Re: Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town announced!

[Chrysalis-Lyn]

Wow, those transportation options are interesting! The horse is to be expected, but the wolf and scooter are a surprise. The implication is that our farmland will be expansive enough to merit faster travel. It does look pretty vast in trailers. I actually like that the scooter integrates newer technology, suggesting a more modern time period. I would have loved the wolf when I was younger, but now it seems a little out of place (more of a Rune Factory mount). Same with the unicorn. Bokumono has always had magical elements, sprites, and deities, but I'm having trouble conceptualizing where these animals fit in. Still, it's nice to have more options.

I also like that the trailer showcased different seasons, especially the leafless trees in winter.

[Kikki]

Yeah, the trees really grabbed my attention. I always wished trees would lose their leaves in winter in Bokumono, though I figured they never would since in most of the games I've played, they even have some trees bearing fruit in winter (like oranges in SoS.)

I love the wolf, but seeing a man RIDE one is a bit horrifying to me. An very young infant could ride a wolf, but even an older child would really hurt it. You'd break it's back. So I'm gonna assume it's a magical hellhound or something that's magically powerful and can't be hurt, lol. I do NOT want a unicorn. A pointy horse! Horses can be kinda vicious even without a great big spike on their foreheads (my dad was bitten and stomped and kicked by a horse before...it was a MEAN horse...all the others were fine.) and I never had the unicorn phase that most girls seem to go through at some point. I do like actual horses, and the idea of a magical horse is cool, but I never liked the idea of a horse with a great spiky horn.

I sort of like the nod to modern day in Olive Town that they showed in the opening and with the vespa or moped whatever that little motorcycle is called, but also like that Olive Town itself is still sort of stuck in the past. It's like Olive Town is in some kind of small pocket of reality where time hasn't passed. I like that.

[Code_Name_Geek]

One game that heavily automated animal care was Innocent Life, which automatically, fed, milked, sheared, and picked up eggs, placing the items on a conveyor belt where you could then take them off to use if needed (otherwise they would ship automatically at the shipping time). All you had to do was talk to your animals to keep them happy. However, this was the only option for animal care - there was no way to manually do any of those tasks, which I personally didn't love since animal care is one of my favourite parts of the game. It would be nice to see something like that return as an option for the people that would like it, though. Maybe something like the autograbbers you can buy and place in Stardew Valley?

I'm so excited to ride the wolf haha! I do agree that it is a bit weird, but Animal Parade lets you ride ostriches iirc so it's not much weirder than that.

[Kikki]

Fun (?) fact...ostriches really can be ridden. An ostrich can support up to nearly 200 pounds, though more typically it'd be people under 150 to be safe. (As if there is anything such as a typical ostrich-rider?) Their skeleton supports it well. Dogs/wolves have a flexible spine with a longer expanse that is unsupported, that would just crumple under an adult human's weight. Even children's. Horses and ostriches and the like have framework that is thicker and in a configuration that can distribute the weight comfortably.

That's why I'm going to assume the Olive Town wolves are magical in nature, somehow. Otherwise I'd keep thinking about its poor spine snapping. You know what I'd really have liked to ride? A BEAR. Those can literally be ridden, too, strength-wise, though it'd be really impractical as it'd be hard to stay on and they walk funny..their run is almost like a rolling hop. But most of all I wouldn't think I was crushing its spine when I sat on it. But if we're getting fantasy mounts anyway, why not a bear?

[Shan O 123]

Holds breath

I WAS RIGHT WITH THE BIKE!! Yayyy lol

Now I wonder if the bike’s customizable.... hmm

[iloverainbow]

Omg I am so hyped

I feel like there is more content (I mean like MORE) than what they are showing us so far. Hopefully they don't reveal everything and keep some surprises.

One thing that I would really love is more dialogues and you are allowed to kiss your spouse after getting married. More post marriage content as well please!!!

I also have a strong feeling that this time they will add DLC a few months after the game being released.

[Chrysalis-Lyn]

Neat fact about the ostriches! They are sturdy animals. There also used to be giant elephant birds, though they went extinct in the 1600s.

I did enjoy the riding mechanic in Animal Parade. It worked well, given the slow pace of the game and the size of the map. It was a little odd to ride cows and sheep, but it made some amount of sense when paired with the overall world and farming. I do agree that the idea of wolf-riding is a smidgen uncomfortable. Bokumono wavers between realistic and unrealistic mechanics. Sometimes these mechanics strike a decent balance and mesh well together, but sometimes it's a source of tension.

[Kikki]

The inclusion of a unicorn mount bothers me. It's too fantasy and Bokumono feels more rooted in reality, to me. It's way more Rune Factory than Bokumono. It's not that magical stuff doesn't exist in Bokumono. The sprites, for example, or koropons or whatever they are this time. But a UNICORN, that you ride around, and people can SEE you on? Do they see a unicorn? Or are you riding an invisible thing, to them? It just doesn't feel like it belongs, to me. Every magical thing they put in the game, they have an explanation for to some extent, and generally only YOU can see them, which makes it feel like magic is quite limited and you, having some special bond with nature (whether plants or animals or both), are more able to see magic than most others. But for unicorns to just be common, so much so that you can ride them around town and no one makes note of it...

