With the tremendous success of Kingdom Hearts having proved that you can toss iconic characters in a blender no matter how disparate their backgrounds, we’re actually surprised no one has thought of doing it on a smaller scale until now. Or perhaps we should say larger — a new RPG revealed in this week’s issue of Famitsu is a collaboration of five different companies: Atlus, Capcom, Gust, Idea Factory, Namco Bandai and Nippon Ichi.
Titled Cross Edge (クロスエッジ), the game sounds like it’s pretty much Kingdom Hearts all the way through. According to Kotowari, who translated part of the Famitsu scan, the story goes something like this:
The main characters wake up after suddenly being sucked into a different world. This world can only survive by feeding off of the souls of other dimensions. It does this by literally sucking souls out of other worlds, and into itself.
Each world is of course based on a different RPG, and you’ll be fighting alongside familiar characters from each series. The following worlds and characters are confirmed thus far:
- Darkstalkers (including Morrigan, Felicia and Dimitri)
- Disgaea (Etna)
- Ar Tonelico (Misha, Shurelia, Aurica)
- Spectral Souls (Meu)
- Mana Khemia 2 (Roze, Lilia, Marie)
Just as Kingdom Hearts featured all-new characters Sora, Rikku and Kairi as its protagonists, here a pair of youths named Yuuto Kannagi and Makoto Aiba will take the lead. Perhaps they’re the work of the game’s actual developer, Compile Heart; known in the U.S. only for budget Wii title Octomania.
Kotaku has an excellent scan up, and we recommend checking out more translated details on the story and combat system at Kotowari.
Cross Edge is slated for a September 2008 release in Japan, so you’ve got plenty of time to start your internet petitions for a localized release.
UPDATE: Kotowari points out we crossed our development/distribution wires; Capcom, not Atlus, is included among the five RPG facilities collaborating on this project.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Hey,
Thanks for linking to my article! Just one thing, though–Atlus isn’t involved in the project, but Capcom is. Here’s the Famitsu article: http://www.famitsu.com/game/coming/1215021_1407.html
You can see the companies in English in the copyright at the bottom of the post.
Thanks again for the linkage, keep up the good work!