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PSO2: More Default Character Designs

December 2, 2011December 2, 2011 Ricardo Leave a comment

Hello, Sakai updated today talking about the concepts behind the character designs and showed off some more costume for the default characters. In addition, the main theme and opening movie for PSO2 is almost complete. It's not a song per say, but rather an orchestral recording. If all goes well, he may be able to show it to you before the end of the year.

Default Character Concepts

In PSO you weren't really able to completely change the costume for your character. So each class had to have their own characterizations (and personalities) as much as possible. In a sense you could say the PSO classes were designed like characters of a fighting game.

PSU introduced the concept of changing clothes on a character. Putting on a combination of clothes became an important point for customization. But with this concept, the overall figure of the characters seemed too similar as if they lacked a part of their individuality.

In PSP2, the clothes and parts were still based on PSU, however they added one piece outfits for the default characters as well as aimed for a design direction closer to PSO. These outfits tend to let the default characters stand out apart from the story characters. This idea continued on in Infinity.

In PSO2, the goal of these costumes is to design them with the freedom as a scifi fantasy online game and create equipment the armed forces "Arks" would wear. While adopting the concept of Phantasy Star Online, the art team used their experiences from PSP2 and PSP2i to create these default costumes.

There are lots of new costumes other than the character defaults which they haven't shown yet.

In the last post, Sakai received differing opinions about the new icons ranging from how they were easy to understand to how they were still difficult to decipher. Even the development team exchanged similar concerns and opinions. But the corrections made towards Alpha Test 2 doesn't just stop at the icons, the overall interface underwent some changes too. It may be difficult to respond to all the feedback, but while reflecting the views of the development team, they want to also make something that sympathizes with the concerns made by the players. He thanks you all for sending your opinions.

Default Characters Designs

Now as for today's porori images, Sakai will show a different pose than the ones shown in the email newsletter and some new default character designs.

Fonewearl Costume.

Fonewm Costume

Focaseal Costume

FoCast Costume

PSO2: Alpha Test 2 Costumes Fonewearl and Focaseal

November 30, 2011November 30, 2011 Ricardo 15 Comments

Early goodmorning! Bonkohara released the first email newsletter for those who just signed up for the email newsletter. If you did, you have a chance at receiving invitations for the second alpha test. In addition a new December wallpaper was released featuring the Oracle Fleet.

The second alpha test plans to add new costumes (which were already on display in the TGS version). Here's a nice and clean closeup of what they will look like.

FoNewearl

You may have seen this costume already in concept images and videos. Here her face paint is similar to the one shown on her concept artwork.

FoCaseal

The Focaseal never appeared in Phantasy Star Online, so this costume is a new design. It seems to give the impression of a magical girl and appears sort of doll-like.

Phantasy Star Online 2: Icon Changes

November 25, 2011November 25, 2011 Ricardo Leave a comment

Sakai updated this morning with the third revolution for Phantasy Star Online 2, which is its ultimate character creation! But instead of going through the whole thing, lets jump to the important parts highlighted in the post.

Phantasy Star Online 2 characters have a one piece suit, stats are no longer tied to the outfit like in the first alpha test. Instead, units, which you attach to your arm, back, and legs, will improve the defensive stats for the character. If you like the unit's stats but you aren't so happy with the way it looks on your character, you can turn off the graphics displaying your units.

Cast bodies consist of their Head, Arm, Torso, and Legs, and you can now change each part through morphing which was a feature the first alpha test did not have.

Alpha Test 2 Iconography

Today's porori images are the improvements to the icons which were a big complaint in the first alpha test. He'll only show a small portion of the changes for today.

The icons in the first alpha test were difficult to understand and identify from one another. They changed the icons by removing the weapon abbreviation, then made the backgrounds more simplistic so you can see the icon's representation more clearly. The icons for weapons, units, costumes, etc, were all redesigned to make them more distinct in each category.

They made it so you can tell each weapon's fighting style more clearly by changing the brilliance of the color on the icon. You can see that there is an orange glow for striking weapons, blue for ranged weapons, and yellow for force weapons. (This color brilliance is also applied to the drop icons.)

Photon arts, skills, and consumption item icons are now redesigned to be closer in direction towards Phantasy Star Online.

You can feel the presence of PSO in these icons.

Photon Arts Icons

By giving the icons a more simplistic style, you can easily point out the photon art's effect and what weapon category they each belong to. Ranged weapon photon arts like the "Grenade Shell" in the screenshot above have a blue background on them. Skills that you can add to the sub-palette are now more distinct from photon arts, in that, skill icons will have a brighter background.

Die-Cast Metal Elenor

A brand new Die-Cast Metal Elenor toy has been announced and will be displayed at Bandai's Tamashii Nation 2011 event. This is only a prototype model.