Soul Sacrifice

'Andriasang' said:

Keiji Inafune is listed in Famitsu in the game's "planning" and "development" role. Actual development is taking place at Marvelous AQL. The game's music component is from Yasunori Mitsuda and Wataru Hokoyama, with Hokoyama scheduled to head up overseas recording. On Sony Computer Enteratinment's side, the game's producer is Kentarou Motomura , and its assistant producer is Teruyuki Toriyama.

For Soul Sacrifice, the concept is "True Fantasy." The "True" part comes from the idea of making sacrifices and payments. If you want to get a lot of power, you have to pay or sacrifice something.
He hopes to deliver this truth in Soul Sacrifice.

Inafune took part in a live play demo as he spoke about the game. He revealed that you can you can select from multiple types for your player character, and make various customizations on top of this, resulting in your very own sorcerer.

The game does not have the notion of "MP" (magic points). Instead, you sacrifice things for magic. Make a big sacrifice, and you'll get greater power. For Excalibur, you sacrifice your life (as you can see in the first trailer). If you continually use powerful magic, though, you'll gradually begin to lose your human form.

During the demo session, Inafune showed how one can use trees and boulders in combat. He also demonstrated using your own blood to send yourself flying at enemies like bullets.

The main character is someone who was raised by a cruel sorcerer. Just as the main character is about to be given as a sacrificial offering, a special book appears before him. This book is a demon in book form. It contains the records of past fights between the sorcerer and monsters.

The player enters the world of the book and experiences the stories and fights depicted therein.

In addition to this background story, Sokuho's Famitsu summary mentions one magic attack that we didn't mention earlier: Salamander. This attack involves burning something (presumably a part of your body).

The game will have a customization component. You'll be able to select from a variety of styles for your character.

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'Andriasang' said:

Your play style will also affect your form. As part of the game's story setting, the monsters you fight are former humans who used their magic too much and lost their human form. Make the same mistake, and you'll also begin to lose your human form. When you defeat an enemy, you can chose to either sacrifice the enemy or revive/help it. You'll get different things depending on your choice.

Following the composer commentary, Inafune introduced the game's multiplayer component, not through a live play session, but through a video.

Soul Sacrifice has support for one to four players. Up to four players can play simultaneously. Inafune confirmed that the game is planned to have both ad-hoc and infrastructure play. Ad-hoc only is not sufficient nowadays, said Inafune, especially if you want to appeal not just to Japan, but to overseas. He added that nothing has been decided as far as an overseas release is concerned.

The game will have a number of other PlayStation Vita-ish features. These will be revealed later.

They're planning download content for the game. Inafune feels that in this era, download content is part of the game.

Sony announced that the game is due for release in the Winter. That can technically mean early next year, but Inafune says he'd like to get it out this year.

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'Andriasang' said:

As shown in the multiplayer video, at the end of a boss fight, you can select to either save the boss, or sacrifice the boss. The players in the presentation video all voted to sacrifice the boss. So what happens if players don't agree? Inafune says that they have a system in place to deal with this, but he would not say what it is. Regarding this area of the game, he noted that he wanted to make a game that did not end just with players feeling relief at having defeated the enemy, but having to think about what to do after defeating the enemy.
The video showed one player near death following an attack from a cerberus. The player was able to sacrifice his life for the other players, and turned himself into "Salamander," a massive flame which struck the enemy.
The three remaining players were able to to select between saving the cerberus or sacrificing it. They all decided to sacrifice it.

Composers Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Front Mission: Gun Hazard, Xenogears and a lot more) and Wataru Hokoyama (Resident Evil 5) appeared at the event to discuss their contribution. They're still working on music for the game right now, they said. Some of the songs will have large-scale recordings with overseas orchestras and full chorus.

Particular effort went into creating unique monster designs, said Inafune.

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Henry Spencer said:

This and Gravity Rush might be a Vita seller, to me.

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Henry Spencer said:

I hope E3 and TGS really bring out the goodies for both systems, since aside from the odd game here and there, we need more for both systems, imo.

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Japanese people tend to shorten lengthy names, often by combining the first couple of characters of multiple words. Monster Hunter becomes Monhan, for instance. Dragon Quest becomes Draque. And so forth.
For Keiji Inafune's new PlayStation Vita multiplayer action title Soul Sacrifice, shortening the name via standard shortening "rules" would result in something that sounds a bit like "So Suck."
Inafune addressed this issue in a post at his blog today. "I'd like to you refer to this game as Soul Sack. Not So Suck... I think Soul Sack is better. Soul Sack. Soul Sack."
Of course, you also have the option of not being verbally lazy and calling it by the full Soul Sacrifice name.

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