One day a friend of mine, fed up with her current life predicaments, exclaimed, “I want to live in Miyazaki world!” Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli has produced some of Japan’s most endearing and lighthearted works of feature length animation, and the daytime fantasy to abandon one’s dilemmas and escape into those beautiful narratives is as appealing as it is implausible.
Until now. Well, kind of.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch marks the first time a North American audience will get to experience a game openly influenced and (partly produced) by Studio Ghibli, the animation studio behind films Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and (among others) Howl’s Moving Castle. The celebrated developers at Level 5 handled most of the technical and narrative work, stating that the game was in the early stages of development before the collaboration was official. Studio Ghibli’s involvement, as I came to understand, was limited to supervising the storyboards, complete responsibility for the animated cut scenes, and other minute details. It’s kind of a bummer for those who were hoping for a full partnership but, at the same, time, had the curtain not been pulled back ever so slightly, they certainly could have fooled me.
Examine the narrative. The protagonist is a young boy, Oliver, who is dealing with the recent death of his mother. In the trailer we were shown Oliver weeping while holding an adorable looking doll his mother had made for him. As one could expect, Oliver’s tears transformed into compassion that brought the doll to life. Level 5’s Akihiro Hino further explained the premise of a parallel world existing alongside our own, and that Oliver’s doll offers a gateway to explore that world. There, Oliver might be able to locate his mother and piece back together the broken parts of their lives. Again, while Ni No Kuni isn’t a full-on Studio Ghibli title, the simultaneous charm and sorrow within its narrative certainly made it feel like one.
Ni No Kuni’s gorgeous art direction doesn’t hurt, either. The animated sequences are obviously the star of the show, but the gameplay segments look every bit as inviting and beautiful. Level 5, with both Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest VIII on their resume, are no stranger to the cel-shading techniques required to forge an interactive cartoon, and Ni No Kuni embraces that concept for a current generation platform. Additionally, Hino went even further to explain that Level 5’s proficiency in cel-shading has recently excelled in the areas of removing unnecessary shadows to create a more hand-drawn feel. In my playtime with Ni No Kuni I was limited to two ten minute sessions in two different environments (Ding Dong Dell and Hamelin), however no two corners looked alike, giving the impression that the game has a massive set of assets in place.
My playable demo, however, was also the source of the most uncertainty. It was neither poor nor unimpressive, but rather lacked direction and I often had no idea what I was doing. Ding Dong Dell’s sequence appeared to be a general free roam session where I could explore the lush world map(!) or wander into the titular village and talk to people. Occasionally I got into battles with monsters where I seemed to be able to toss out Pokémon-like “familiars” to cast spells and fight for Oliver. This concept was better defined in the Hamelin sequence, which tasked me with reaching a point in the grimy city to fight a boss. Confusion arrived when another character said I needed a wind spell to weaken the boss, and while I was never able to find a wind spell amongst my party I eventually managed to topple the boss anyway. In the end the pronounced lack of direction was more a fault of the demo environment than the actual game (it would be crazy if these systems weren’t explained with a fitting tutorial in Ni No Kuni proper)
The localization, including both English voices and text, was firmly in place. I don’t profess to be an expert in the realm of either localization or translation, but Ni No Kuni’s dialogue seemed accurate to the context and competent in regard to grammar. Plans are even in place the replicate the different accents in the original dialogue. Hino did state that the original Japanese voice track would be included anyway, just in case you were searching for absolute purity. In any case Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch will be released exclusively on PlayStation 3 (its native platform) in Q1 of 2013. That’s a long time away, but after months of waiting it’s great to know a publisher has finally stepped up to give the game a shot in North America. Check back with us for a review early next year.