Feels too weird. If other people love the idea, then that's great, but I definitely won't be having a unicorn. I probably won't be able to resist having a wolf (big wolfy dogs are the only ones that really interest me), but I don't know that I'd actually ride it even if I did. I'd go with a horse or a scooter/vespa/moped thing for actual transportation. Assuming that it's possible to keep more than one item of transportation, that is.

[white66]

I'm a little conflicted on the unicorn too. I'm hoping there will some sort of special significance to it, like if it's plot-related or requires extra work to get. If you can just buy one from animal store that would be lame.

[Guest]

I don't think the 'unicorn' is actually a unicorn. If you look closely, its 'horn' is the same shade as it's hair. so I think it's just a horse with stylized hair. That said, this game seems slightly more fantasy-ish; like in the lava area, I recall there being a giant crab chilling in the lava pool. So if it's an actual unicorn, it probably won't be that out of place.

[Kikki]

It's true about the lava crab, but the whole lava area is a secret area that you only uncover by finding enough of your little magical koropon buddies, afaik. It's the idea of openly riding a unicorn around in public that gets me, as that makes it seem like magic would just have to be a commonly accepted fact in Olive Town, which I would find out-of-step, more like Rune Factory ('a fantasy Harvest Moon') than Bokumono. I love Rune Factory and the fantasy, but I also really like the more-like-the-real-world feeling of Bokumono. (Not that it's exactly realistic, mind you, it's just not usually full of unicorns.)

I'm assuming it, like the wolf, is one of the wild animals you can tame, rather than a mount you could buy. Though I don't know if you can buy a regular horse, either, since we have to forage all of our livestock this time (I laugh every time I say that because it just sounds so weird). It sounds like stuff will be available to buy after we've recovered it from nature with our own hands at least once, though I don't know any details about that, such as if you have to find a certain amount or if you have to sell at least one or if there are any other conditions to unlocking crops and livestocks as items you can purchase.

I had noticed about the horn being the same colour as the hair and had wondered at first if it just had really long pointy bangs, but Xseed is promoting it like it's a unicorn. They even put an icon of a unicorn up, and I know on Facebook at least, people commenting on the post were getting all excited about being able to have a unicorn. Be pretty misleading if it turned out to just be a horse with a hairstyle. I personally wouldn't be angry about it if they'd done that since I don't really want a unicorn, but I'd be a bit 'wth?' over the way they featured it if that turned out to be what it was, so I imagine folks who love the idea of a unicorn might be upset if it turned out to just be a horse with a lot of pomade in its forelock.

I doubt the unicorn will be a big deal in the game either way, any more than any of the other animals. (Though I guess it could be. Maybe the unicorn is the entire point of the game, lol.) It just feels so strange to me. Maybe other people simply can't see the unicorn's horn or something and they see it as a normal horse? That or Olive Town is just a very magical region and everyone knows and accepts that. I'm really curious about the unicorn now, and how it fits. Or if they made it fit at all.

[suvius]

I was thinking the unicorn was the preferred Koropon village mode of travel that can also be used in Olive Town and your farm; just looking like a normal horse away from the magic of our Koropon friends.

[Kikki]

Yeah, we've know way of knowing, yet. There's a lot of things like that, still...we can see a lot of the body of the game, but none of the joints...we can't see how everything flows. So many things we know will exist in the game, without quite knowing how they're going to be implemented. Maybe they've made owning a unicorn completely feasible in Olive Town, somehow. Or maybe they just stuck it in as pure fan-service. At least we don't have a year to wait, as we would have had on previous games at this point, still a bit more than a month away from the Japanese release.

This is going to be a unique experience, with us unable to gain insight due to the Japanese-release players having gotten the game 8-12 months ahead of us. Should be a lot easier for those who like to go in as 'blind' as possible this time, though.

[Farm Friend]

I commented this back in October:
"I'm hoping that as we get closer to the release we get more character art/portraits. Personally that's what matters the most to me is the villagers so if they end up being boring I'm gonna be bummed."

Happy to say the villagers turned out to be amazing! And I'd rather date the villagers than some of the marriage candidates! I am excited to talk to villagers like I was when I would play Tale of Two Towns - I wanted to talk to everyone not just for the FP but because I just liked seeing them!
Very happy to see more characters being revealed.

[Shan O 123]

I mean, having a unicorn wouldn’t be so bad, just not my personal choice imo. I’m probably going to use the motorcycle to get around but if there’s a place that the bike can’t reach the unicorn or wolf kinda makes sense.