Star Ocean 5 Has Been Announced, And It’s A PlayStation Exclusive

Tri-Ace and Square Enix are collaborating on a new game in the long-running Star Ocean series of RPGs. Gematsu managed to get hold of a translation of the news, which comes in an article published in the latest issue of Japanese gaming mag Famitsu.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is set on the planet of Feycreed, an uncivilized outpost over 6,000 light years from Earth. Combat takes place in real-time, with contextual attacks changing depending on your position relative to opponents - characters will switch from long to short range attacks, depending on how far away they are. There’s a combo system too, allowing you to chain your attacks together for increased damage.

Alongisde the usual methods of conveying story through cutscenes and dialogue, new “seamless events” will offer branching outcomes depending on how well you perform. Not much is known at the moment about the finer details of how this will work, or how flexible the system is, but any attempt to provide replayability and choice in an RPG is welcome, particularly given that Japanese role-playing games often lag behind Western RPGs when it comes to allowing the player to shape their own narrative.

Three characters have been revealed so far. Fedel Camus is the protagonist, a fencing expert who’s determined to protect his home village. He’s joined by childhood friend Miki Sorvesta, and the two share an an almost sibling-like relationship. The last character to be mentioned is Lilia, a girl who is suffering not just from amnesia, but also a loss of emotion. Our guess is that discovering what happened to Lilia, and curing her of her affliction, will form the central narrative focus of the game.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness will be the fifth main installment in a series which began way back in 1996 on the Super Nintendo. The most recent Star Ocean game was released back in 2009 on Xbox 360, before making its way to PS3 the following year. Integrity and Faithlessness is a PlayStation exclusive, with release planned for both the PS3 and PS4.

It’s still early days, and so it’s likely we’ll learn far more about Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness over the coming months. While no release date has been set, it’s pretty safe to assume that it won’t be arriving this year.

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Dale Morgan

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When Dale isn't crying over his keyboard about his never-ending workload, he's playing games - lots of them. Dale has a particular love for RPGs, Roguelikes and Metroidvanias.