E3 '07: Lost Odyssey Trailer Impressions

We last took a look at Lost Odyssey during last year's Tokyo Game Show, where we managed to get a lengthy hands-on demo of the title at Microsoft's booth. It's also making its presence known at this year's E3, though, although it was shown only in trailer form during the press conference.

Much of the information appears to be new, though, at least compared to the older demo that we played. The trailer revolves around the character of Kaim Argonar, an apparently unkillable soldier that survives a cataclysmic meteoric crash during a major battle. While he doesn't know why he is apparently immortal, he does know that it's been personally ruinous for him, as he's seen his family and loved ones fade away from him, with one of them apparently committing suicide in front of his eyes. Over his thousand-year lifetime, he has apparently seen nothing but battle, bloodshed, and pain, at least according to his telling of the story.

Some more plot details were revealed here, though, as apparently Kaim's world is being infested with magical energy that is infecting its soil, which should remind some gamers of the ecological themes of many Final Fantasy games. That's not unexpected, since Hironobu Sakaguchi, the producer of Final Fantasy, was the creator of Lost Odyssey.

The trailer ends with some of the combat systems of Lost Odyssey being shown, with large robots, dinosaurs, birds, and even a robotic dinosaur being shown in combat. Since Kaim lives for at least a thousand years during the course of the game, it should be interesting to see how the progress of time affects the unveiling of the story. One of the last lines of the trailer indicates that the experiences of Kaim over his millenial lifetime will be integral in solving the problem of the magical infestation. Since all of these games in Microsoft's press conference were promised to be coming this year, we theoretically will know more about Kaim's life by the end of December, although no official release date has been set yet.