TGS 06: "White Knight" comes to PS3

Sony unveiled a handful of new PlayStation 3 titles during the first day of the 2006 Tokyo Game Show. Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Sega Golfclub, and Wangan Midnight were in the initial batch of new games, but after the show floor opened, Sony dropped the news of another big PS3 title, Shirokishi.

Shirokishi is being developed by Level 5, the studio behind role-playing games like Dark Cloud and the upcoming Rogue Galaxy for the PlayStation 2, and the canceled Xbox massively multiplayer online game True Fantasy Online. "Shirokishi" literally translates to "White Knight," but that's still just a working title for the moment.

In the game, a coming-of-age ceremony for the princess of a peaceful land is disrupted by a mysterious group dressed in black. They burn down the castle and murder the king, but before they can get to the princess, a young wine merchant who meets the princess by chance sneaks her away into the castle's underground vault. There they discover a relic pulled from ancient ruins, the armor of the White Knights.

A trailer released for the game shows several minutes of gameplay, with the main character and two traveling companions ambushed along a road by a group of soldiers in black armor. The combatants pair off and battle one-on-one for the most part, until the player characters get a numbers advantage and begin to doubleteam their opponents.

Most of the combat in the first skirmish is more swords than sorcery, but things take a larger-than-life turn a little on down the road, when a giant fire-spewing, spiderlike boss appears to attack the trio. At this point the lightly armored protagonist responds by plunging a dagger into his gauntlet and transforming into a white knight alter ego, every bit as imposing as the boss, and the trailer comes to a close.

In March, Level 5 president told Japanese site Gpara that his team was working on another game, and dropped some hints about it. He said that it would be an RPG with a subgenre, although he wouldn't disclose whether it would be strategy, action, or something else. However, he hinted that it wouldn't be something completely radical, saying that, "for people that love these [RPG] types, this will be a really cult game." In its promotional materials, Sony lists Shirokishi simply as an RPG.

Currently the game is only 10 percent complete and has been given no release date or price.