The 36th Broadcast has been announced and it’s a whopping 15 hours long. Yeah that\s right, 15 freaking hours. What the shit!?
It starts at 2:00PM and ends at 5:00AM in Japan time. which is ridiculous. Do they really expect their fans to stay awake that long? More to the point the hosts are gonna be shattered themselves, surely? This does however mean that for once I won’t have to lose a night’s sleep just to catch the broadcast live this time! Manta’s created a timezone table here.
Anyway bemusement at the length of the broadcast aside, this post is mostly going to be looking at things they’re announcing and what may or may not turn up at the show. So mostly speculation and pondering over announced and data-mined content.
The broadcast is planned to include the following:
- Information on November and December content
- New information about Episode 4
- Live-playthrough of the Arks GP preliminaries and Mining Base: Demise.
- Setlist for the Sympathy 2015 concert
- Phantasy Star Festa 2016 details
- Developer Q and A
- Chats with PSO series staff
- PSO2 Anime news
There’s also a sub-channel but that’s just going to be celebrities streaming.
It’s Nico, so you’re likely going to want to find some fan re-stream if you want to catch it live. Unless you’re a subscriber in which case you probably have more money than sense anyway. If you can’t catch it live, don’t worry because people will almost certainly upload the more important parts to Youtube and I’ll endeavor to collect information into a post as I normally do.
Among the updates are anime and video game collabs. There’s also going to be some new information about the PSO2 anime including characters and zzzzz…
Moving on.
Notably there doesn’t seem to be much room for actual updates in November. October will be ending with the Dark Falz Double and Profound Darkness Emergency Quest, making it a major month for story content but November just seems to be getting an anime collaboration and perhaps a Limited Quest.
December on the other hand could be more interesting. Among the things we know are arriving are Mining Base Defense 4: Demise, in which we face off against Dark Falz: Apprentice and corrupted AIS in what looks to be the most hectic Mining Base Defense yet. If the Profound Darkness has been defeated before this quest is set in the storyline, the Darkers aren’t going quietly into the night it seems!
Other possible things for December include a new Time Attack Quest and the Extreme Quest expansion. Presumably the Time Attack Quest is set on Harukotan, seeing as it’s the only planet without one at this point. As discussed in a previous post, the Extreme Quest expansion could either be new floors with Extra-Hard level enemies or it could be a Harukotan themed Extreme Quest. It could be both! This carries with it the possibility of a new weapon series, which has a decent chance at being 13* rarity. I’ll be hedging my bets for this in the meanwhile by doing full runs of the quests to save up on stones, but there’s obviously no guarantee that if they do add new weapons that they’ll be worth shooting for, especially as the stones will also used for Austere weapons by then.
This is likely on the forefront of the minds of the playerbase right now. With Episode 3 coming to a rather definitive end and the very existence of the Darkers now under question the Arks seem to be going foward without a nemesis. This leaves room for a brand new threat to arise, which leaves me eagerly wondering where they might be taking the game next.
The data we have so far isn’t definitive enough to make any solid predictions either. Right now the only major tidbits we have are the possibility of a new class and the “phantom” enemies.
The phantoms seem to be military themed, with tanks, helicopters and various classes of soldiers among them. This suggests the possibility of a new planet or at least a foe with technology far beyond any enemy encountered so far. Well, any aside Lilipa that is. This leads me to ponder the possibility that the phantoms could be native Lilipans, either returning to the planet or some wibbly-wobbly timey-space stuff happens and in the newly altered timeline they never left. Yeah there’s not really enough information to go on, not even any new planets or areas that the phantoms could belong to. Sadly, planet and area data doesn’t seem to arrive ahead of time anymore. Assuming the phantoms are the new big bad could be like datamining Naberius enemies and determining that the grand threat in Episode 1 was a bunch of monkeys and a giant cat. That said, if it was a separate threat you’d think we’d be seeing the Episode 4 equivalent of “antsoldier” (El Dagan) or something.
As for the new class, it was found a while ago that Episode 4 files contain references to “Summoner” PAs as well as at least one summon-able pet. There isn’t enough data to definitively say that it’s a new class and not a mechanic that’s just available to all players. That said, a Summoner class could conceivably fill in the R-Atk T-Atk hybrid they have yet to add to the game.
As for what they will actually say and show is anyone’s guess. I’m more hopeful for some tidbits that might help with speculation over the details we know, though anything beyond a release date would be nice!
As often is the case with these broadcasts, they drop an unannounced trailer at the end. They don’t always do it, they didn’t last time, but if they do I feel it will almost certainly be a teaser for Ultimate Amduscia. I mean come on, it’s been in the data for a year now. If it’s going to be a thing that happens this side of Episode 4 they’re going to have to announce it soon! Though it could well be post Episode 4 content or not happen at all.
I’m curious to see what ultimate Dragon Ex, Quartz Dragon and Tranmizer-dragon will look like!
PSO2Blog 