Left Alive
Rumours of Front Mission’s demise have been greatly exaggerated
PC, PS4
“We wanted to tell a good war story that also happens to have robots in it”
The Front Mission series is 11 games old, and in the 23-plus years since its inception it has sold millions across Japan. Yet in the west, it remains an unknown quantity; only two games in the series have ever been localised on these shores. That’s a big part of the reason for its latest instalment bearing no mention of the series. But Left Alive is also a very different kind of game.
Front Mission is a matter of tactics and strategy, of armies of giant robots facing off against each other. Left Alive, however, is a thirdperson shooter in which the Wanzers, as Front Mission styles them (short for the German word ‘wanderpanzer’, or ‘walking tank’), belong to the enemy, and the enemy alone. The game is set in the early days of a war, the protagonist one of few survivors in a suddenly war-torn city. Thus the stage is set not only for a thirdperson shooter, but one in which the sort of mech-on-mech combat on which this series made its name arrives only rarely, and in which avoiding conflict is often better than engaging in it.
“Of course, we do have scenes in the game where you ride these giant robots and fight with them,” game director Toshifumi
Nabeshima tells us. “But we wanted to move away from that a little, and tell a good war story that also happens to have robots in it.” It’s a story about people first and foremost, that recasts Wanzers from their previous starring role to that of a pacing device. You’ll take them into combat occasionally, hijacking the biggest threat in the game and turning it on your aggressors, though doing so naturally alerts the enemy to your position. But the bulk of the game is played on foot: while you’re notionally given the choice between going loud or staying in the shadows, a persistent scarcity of weapons and ammo will make you think twice before simply steaming in. “You’ve really got to think about things like traps and ambushes,” Nabeshima says, “finding ways to lure the enemy into situations where you can deal with them without sacrificing too much.”
Choice is a theme outside combat, too. Nabeshima gives the example of you happening upon the imminent execution of a group of citizens, and being able to decide whether to save them, knowing a battle will result, or simply skulking on by. “And while you can save them, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they’re good people,” he says. “They may not be grateful, may say it’s all your fault that this war is happening. The nature of these situations, and how difficult they are, changes as the game goes on.”
The choices you make during the game will impact which of the multiple endings you see. Nabeshima believes this is true both to the series’ history, and that of its publisher. “Front Mission is known as a game about robots fighting, but if you really look at the older games, the world, the setting and the characters are created to a really fine degree. It’s a game about stories, and how people interact. That’s one of the things that makes it a Square Enix game, I think.”
Nabeshima is a relatively new hire. He’s been making games for 20 years, and spent the vast majority of that at FromSoftware, working mostly on the Armored Core games. A friend told him that Front Mission veteran Shinji Hashimoto was plotting the series’ return. Since joining he admits to being struck, and somewhat intimidated, by what happens when a series enjoys as long a life as Front Mission’s. “There’s a huge amount of lore documentation. All the characters and factions are so detailed, you really have to get very deeply into it. I didn’t want to make something that would run counter to that spirit when I started working here. I felt like I really had to step up my game.”
This is a new direction for the series, one Nabeshima and team have had to build from the ground up. And that lack of familiarity certainly showed in a TGS demo that was, to put it mildly, rather rough around the edges (and voice acting that’s as camp as Christmas). Yet it remains a premise full of potential, and there’s no disputing the talent Square Enix has assembled to make it happen, whether its mission is accomplished or not.