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The Last Remnant

• By Emily Balistrieri
• June 25, 2008 15:06 PM PST
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GamePro takes a look at Square Enix's upcoming epic, The Last Remnant in this exclusive preview!

Facts regarding Last Remnant may be scarce, but it sure is looking good - even in its early stages.

There isn't really only one remnant. In fact, there are a bunch of them with different powers, and they were left behind by an ancient civilization. That's pretty much all the round table could coax out of the developers on that subject. The Last Remnant is mysterious - hard to pin down, "We expect each gamer to have their own definition of remnant at the end of the game so if we could explain in a really simple word we are spoiling that factor, so it's a difficult thing for us."

"It's not a simulation game, it's an RPG," but it's an RPG with turn-based battles where you can eventually take control of up to five "unions" of five soldiers apiece (still, if you want to be a loner you can just assign one soldier to one union and see how far you get with that) "What's most different from the usual RPGs is that most usual RPGs you give one command to one character and one character moves, but for this game, because we have massive battles, we can give one command to a bunch of characters and they all react differently."

The massive battles in Last Remnant create a unique fighting experience.

Giving commands goes further than your selection, though. Once the action starts you'll have "critical trigger" moments, essentially quick-time events for critical hits or excellent defense (sort of like in some of the Mario RPGs). We asked about the possibility of union-wide attacks, thinking of the triple techniques from Chrono Trigger, and while they didn't rule it out, they did say it might throw off combat balance.

A good way to throw the combat your way right from the start is to take advantage of the morale system. By attacking from behind (which leads me to believe there must not be any random battles-score!) or simply outnumbering your enemies, their will to kick ass is somewhat depleted. Of course, your characters are also susceptible...

The Yama are among some of the more interesting character designs to be found in Last Remnant.

As for plot, it wasn't much discussed, obviously, but The Last Remnant was described as a "mid-century RPG," -- whatever that means. It takes place in a pretty heavy fantasy setting, complete with four races of humanoids: the Mitra people-people, the Sovanni cat people, the Qsiti frog people, and the Yama fish people.

If you've seen the new trailer, you already know the game looks good, although it didn't seem quite as polished as Infinite Undiscovery was looking at the time. Admittedly, that could just be because while Infinite Undiscovery is coming out in September, The Last Remnant hits simultaneously worldwide for 360 sometime this winter, with a PS3 version to follow.

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