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 2020 was an absolute disaster of a year with very few things to celebrate about it. However, it provided at least two wonderful gifts to fans of beloved video games from the mid-90s. The first of these was the inescapable Final Fantasy VII Remake. The other game, the one we’re going to focus on for this LP is Panzer Dragoon Remake. You may or may not recall that I LP’d the original Panzer Dragoon for the Sega Saturn back in 2014 with Blind Sally and TravelLog. Lucky for you, if you’re familiar with that old LP, basically everything I said about original game still holds true for its remake. If you’re not, don’t worry. This game is literally a 1:1 remake of the original just with less mid-90s video game jank, and some unneeded early-20s video game jank swapped in to make up the difference. You’re more than welcome to pass on watching the original LP, especially since it’s now a relic of my early LP career. The remake covers the exact same ground, hopefully with different jokes than I made seven years ago. Joining me on this temporal record skip in the place of Sally and TravelLog are my good buddies Artix and FPzero.   Panzer Dragoon Remake is a ground-up remaster of the original Panzer Dragoon for the Sega Saturn. The remake was originally developed for the Nintendo Switch before finally making its way to PC in October of 2020. The original Panzer Dragoon was a rail shooter in the vein of StarFox and Space Harrier in which you played as a young man by the name of Kyle Fluge, who encounters the deadly aftermath of a battle between two dragons and is entrusted by the dying rider of the blue dragon, Lagi, to stop the evil Dark Dragon from returning to a mysterious tower in the middle of the ocean and unleashing the apocalypse. The game drew heavy inspiration from the novel Dune, by Frank Herbert, and the artwork of the artist Jean Giraud (aka Mśbius), specifically his graphic novel Arzach. Team Andromeda, the studio behind the original game, even commissioned Giraud to do a few pieces of artwork for the game, one of which was used as its original cover art in Japan. Told in a minimalist style similar to Arzach, the game is very sparse on surface-level information. There’s barely 20 lines of dialog in the “story,” if it can even be called that, all of them conveyed in a fictional language that has become known as “Panzerese,” a mishmash of Ancient Greek, German, English, Japanese, Latin, and Russian designed by Yikio Futasugi. Meanwhile, similar to Dune, the game is also flush with supplementary details explaining things after the fact, most of which come from the subsequent games in the series fleshing out the events of this one after the fact. For example: play a game with yourself and count how many times I say the name “Sestren” across the whole hour-long video. Feel free to read the previous LP on the Archive if you would like to see everything fully explained.  So that begs the question, “why remake Panzer Dragoon?” Well, that’s a question best left to the people who created the remake, Polish developer Megapixel Studio. For me, the answer is clear and that’s “to one day remake Panzer Dragoon Saga,” but that’s another matter entirely. MPS also hinted that the Panzer Dragoon Remake was just the first step on a journey with the franchise, effectually proclaiming in its press release announcing the the game that they were also going to tackle its sequel/prequel Panzer Dragoon Zwei. And lo and behold a few weeks ago as of the time of this writing, they have officially announced that Panzer Dragon Zwei Remake is currently slated for a No official mention of the remaining two games in the franchise, Panzer Dragoon Saga, or Panzer Dragoon Orta has been made yet, but seeing as the original Remake sold well enough to justify moving on to Zwei, and if Zwei does well also… who knows. They just need to clear the hurdle of, well, remaking the game from scratch because the source code for Saga is completely corrupted. There is also ANOTHER Panzer Dragoon “remake” currently being developed, this one by Wildman Inc. with the explicit backing of Sega itself called Panzer Dragoon: Voyage Record. And if the V and the R in the title wasn’t a big enough hint, Voyage Record will be a VR-exclusive title described as an “omnibus” game that will cover various levels of all Saturn three games. Unlike MPS, Wildman has explicitly stated they will take a crack at remaking Panzer Dragoon Saga—but only if Voyage Record is financially successful. Which… uh… is probably going to be a huge ask, but whatever. UPDATE: Sega has allegedly pulled the plug on Voyage Record after a bizzare incident in which Wildman Inc. CEO Haruto Watanabe was falsely reported to have died in October 2021. Watanabe was later confirmed to be very much still alive, however Voyage Record is probably very much dead. A third remake project is also now in development, this one explicitly focused on Saga. Announced under the code name “Azel Resurrection Project”, the indie studio Black Fenrir is attempting to remake Panzer Dragoon Saga on the Unreal Engine, just like Megapixel did for the original. Though unlike Voyage Record, Azel Resurrection Project does not have the official backing of Sega behind it and very openly says on its funding Patreon that they’re going to see how far they can get before Sega C&Ds them, although they are also lobbying to get Sega onboard so they can officially call it “Panzer Dragoon Saga Remake”. Right now the only official tie to the franchise is that Saori Kobayashi is also remaking Saga’s soundtrack for Azel Resurrection Project. So basically it’s a  This will probably be the shortest fully complete LP I’ve ever done with literally one update and two videos, one main video comprising the entire game in a single 1-hour shot, and a 28 minute bonus video showing off the various feature of the remake including the brand new Pandora’s Box added to the game. Why didn’t I just put this in the Casual Thread then? Because I didn’t feel like it. What? Are you mad about it? Then please tell me so here in the thread because I’m legitimately curious if I can get this one to at crack 2 pages of posts or not. Will I be tackling Zwei Remake when it comes out? I don’t know, honestly. Despite buying Zwei from a used game store back in 2014 with the aim of following up the original LP and finally plugging the hole in the PD LP catalog here on Something Awful, I never actually go around to playing it. I might rectify that with Zwei Remake, but I can’t say for certain.    