the same time, in previous open tests, "2089: the Border" performed well in terms of picture and performance, and the play and storytelling atmosphere were quite the essence of the original, restoring to a considerable extent the fun of customized mecha and strategic combat.

From accessories to color matching, the freedom of customized machine armor can also be regarded as the highest in the series. In view of the precedent of "Left Alive", even players who do not like F2P mode are difficult to deny that it may not be able to achieve such a "mobile game level" if we are asked to do a new SRPG work of "frontline task".

After the project was made public, some interactions on the domestic social accounts of Border can also be seen that the domestic followers of Border are more players of the original Purple Dragon game than the old fans of the series, and they are more concerned about what new fun "Custom Mecha" can bring to the game as a SRPG than the previous "attribute restraint" of Dream War and Heaven and Earth robbery.

Compared with the previous Zilong's own chess game, Frontier also shows a lot of new ideas in the game. compared with the common "fight against momentum by authorized IP", this cooperation still tends to Zilong's tradition of "taking advantage of the unpopular feelings of the old IP and seeking mutual success." Overseas, however, players know little about the company, and the title of "Frontline Mission" and the released content of the game have attracted attention.

The game has previously opened Chinese language tests for domestic players only, but overseas fans of the series are still interested in it. The video related to the player's spontaneous move to the oil pipeline has been played a lot, and most people say that the real content of the game is quite in line with their expectations for a new "frontline mission".

Many people were surprised that some of the images seen in the previous video were real phones, and it was overseas followers who first noticed that something was wrong: just a few days ago, the official account of "Border" on Twitter suddenly disappeared, the promotional video was deleted, and the Japanese media asked SE for confirmation but did not get a response.

Then, the "Border" in the domestic social accounts are also offline one by one, and then the official launched a publicity for "Gang Lan".

3 in the official announcement, Zilong did not explain the direct cause of the termination, but interpreted it as "in order to have more continuity and control in content creation", and obviously wanted to express "termination of the contract on its own initiative".

As for SE, it still acts as if it never happened.

While the Ganglan project was made public, it was also announced that the game was about to start a new round of testing. Through the newly released content, it is not difficult to find that the game retains the game in which the mecha parts can be freely matched and broken one by one, and breaks the original framework in combat, with more mirrors and performances.

The real-time rendering of the plot has also become more smooth in contrast, while the Western-style vertical painting, which has been criticized during the previous test, has been replaced with a new version, with a realistic style of machine armor interlaced with 2DLive characters.

Judging from various signs, most of the original "Border" is a derivative work with a high degree of originality. In addition to the authorization of IP, I am afraid that SE rarely interferes with the specific content of play and setting, and the announcement that "for the freedom of content creation" does not seem to be the core reason for termination.

However, outside the content of the game, I noticed that there were some side effects in the promotion of Border-the original CG promotional film mentioned above once encountered "harmony", and the scene of artillery bombardment machine armour in the first version of the film was mosaic with the help of the text Logo.

The above picture is the initial release version, and the picture below is the harmonious version, which is obviously baffling. Today, we still see these two versions of Chinese promotional videos in China, while overseas, the relevant promotional videos are basically replaced with the latter or deleted. Combined with all kinds of information, it can be speculated that the propaganda stalls coincided with the turbulent months in Europe.

Repeated "twists and turns" like this occurred many times in the overseas publicity process of "Border", so that when its domestic accounts were still interacting with followers, a number of its overseas accounts fell silent even earlier. There is a more or less attitude of "more than less".

Now, the original "Border" overseas account, no matter how many fans, has directly emptied the deleted account. It can be seen that the contradiction between the two sides mostly lies not only in the content of the game itself, but also in the external factors of these publicity, especially the purple dragon is not the only one who has had a similar conflict with SE recently.

SE's series of old IP and veteran producer revival plans are undoubtedly a good idea, avoiding the current "3A volume" and responding to the voices of many players.

But as far as the actual results are concerned, most of these projects are visible to the naked eye as "limited funds". Producers cannot make bricks without rice, and SE often prices these works "equally" at $60, regardless of the player's response.

The "fall of Babylon", which has been suspended for half a year, is also one of the hallmarks of this practice, which is now jokingly called "open-blind box" development by players. It is believed that SE tried to do the same after the success of "Neil: mechanical era", spreading the net with quite limited funds and publicity resources, handing over its IP to external partners to see if it could take a chance to make another popular style.

Even Yoko Taro, the producer of Neil, has repeatedly euphemistically said that the development funds at that time were really stretched, and he made a fairly satisfactory result by going to the platinum studio every day to supervise his work. And he doesn't want to go through that kind of hell-style development anymore.

Yuji Nakagi, a well-known producer who changed jobs from Sega to SE, sued SE in a lawsuit this year, saying that during the development of "Wonderland of Balaam," SE fired its producer midway, and half a year later, together with Arzest Studio, which is responsible for external development, he still released the work at full price, knowing that the game development had not been completed, and still bears his name.

Coincidentally, the semi-finished game is a strong competitor to the "worst game of the year" in 2021, he also accused SE's publicity department of completely disrespecting developers and understanding players, such as not allowing the use of the original soundtrack in the promotion process, rather than using an adaptation of the main UP master of the piano on the tubing, and even citing Yuji Nakai's refusal to compromise as a reason for his transfer.

Recently, however, Nakayusi was arrested twice for leaking information about his company's involvement in investment and insider trading during SE, which is believed to be the reason why he was held aloof at SE, and some people think it was revenge for his dismantling and suing SE.

Regardless of Nakayushi's personal situation, SE is not difficult for even ordinary players to take a glimpse of the confusion in the management and promotion of these external cooperation projects. "Frontline Mission" is just one of the victims.

Conclusion compared with the previous "breakup" between Blizzard and NetEase, the termination of the contract between Zilong and SE is negligible, but we can still feel the change in the status of domestic game manufacturers in the global game industry.

The authorization of a well-known IP used to be a lifesaver for many domestic mobile game developers, and whether you can "get it right" and "get it right" may be the difference between life and death for a game; but in the past, players generally tend to feel that domestic manufacturers are in a weak position and passively terminate their contracts.

However, such a situation is rare nowadays, and most domestic developers are more willing to create their own original content, while even external cooperation often attaches more importance to their own voice over the content, seeking mutual benefit, sometimes even playing the role of "helping save the old IP" as a white knight.

Specific to today's "Gang Lan", from its newly released content, it is difficult to say what negative impact this termination has had on it: the core selling point of the game is still there, and it is likely to become freer to accept other linked content after that. Some players are even expecting the well-received "Cherry Blossom War" linkage in "Dream Simulation War" to be introduced into the new work. So that players can create their own "rice cooker" machine armor according to the parts.

Not limited to domestic or overseas, more than developers and players need to adapt to this change may be people who used to lie down and sell licenses to make money.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: fish and dunes

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.