It won't be very long before Level-5's Ni no Kuni, the DS adventure game they're teaming up with animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli to produce, is out in stores. (This week's issue of Famitsu claims a fall release in Japan, but considering that the official site and every other source online says "spring 2010," this is quite likely a typo.)To celebrate, Level-5 has released a bevy of new information from their DS mega-game, essentially revealing most of the intro and the first set of quests Oliver the hero undertakes. If you're sensitive to very light spoilers, feel free to skip the rest of this article.
- The game takes place in Hotroit, a white-bread industrial city that looks a bit like Anytown, U.S.A. as envisioned in the 1950s. Oliver and his friend Mark are both pre-teen tinkerers, retiring to the garage in their spare time to work on a secret car project they've been puttering around with for a while.
- One night, Oliver waits until his mother Allie is asleep, then sneaks out in order to test out the racer with Mark at the riverside. Allie, noticing that her son is missing, arrives at the scene just in time to witness Oliver crash the car and get thrown into the river, thrashing about helplessly. Allie dives in to rescue the boy as eyewitnesses look on, successfully bringing him back to shore uninjured. Just then, however, Allie is struck down with a heart attack and very suddenly passes away.
- Distraught, Oliver holes up in his room all day in mourning, clutching the doll that his mother made for him. He's rather surprised to find that the doll comes to life before his eyes. It calls itself Shizuku, a spirit from the world of Ni no Kuni, and claims that Oliver's tears are what freed him from a curse laid upon him by Jabow, an evil wizard. Shizuku wants Oliver to help him defeat Jabow and rescue the great sage Alicia -- who apparently shares souls with Allie over in the "real" world. If Oliver saves Alicia, Shizuku says, he might be able to bring Allie back to life as well.
- The pair proceed through a magical gate to Ni no Kuni, a fantastic world filled with strange characters -- many of whom bear an eerie resemblance to people and things Oliver knew in Hotroit. For example, the kingdom is run by Nyandahl XIV, a despotic ruler who looks quite a lot like a neighborhood cat named Frank that Oliver runs into now and again near his house. Nyandahl is extremely angry about something -- what, nobody knows for sure -- and refuses to help Oliver or even see him.
- Realizing that Ni no Kuni and Earth are more connected than at first glance, Oliver returns to his home world to find that Frank the cat is also acting rather annoyed -- he likes having the neighborhood dairy-shop owner clean his ears, but the lady hasn't done it lately because she's lost her special ear-pick. Oliver tracks down the pick, Frank is happy, and before long, our hero finds that this has changed things for the better in Ni no Kuni as well...
No US release has been announced for Ni no Kuni yet, but a DS game with this sort of game-design and animation talent behind it not getting an English version would seem a terrible shame indeed.
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