A recent update to the game also gave players the choice of playing with a brand new fully remade soundtrack created by the main composer of the Panzer Dragoon franchise (and Crimson Dragon, Saori Kobayashi. The original soundtrack for the game was composed by Yoshitaka Azuma, who died in 2012. Kobayashi stressed the importance of trying to live up to Azuma’s original and iconic work when setting out to draft a remastered take on the original score, dubbed the Definitive Edition Soundtrack. Personally speaking I’m a big fan of Kobayashi’s work and while she knocks it out of the park on a couple of tracks, overall the original Azuma version holds up a lot better, so the LP will be using that version for the main video, and the new soundtrack for the bonus vid. The Definitive Edition Soundtrack published by Brave Wave Productions can be bought digitally on their Bandcamp page for $15 MSRP or on iTunes. Links will be provided below to YouTube versions of each song on the soundtrack if requested. (The Remake version of the track “The Tower Activates” is soundtrack-only, as the remake actually doesn’t use either version in-game. It’s only in the video because I added it in myself in post.) nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Apr 1, 2022 |
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Mar 27, 2021 22:08
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 08:36 |
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Congratulations on finishing the LP, Crow. I know it was a tough one, took a lot of time and effort by all involved.
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Mar 27, 2021 22:17
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Ground fl- oh never mind.
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Mar 27, 2021 22:38
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I'm eager to see where this LP has going to be in the present future. If anyone has any better ideas on what tenses to use for something like this I'd love to hear it.
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Mar 27, 2021 22:42
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I was going to stagger this with several updates, but was talked out of it by Artix. Blame him.
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Mar 27, 2021 22:47
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looking forward to the next update!
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Mar 27, 2021 23:31
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Dr. Snark posted:I'm eager to see where this LP has going to be in the present future. You're eager to see where this LP will transpire to have gone.
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Mar 27, 2021 23:33
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nine-gear crow posted:I was going to stagger this with several updates, but was talked out of it by Artix. Blame him. Don't pin this on me, you wanted to do like 7 videos and I said to break in half so it wasn't just a feature length film about
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Mar 28, 2021 00:47
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Went to check out the lore in the old LP and hey did you know the will of the ancients site is, er, a cryptocurrency blog now? Glad you copy/pasted a bunch of stuff into the LP because I guess the rest of it is just gone now.
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Mar 28, 2021 03:23
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Anfauglir posted:Went to check out the lore in the old LP and hey did you know the will of the ancients site is, er, a cryptocurrency blog now? Glad you copy/pasted a bunch of stuff into the LP because I guess the rest of it is just gone now. Yeah, Will of the Ancients went under while ago. I guess someone bought out their old domain. I should probably have baldurk scrub the LP Archive version of all the WOTA links. I don't know if it really covers the same stuff as Will of the Ancients did, but the successor site to WOTA is now Panzer Dragoon World.
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Mar 28, 2021 03:32
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Artix posted:Don't pin this on me, you wanted to do like 7 videos and I said to break in half so it wasn't just a feature length film about haha, we already did that with the first video. this helps this one stand apart.
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Mar 28, 2021 05:02
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but seriously let's keep posting at crow until he LPs the sequels
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Mar 28, 2021 05:03
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or gently caress it, updates White Knight Chronicles: Origins
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Mar 28, 2021 05:03
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the ship in the first mission still looks like a giant flying nose. music still rules!
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Mar 28, 2021 05:31
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Sally posted:the ship in the first mission still looks like a giant flying nose. music still rules! I’m about as conflicted about the remake soundtrack as I am the rest of the game as well. There are a lot of tracks that are really well done and can stand on their own against the original. Some are so different they’re like completely new songs, but they’re great. And others are completely different, but they suck compared to the original version. I’m rather interested to see how Saori Kobayashi handles the remake soundtrack for Zwei as well, because Zwei also has some real bangers to it.
