Can Love Bloom on Left Alive’s Battlefield?

When I posted about the announcement of Left Alive from Square Enix at Tokyo Game Show last year, I titled it “Not 4 Dead, But Left Alive,” a very clever jab at how its title seemed like the opposite of Left 4 Dead’s. But I was starting to wonder if the title had seriously been left for dead after it went dark for a while. Concern about its whereabouts manifested when it missed E3 2018, despite how it appeared to be pretty far along in development when it was first shown last September.

It turns out there was nothing to worry about, but it was still strange that it vanished for so long. Left Alive reappeared at Gamescom last month, but the public only received some new screenshots and a little info, while the press received a nice behind-closed-doors look. They were simply saving the grand reemergence for Sony’s PlayStation LineUp Showcase and Tokyo Game Show.

As mentioned when it was announced, Left Alive has connections to Square Enix’s now-defunct Front Mission strategy RPG series. It takes place in the same universe, though this one is a stealth action title with a larger focus on humans rather than the Wanzer mechs. It also has a connection to the Armored Core series, since director Toshifumi Nabeshima was previously responsible for producing and supervising several games in the series during his time at FromSoftware. It appears the only big Front Mission veteran involved here is composer Hidenori Iwasaki, previously lead composer for Front Mission 4, 5, and Online. Most franchise veterans left Square Enix a while ago, but this project appears to be still in good hands.

The game is also channeling another series that involves mechs: Metal Gear Solid. Merely being a stealth action game isn’t what shows this, but the character designs are being provided by Yoji Shinkawa, who previously provided designs for all the Metal Gear Solid games from Hideo Kojima. The stealth sections and locations shown in the newest trailer are also reminiscent of those from several Metal Gear installments, though it’s tough to tell whether there are as many stealth options as the later Metal Gear games. There’s little issue with these similarities, since the series it’s taking inspiration from is dead at Konami, barring some miracle.

When the initial details were provided last year, it appeared the game would focus on human-based stealth and on-foot battles, while controlling Wanzer mechs would be a nice-though-minor feature. But newer details paint a different picture, suggesting there will be a helping of both. The game will have limited ammo to encourage either slipping by or taking out enemies stealthily, but it’s being balanced so the player can shoot enemies if their accuracy is good. This is similar to how gameplay approaches work in — stop me if you’ve heard this one — a Metal Gear game.

There will also be options to rescue hostages in both the main and side missions. The Tokyo Game Show demo (go to 10:00, 15:25, and 23:17 for the gameplay sections) featured a section where enemies are holding someone hostage at gunpoint, presumably for information. The player can rescue them, but they’ll die if they wait too long.

Left Alive will take place in December 2127, between the periods of several Front Mission games, though notably before the western-developed Front Mission: Evolved. In this period, the Garmoniya Republic declared war on the Ruthenia Republic, which started with the invasion of Novo Slava. These locations are around where Russia is now.

It will have three playable characters with different scenarios. One is Mikhail Alexandrovich Shuvalov, an inexperienced Wanzer pilot who’s made minor breaches of discipline in the past. He narrowly escapes his battered Wanzer after his unit is wiped out. Second is Olga Sergevna Kalinina, a Novo Slava police officer who was previously a Wanzer pilot for the Garmoniya Army. Her main itinerary is investigating human trafficking in the Novo Slava area. The third character is Leonid Fedorovich Osterman, who was previously a mercenary with no allegiances, but became sympathetic to a cause after joining a Novo Slava liberation movement. Their leader was fatally shot, and Leonid was subsequently captured; he manages to bust out during the invasion.

There won’t be many differences between the characters in terms of gameplay, and the game will only have one ending. But the character arcs themselves will have different resolutions depending on decisions players make, though there’s no current way to tell how different they’ll be.

The trailer and the gameplay video show how this game doesn’t have a big budget; in fact, it resembles a PS2-level B-tier game in terms of style. This won’t be for everyone, but I’m personally delighted. Games with B-tier budgets started vanishing during the last console generation, when many companies felt they had to compete with the biggest AAA publishers around to stand a chance. This had catastrophic results, as it only took one underperforming high-budget title to cripple, if not kill, a studio. Now, some of them are starting to make B-tier games again, and games like these could come back strong if others follow suit.

You know, if they’re good. Some who’ve seen Left Alive in action up close voiced concerns about its polish, so hopefully Square Enix is taking care of that before releasing it.

Left Alive will release in Japan on February 28th, where it will also have an Ultimate Edition that costs a whopping 25,000 yen that includes a “Volk” Wanzer figure, a special soundtrack, and artbook featuring work from character designer Yoji Shinkawa and mech designer Takayuki Yanase. The game is due for a western release at a currently unspecified time next year, but it shouldn’t arrive too far after the Japanese date, since the voice acting is in English for all territories. There should be several more previews between now and then, and let’s hope they showcase a more polished product.