Difference between revisions of "Front Mission (series)"

While standalone titles within the series do exist, one distinct attribute of the series is that there is a larger narrative framework that connects that majority of the games into a single story. This serial drama approach to storytelling and focus on realistic military conflicts is contrary to the majority of [[Square Enix]]'s games, which are typically fantasy-orientated adventures with self-contained stories. Currently, the series has seven main titles and seven spin-offs.

Front Mission titles focus on the development, construction, and deployment of walking tanks know as Wanzers, which have become the mainstay units of 21st century military technology. The player is given a high degree of customization over a unit and can decide how to best optimize it for a particular battle scenario. As the player advances further in a game, they are given increasingly higher numbers of wanzers to control, until a veritable platoon is at their command. In addition to military hardware, the pilots that make up a game's cast of characters can be trained to become ace pilots and control their wanzers with deft aplomb.

2005 would be an ambitious year for the series, with efforts to find a new demographic on the recently emerging mobile phone market, an third-person MMO title, and a traditional, numbered entry for the Playstation 2. The former of these two experimental titles saw the series expand beyond standard release for an episodic, three-chapters-per-month download title dubbed ''Front Mission 2089''. 2089 would reused music and sound effects from previous titles and had a non-linear story. The game performed well enough to gain a sequel a year later in 2006, titled ''Front Mission 2089-II'' and both games would later be bundled together as a single DS game released in 2008 under the name of ''Front Mission 2089: Boarder of Madness''. Niether version of either title would receive an overseas release. The MMO, ''Front Mission Online'', was released on the Playstation 2 and PC and featured real-time combat in a free-roaming environment instead the turn-based grids of previous games, owing to its nature as an online title. Strategy is still a fundamental part of the game, however, and cooperation with other players was essential to completing missions. The game lasted until May 31st, 2008, and remained exclusive to Japan.

The fifth entry in the series, ''Front Mission 5: Scars of War'', was planned by Tsuchida as the grand finale to the overarching plotline introduced in the original, with loose ends from each previous entry being tied up or addressed openly in the game's narrative. The programming and design team from the fourth game was kept on, refining the skills they developed and resulting in the most tactically deep and complex game in the series to date. Due to the dense, self-referential plotline and high strategic expectations of players, Square Enix decided against localizing the game for the overseas audience. However, an 2009 fan translation was made available online by a group calling itself the ''Front Mission: Series Translation Project''.  

With the 2008 port of the ''2089'' duo not being released outside of Japan, the Front Mission series would enter the HD era with ''Front Mission Evolved'', a third-person shooter developed by Double-Helix games and released in 2010. Reception was very negative, with fans expressing frustration of the abandonment of the series' strategic roots in favor of unoriginal shooting action. Though the story was written by Square Enix staffers [[Motomu Toriyama]] and [[Daisuke Watanabe]] and supervised by the company, all other aspects of development were handled by the California studio.