Needle
Member since: Dec 14th, 2006
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| Joystiq | 1 Comment |
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| Joystiq Nintendo | 1 Comment |
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Schilling says he could lose $50 million of his own money in 38 Studios implosion [update: Chafee responds]
Posted on May 29th 2012 10:00AM

For Famitsu, 428 equals 40
Nov 27th 2008 12:54PM (Joystiq Nintendo)In Machi ("The City"), the player follows the stories of 8 different protagonists, each pursuing their own unrelated agenda, all in parallel but all taking place in the same city of Shibuya, Tokyo. The player can read the stories, switch between characters to read, and backtrack to any point in the story at will.
Since everything is running in parallel, what one character did would often unknowingly lead another character to a dead end; For instance, one character casually locking a warehouse door would lead to another character who happened to be hiding in the warehouse to starve to death.
The player's role, as the sole overseer of all 8 protagonists, is to make each character behave so that none of them would block the progress of the others, and let the story continue on to the end of that "day". The game was essentially an intricately woven ball of narrative yarn that the player had to untangle.
Machi was massive, with the story spanning five days with over 300 major and supporting roles. Even the minor characters which you didn't control lived their own lives; Many of them would exit the story path of one character, only to walk into the story of another, often showing different sides of their personality.
Machi was regarded one of the best games ever by those who played it, but suffered profit-wise. The planned sequel was canned. In the 10 years that ensued, Chunsoft released numerous adventure games that took the parallel narrative gameplay mechanic and tweaked it in various ways.
With 428, they've come full circle and are releasing what comes closest to being a true sequel to Machi - the game even unfolds in the same city as where Machi took place.
Hell, I waited 10 years for this!
Secrets of the Tetris Grandmasters
Jul 4th 2007 10:36AM (Joystiq)Regardless, never bash a game or dictate what a game "should" do without playing it yourself! When you're playing you won't even notice it's there :D
Hori busts out arcade-style joysticks for the PS3
Dec 14th 2006 7:44AM (Engadget)