More Legends to be Untold

Sony Online Entertainment really loves PSP as it’s announced its first sequel - which as far as we can work out is the first sequel for any non-Japanese developed PSP game.

In this case the sequel is for its hack-and-slash role-playing game Untold Legends. Due for release a couple of months into 2006, Untold Legends: The Warrior’s Code should improve on the more obvious problems of the first game, which was released by Activision in the UK.

“The look and play of The Warrior’s Code has been redesigned, upgraded and completely enhanced,” reckons the game’s producer Rob Hill.

There will be a new 3D engine giving better graphics, lighting and special effects, even though Untold Legends had some of the better graphics of PSP-launch games. Perhaps more exciting however is the promise of smoother combat, with a wider variety of moves, special abilities and dynamic attacks to improve upon the first game, which quickly became a boring ‘press-button-x- repeatedly’ sort-of affair.

As you would expect, there will be new story options. This time, you’ll get to choose between one of five classes of shape-changing characters, rather than being stuck within a fixed character class. An epic plot has been written, with five chapters, driven by dramatic in-game cutscenes, as you try to defeat waves of evil creatures taking over the world. But, in a reversal of the heroic theme of the first game, in The Warrior’s Code, as one of the shape-shifting creatures, you’re actually also trying to stop the destruction of your race, as they are being exterminated in a secret plot, which leads the remnants to flee into the wilderness. And as you play through the plot, you’ll be exploring 45 dungeon areas full of traps, secret chambers and 40 new species of monstrous inhabitants, as well as taking on 12 huge boss characters, each of which lives in their own special environment. Thankfully, the item collection system will improve too with a method for storing items and gems you can’t physically carry on your character.

Bigger changes outside the scope of how the game plays, see the introduction of Internet-based networking - this is a Sony Online game after all. There will be two online options so you can either play in a co-operative mode where two players fight together through the single player game. Alternatively, for the first time there will also be a Player-verses-Player mode with up to four players battling it out for the glory and gold. Both options will be supported by centralised match-matching, so you play with players of the same ability, and there will be in-game and out-of-game chat systems for shooting the breeze, although there are no details yet whether these will be text or voice-based.