Ninety-Nine Nights E3 2005 Preshow Impressions

It has been known for a while now that Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment studio was working on a new action adventure game for Microsoft's upcoming console, the Xbox 360. At tonight's pre-E3 press conference, Microsoft included the game as part of its demo reel and announced the official title: Ninety-Nine Nights. The clip itself was roughly 10 seconds long, which is odd, considering that a full video of the game has been out since the day after the official unveiling of the system on MTV.

The video from the Microsoft conference shows a whole army of people getting blown up and flying around all crazy. We love that, but that's actually only the middle of the original video. The video that appeared on the Internet featured lots more--though mostly what appeared to be cutscene footage. The video opens with a ground shot of an armored knight standing up amid a chaotic sky, filled with some sort of bright, unidentifiable debris flying all over the place. The next shot is of a young, purple-haired woman walking through a field, with rose petals falling all over the place. The news anchor narrating the video talks about how the system can render more impressive facial animations and expressions, and, unsurprisingly, the scene closes in on the girl's face, showing off some highly realistic expressions and animations.

Cut to a battlefield, with a gargantuan army standing around, moments before they are blown into the air; this is the piece of the video shown from the Microsoft conference. But wait, there's more! The video then cuts to a sequence of these same soldiers on the same field, training in unison. Cut to what looks like a fight sequence between some kind of troll creature and an unseen opponent. A sword swings at the troll's face--an attack that he deftly dodges. After that, it's a lot of quick cuts between a crystalline-looking city, a pair of young-looking troll people running through a field, and a big crystal snapping in half. What does any of it mean? Who knows! But it all looked impressive.

It's completely unclear at this point whether or not any of this footage is in-game or if it's all a lot of CG cutscenes, but even if it is a bunch of cutscenes, we're impressed with what we've seen of Nintety-Nine Nights, and we can't wait to learn more. We'll bring you more details on this promising-looking game as they become available.