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Mar 28, 2021 05:41
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Sally posted:or gently caress it, updates White Knight Chronicles: Origins I haven't lost hope.
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Mar 28, 2021 14:11
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um excuse me do you just not have to follow the rules because the mods are chummy power-abusers the rules of lets play are very clear 2. No YouTube dumps or reposts! The point of an LP thread is, if not participation, at least discussion. It's not against the rules to have a backlog or even to record an entire playthrough in advance - just don't post it all at once. this is corruption and I will see you all in qcs
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Mar 28, 2021 15:35
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Oh sorry, the title is confronting the past. My mistake.
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Mar 28, 2021 15:37
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Oh sorry, the title is confronting the past. My mistake. The really meta part about this whole thing is that it's as much about having a dialog with the original LP vs. this new one as it is the original game vs. the remake 
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Mar 28, 2021 23:27
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This sure as hell took me back, I was fortunate(?) enough to own a Saturn back when I was kid. I remember playing this a fair bit, as well as the first disc of Saga that came as a magazine demo disc. I think to this day Saga is still the game I want remade more than any other, I don't think there's been an RPG since that emulated its gameplay.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:27
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Bloody Pom posted:This sure as hell took me back, I was fortunate(?) enough to own a Saturn back when I was kid. I remember playing this a fair bit, as well as the first disc of Saga that came as a magazine demo disc. I added this to the OP last night, but nobody reads my OPs  but a third-party indie remake of Panzer Dragoon Saga is now in full development apparently:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYE9_pYVFKM Called the Azel Resurrection Project, more details are available on its Patreon page. Right now it's kind of a "gently caress it, we'll do it ourselves" venture, that's plugging along without any official backing from Sega with the hope that Sega won't C&D them and perhaps actually allow them to use the Panzer Dragoon license. It they actually pull it off, it'll be amazing, but we'll see.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:59
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1) The first LP was 2014!? Holy poo poo, I was sure it was more recent than that. 2) A remake of Zwei is the first remake I've been happy to hear about in quite some time; it was my first Sega Saturn game, and I loved it to death. Mind you, like [s]many most[/i] virtually all games I played as a kid, I was garbage at it, but that's beside the point. 3) I don't have much in the way of photosensitivity, but holy poo poo episode 4 hurts! 4) Pandora's Box was in Zwei as well. You didn't even need to beat the game to unlock it, because I didn't. No, I played the first 4 stages over and over for 30 hours, and unlocked it without realizing it was even a thing. So at least I got to see the end of the game. Dr. Snark posted:I'm eager to see where this LP has going to be in the present future. I don't have an actual contribution, but I'll take any chance I can get to quote the phrase, "technically, we don't ever have existed here anymore, but this is hardly the time to be conjugating temporal verbs in the past-impossible-never tense." edit: Thanks for the LP, Crow!
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Mar 29, 2021 03:22
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I picked up a saturn and a bunch of games in the early 2000s or so, and I still have an OG panzer dragoon 1 and 2 and probably the instruction manuals for them, although it would take while to find said manuals. I never beat any of the saturn games I bought except one or two. They really were hard games. And Nights was, for me, just bullcrap. I was never able to enter the gated levels. I'm happy to finally see the ending of Panzer Dragoon 1, at least.
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Mar 29, 2021 04:32
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Fedule posted:You're eager to see where this LP will transpire to have gone. This thread is a flat circle.
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Mar 29, 2021 06:43
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nine-gear crow posted:I added this to the OP last night, but nobody reads my OPs  Sega seem to have a pretty good track record of not smacking down fan projects, and have even been letting other publishers pick up their IPs (SOR4 is probably the most notable one I can think of), so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this. If nothing else, whoever they've got working on the 3D models sure know what they're doing.
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Mar 29, 2021 23:28
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 08:36 |
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Let's Listen to Panzer Dragoon's OST I am not a trained musician, but I listen to a lot of music. So I am going to listen to and just the soundtracks here. Thank you for coming to my Let's Listen in crow, FPzero, and Artix's LP! Without further ado, here's an anecdotal comparison of the soundtracks of the original and remake along with links for your own listening pleasure:
Hmm, Remake got its rear end kicked early on, but bounced back with some drat solid gaps to prevent this from being too much of a rout. That said, I'm going to give the Original Soundtrack the win in this Let's Listen to the Panzer Dragoon OSTs. Congrats, original PD OST! You remain unseated! Sally fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 07:46
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