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At the Taipei Game Show today, SCE Worldwide Studios producer Junichi Yoshizawa announced that Freedom Wars for the PlayStation Vita will launch in Japan and Asian territories simultaneously sometime in 2014.
Not only that, but since Freedom Wars takes place in the not-so-far-flung future of 102013, where nations are replaced by prison cities called Panopticons, at launch players in Asia can also pick to play for their own country in real-life, for the purpose of the online metagame. After the stage presentation, a brief group interview session with Yoshizawa and game designer Toshiyuki Yasui was held for media representatives in attendance.
Siliconera attended the presentation and the very first question we asked was about something we think many of you reading this would be quite anxious about localization plans.
At the stage presentation, you announced that Freedom Wars will launch simultaneously in Japan and Asia. Is that just in Japanese?
Junichi Yoshizawa: The game will be released in Japanese and Chinese.
What about an English version? Will there be one?
JY: At the moment, we’re currently focusing our production efforts on the Asian release, which will come first. As for the game’s release in Western territories, please look forward to hearing the details on that in a future announcement.
What I meant to ask was when the game launches in Asia, will there be an English version?
JY: At the moment, the simultaneous Japan and Asia launch for Freedom Wars planned is for the Japanese and localized Traditional Chinese versions.
Also at the presentation, you talked about the war being waged between different Panopticons to "recapture" from one another, and shared that players in Asia will be able to experience that online. Can you provide more details on that?
JY: Well, at the beginning of the game, players can choose which Panopticon city they belong to. And these cities that they can pick from are the ones we showed you on a map image at the presentation — there’s Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, etc.
And then what happens is, to help their city develop, what players can do is log-in and embark on Volunteer missions on a daily basis to recapture from other cities (note: in the game’s universe, every time you embark on a mission, you are considered a Volunteer).
We’ll have more on Freedom Wars soon.
