September Musings about Front Mission

And it is official – Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style will be ending on October 5, 2012, with the release of the tenth and final omnibus volume shortly after on October 25, 2012. The critically-acclaimed series began back in March 2007, so it will have been in circulation for a little over five-and-a-half years. And once it’s all done, Front Mission will finally come to a close.

Aside from that, please check out our newest patch updates on the Front Mission 2 project. As promised, we found a solution to the compatibility issue between the original, History, and Ultimate Hits versions of the video game. I would highly recommend any users who own physical copies of the original Front Mission 2 to do the data conversion. As mentioned earlier, there are some significant changes from the original to the History version (which the Ultimate Hits version is based off of) that make the latter the definitive Front Mission 2 experience.

1. The addition of a Quick Battle option, a feature also seen in the PlayStation version of Front Mission First, to skip the battle sequences.
2. Programming changes for loading time optimization, ensuring faster load times.
3. Several game crashing bugs fixed.
4. Gameplay data naming conventions fixed (ie. the wanzer Heil is renamed Hayle).

Also, there are new dialogues or event scenes which only occur in the History version. Without getting into too much detail, we noticed that many event scenes had new dialogue sections in the coding. A lot of these dialogues are character-related and further fleshes their personalities. The team didn’t get to test out where all of the triggers for these dialogues occur, but we found it intriguing how there was a fair bit of new content that wasn’t announced in public. In terms of the event scenes, they’re not really “new”…rather, they were “blocked” from being seen by the player. In a series of interviews with Dengeki GAMES in February 2004, the developers admitted to deliberately crashing parts of the video game so certain plot details would remain secret until they had released more pieces of the puzzle. These glitches were then “fixed” in the History re-release. It’s a bit of a long story, so we’ll explain this some other time. Speaking of Front Mission, it’s been interesting reading up the comments on the “The End” and the “Testimonials” sections. Keep those comments and opinions coming, everyone!

Unlike say Suikoden, Xenosaga, or Shenmue, all Japanese franchises with ambitious storytelling designs that unfortunately will remain incomplete, Front Mission achieved its original vision. However, did you know that there were some Front Mission stories which were supposed to be released, but never made it into fruition?

Front Mission hybrid TBS/RTS spin-off – After Front Mission 3, there was supposed to be a third genre spin-off set between Front Mission Alternative and the main Front Mission storyline. This spin-off would combine turn-based strategy (TBS) and real-time strategy (RTS) elements, as the team noted in the same Dengeki GAMES interviews. Why didn’t it happen? Well, Square Co., Ltd. diverted a lot of their resources into the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie and their PlayOnline service in 1999. A part of that meant laying off their employees…and that included the Front Mission team. While the concept was explored by some developers who were hired to make Ring of Red, the spin-off never materialized. A shame too, as it would have made it more obvious to people that Front Mission video games should be embraced with an open mind because it’s not just “turn-based strategy”.

Gun Hazard 2 – A perennial fan request in Japan, there were always intentions to create a Gun Hazard 2. No one, including Toshiro Tsuchida, knew when to make this a reality though. This video game was a huge possibility after the “end” of the main Front Mission storyline, and according to the Japanese Front Mission Evolved strategy guide, it was indeed in the works. Shinji Hashimoto also hinted at this in an early Front Mission Evolved interview in a Gamespot video…which I hope wasn’t taken down because I can’t find it. What happened to it? Well, the original idea of Gun Hazard 2 being developed by the Front Mission team wasn’t deemed feasible according to management so it became…Front Mission Evolved.

Video games aside, there should have been more Front Mission novels as noted in the said Dengeki GAMES interviews. One novel was meant to act as a bridge between Front Mission 2 and Front Mission 3, and was supposed to be published around the latter’s release. According to Hideo Iwasaki of the franchise’s writing team, there were scheduling conflicts with the novelist who was assigned to it. Iwasaki noted that someone else could have taken the reigns, but Tsuchida doesn’t like it when work is entrusted to someone he doesn’t feel is the right person suited for the job. There was also another novel set between Front Mission Alternative and the main Front Mission storyline. Iwasaki gave this reason as why it never got made – it was linked to the story of that planned hybrid TBS/RTS spin-off, so no go.

That about sums up what kind of Front Mission things the world could have gotten, but were never made. There were other ideas that Tsuchida and the writing team thought up of, such as a live-action television miniseries in the style of 24, but these ideas hinged largely on Front Mission achieving its desired impact on the world…and that never happened. Luckily, they had planned the storyline to have contingencies, or “trap doors” as J. Michael Straczynski of Bablyon 5 fame would say, in case the original vision couldn’t be fully completed. It just stinks that there could have been more to the whole transmedia than there already is!

And on more random musings, the team learned a little bit more about the man behind this grand vision. We already noted a lot of the things Tsuchida has taken an interest in through our transmedia analysis, but did you know he’s a huge fan of Red Faction and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six? Or that his film tastes vary from thrillers like Deja Vu and Conspiracy Theory to dramas like I Am Sam? Or that he’s rumored to be lurking around somewhere in Battlefield 3?