From the team at Atlus that brought us many games in the Shin Megami Tensei and Trauma Center series, comes a new teaser for Shin Megami Tensei IV on Nintendo 3DS. Unlike all the previous trailers that have been aired, this one has spoken English, and is most definitely one from the localized version.
The voice sounds most likely to be from Jamieson Price, who has played characters in Atlus games before, such as Lupa from Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, Frank Gaunt from Operation Darkness, and characters like Gawain Rothschild and Gabriel Celeste from Radiata Stories.
Now onto the trailer:
We see glimpses of images accompanied by narration that may imply how the gameplay works. The choices our protagonist makes do not only affect himself, they affect everything around him, and thus creates “a new world”, or an environment representative of every outcome of the decision. This is something we have seen before by Atlus, such as in Catherine, the Persona series, and select moments from Trauma Center. There isn’t much live gameplay footage other than running and traversing before striking an enemy to trigger a battle sequence.
Shin Megami Tensei IV will be the first game in the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series to incorporate full voice-acting. The previous installment in the series, Nocturne, had little to no voice-acting, save for minor attack grunts by characters, with cutscenes that only had animations accompanied by sound. The Shin Megami Tensei spin-off, Devil Survivor on the Nintendo DS, had fully spoken dialogue once ported over to 3DS, which its sequel Devil Survivor 2 Break Record will as well.
The game is slated to release in North America on July 16, 2013 with first-print editions featuring a Strategy and Design Book, Music Collection, and Collectible Slipcase Package that you can read about here. There is no solid PAL release date yet, but it’s coming soon, and with the first-print editions.
