Fresh bits for Sonata PS3 News

Any chance of the 360 getting any of this new content via DLC, for free?

^^ I was just about to post this question. So, any news on DLC for the 360?

I wonder how the new characters will fit into the game? I'm some 25 hours into the game and already have a choice of 3 out of NINE varied characters for my party so I'm not sure the game needs more unless you only get to play them for a short while. Actually I can imagine them being used during the pirate raid at the start of Chapter 4...

As for the costumes, well sadly the 360 version shows your characters wearing the same stuff throughout the game - it doesn't change despite upgrading your outfits throughout the game - so that sounds like a nice extra for the PS3 version, particularly as the game has loads of gorgeously rendered and lengthy cutscenes so you can view them (more even than Blue Dragon which came on THREE DVDs and Eternal Sonata's arguably look superior!).

Hmm, I think I may hold out for the PS3 version of this game. Possibly.

I think the cut scenes in BD weren't all in engine so that's probably the 3DVD thing.

They do look wonderful in both.

I want DLC!! Especially the costumes.

I can see them doing it as DLC, but being on XBOX Live i doubt it will be FREE

Isn't this news a bit old now? I remember reading it on IGN yonks ago.

I hope it's available as DLC, free or not. I hate console exclusives. The game does support DLC so who knows.

sod just bought it

@Menage - Blue Dragon did use a lot of pre-rendered FMV, true, but it was made to look almost exactly the same as the ingame stuff. However, all of Eternal Sonata's cutscenes are ingame and the artwork is far more detailed so it begs the question of why BD used pre-rendered cutscenes in the first place. Mind you, those FMV cutscenes are the only parts of the game that don't tear... LOL

Any chance of the 360 getting any of this new content via DLC, for free?

Remember the so called exclusive material for splintercell?

@Darren

I'm only at chapter 3 in Sonata, but BD use a couiple of mass scenes (raid on the flying airship comes to mind), which probably were to big in scale to do in engine. The tearing was unnecessary though, maybe LO will fix that with the new engine and all.

Thats ace. PS3 owners can have it in April when 360 owners are then playing whatever PS3 owners can purchase in December.

I must admit I really enjoyed Blue Dragon even if it does seem a bit ordinary in comparison to Eternal Sonata. However, BD was technically a bit shonky really, what with all the tearing and the horrendous slowdown at times. It's a shame that Mistwalker didn't use that extra eight months translation time to refine the engine further. Considering how simplistic (but charming!) the visuals are, it really is surprising that it doesn't all run smoothly. At least, Eternal Sonata gets that right. Apart from the poor texture filtering and lack of camera control, the engine and visuals are outstanding.

At least BD's combat is a bit deeper, that's one thing I don't really find all that great about ES. It's really simplistic at times (just ram the button and finish of with a special). BD hat least has some depth, especially on hard mode.

I rate them equally, I love them both.

BD's combat is far too easy by default though (the Hard mode came too late for me to try it) whereas ES gets it just right, reasonable to challenging with much tougher boss fights. Like you, I rate both games but feel that ES's more action-orientated combat, which forces you to act quickly, combined with its richer story and better defined characters makes it the better game. I'd love to see a sequel to BD though.

Have both games and would recommend Eternal Sonata to PS3 owners for next year, aside from much anticipated FFXIII to come for PS3, X360 seem to have much better availabilities of RPGs.
Both multi platform and exclusives (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Infinite UnDiscovery etc) and certainly in the comparative timeframe, far better than what was on Xbox.

Hmm.. I wonder if they're putting in stuff that was cut from the 360 version due to DVD size constraints.. or if they're really creating new artwork from scratch?

If they do bring the content out for Live they'll have to do it free as developers aren't aloud to charge for content that's available on other systems free.....at least that's how it's supposed to work

It wasn't a diskspace thing (I heard), more of a time-related have to release it sometime thing.

Crescendo and Serenade were only involved briefly in the story and were frankly a bit shit anyway.

"Hmm.. I wonder if they're putting in stuff that was cut from the 360 version due to DVD size constraints.. or if they're really creating new artwork from scratch? "

There are no DVD size constraints, you just have multiple DVDs or better compression.

Check the rant over on:
http://jbooth.blogspot.com/2007/10/ps3-m...

"But it's got a lot more space than DVD"

Ok, you got me there - it does have a lot more space, and there is the potential to use that to do something cool, but thats unlikely to be realized in any useful way... Most developers who use the entire Blue Ray drive are doing it to work around other problems with the ps3 such as it's slow loading - for instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times. If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it would likely fit on a DVD without any problem."

nice incentive for PS3 owners

I'm still waiting for the gamerpics on XBL. The American's have had them on their XBL for a while now, but still no sign of them over here. Same can be said for Blue Dragon too : (

My only realy problem with Eternal Sonata was the fixed camera, which was painful in combat with enemies sitting off screen.

You can zoom out you know, hold the L button for a full scale view.