Arc System Works and Cygames announced during the Cygames Fes 2018 event that the new Unreal Engine 4-powered fighting game, Granblue Fantasy Versus, is on the way for home consoles. They released a new trailer for the game, sporting three minutes of cinematics and gameplay.
Visually, Arc System Works is relying on their own custom-built shader that replicates anime cel-shading for character lighting and dynamic hard and soft shadows. As you can see, the designs are made to mimic the likes of the anime that came out back in spring of 2017. The character designs and overall aesthetic presentation is almost 1:1.
You can see what it looks like in action with the trailer below, courtesy of NK777.
They attempt to utilize the low frame-rates during cinematics to capture the movement of the anime, but it looks pretty bad. However, the actual gameplay is closer to Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear Xrd series or the highly popular Dragon Ball FighterZ, which ended up selling millions of copies due to how it was able to capture the look and feel of the show.
During the livestream for the announvement of Granblue games, Cygames also announced that Granblue Fantasy Relink was coming to the PS4 in 2019. There’s a near-two minute trailer posted up on Giuseppe’s channel.
We don’t get to see much of the actual game, other than a large open-world with the main character walking down the world. However, the game will be developed by Platinum Games so expect the fast-paced, break-neck speed action that their games have become renown for.
According to Twinfinite, the title was initially announced earlier in 2018 as Granblue Fantasy Project Re:Link, but was later renamed to just Granblue Fantasy: Relink.
The only thing I’m curious about is how much of the game they had to censor to accommodate Sony’s censorship policy?