I have written all but one of the Tokyo Game Show posts I still needed to get to this week. I've had little time to report on much else. So, today, on the even of the many October New York City visits from many of gaming's biggest companies, I don't have much left in my notebook.

Here are some leftovers:

The Best Thing I Saw In Tokyo: Witness the magic in the YouTube clip above. In a toy store that Crecente, McWhertor and I visited before the start of TGS, I took many pictures of Pokemon. And then, upstairs, I found this five-minute video of Aero Spider, a toy car that drives up walls and on the ceiling. Stupendous!

One such statement — it may have come from Kazumi Kitaue, head of Konami Digital Entertainment — covered the accessibility of American movies. The gentleman who said this explained that, while living in the U.S., he'd realized that there are many non-English speaking people in the country who can nevertheless enjoy going to the movies.

Why?

Because Hollywood "makes entertaining films you can enjoy without even needing to speak the language." I thought this was an odd analysis, even though I understood where he said he was going with it: "To succeed globally we need to look at action games and sports games and games that can be understood globally."

(On my flight home, I watched part of the newest Fast and Furious with the sound off as I transcribed interviews I had recorded. )

Leaving With High Hopes: I usually end my interviews by asking my interviewees if there is anything else they want to tell Kotaku. Sometimes I get good stuff out of that, but I primarily ask it to make sure the person I've been interviewing feels they've been able to express whatever they wanted to get across in the interview. Often, the responses to the question repeat things we've discussed or sum things up about a new game in the most PR-friendly way.

And sometimes, as was the case with Level 5's Yoshiaki Kusuda who discussed the 2008-in-Japan and 2010-in-the-U.S. White Knight Chronicles with me, the response is one of apology and hope: "We are so sorry that we have been keeping it from users for so much time, international users who have been looking forward to it. But over the past months we have worked very hard to incorporate all of the feedback the Japanese users gave us since the release of it in the market and we have also worked to incorporate all the requests from the U.S. users. We hope we can deliver the title.. I would like to ask for a little more patience."

That's all I've got for the ND this week. One more semi-TGS-related piece coming next week, plus my monthly Nintendo stats report and hopefully some hands-on with games I think people will care about. Enjoy the weekend, everyone.

Level 5, the studio behind White Knight Chronicles, is an RPG juggernaut in Japan. They make the top-selling Dragon Quest games these days, are working with Studio Ghibli on a major adventure and have the Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy RPGs to their credit.

So if anyone would be able to explain the art of deciding how long an RPG is, I was sure it would be someone from Level 5.

"When we start developing an RPG we start from a story," Kusuda explained. "Then we divide the story into the parts where the player should play and the parts that would be just shown. Based on that, we create kind of a flow chart and then decide how many hours should be allocated to this part where players are supposed to be in the story, to make sure we keep a good balance.

Level 5's next RPG for the U.S., White Knight Chronicles, has an online-enabled quest system that auto-matches players interested in group missions. That affected how long this game would be.

"With White Knight Chronicles, we thought that many players would first complete the story mode and then spend more time online. So in terms of the story mode we decided it should be completed within 25 or 30 hours — it will be different from one player to another. And then, in terms of the online games, you could continue to do it forever."

As soon as Kusuda told me this, Sony's producer on the game, Kentaro Motomura, chimed in: "I have spent 1,500 hours online and I don't feel i have finished doing everything."

Shaken from my original line of questioning, I had to follow up. I asked Mr. Motomura if he did anything other than play the game?

"Evey moment I can spare and every break time I have, I play White Knight Chronicles," he told me.

Ask for one secret to be revealed and you get another. But at least now I have a little better sense of how RPG-makers figure out how long their games will be.

It's called White Knight Chronicles: Awakening of Light and Darkness, which you may already know if you've laid eyes on this week's copy of Famitsu. No real info to report other than that, as only a trailer was shown. We'll update with the trailer as soon as it becomes publicly available.

The feature was confirmed during a PS3 press conference at the Tokyo Game Show earlier today, along with word that the international release of White Knight will include all of the updates released for the game so far in Japan.

Kudos to localisation that goes the extra mile!

Priced at ¥3,800 (US$40), the game comes with the 2nd Wave downloadable content that is hitting this month. White Knight Chronicles EX will be out in Japan October 8.

PS3 白騎士物語 -古の鼓動- EX Edition[ソニー・コンピュータエンタテインメント]《予約商品１０月発売》17％オフあみあみ本店 [amiami]

続編も制作中　(zokuhen mo seisaku chuu)

That means something like "a sequel is being made". Details are scant, and the article details the 2nd Wave update. The last big update to the game, dubbed the 1st Wave, was back in the Spring.

What Is It?
White Knight Chronicles is an action role-playing game developed exclusively for the PlayStation 3 by Sony's Japan Studio and Level-5 of Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy fame.

What We Saw
We started off with a little rudimentary combat, with my party of two story characters and one player-created character wandering the countryside, taking out random monsters using the active real-time battle system, which is somewhat reminiscent of Final Fantasy XII. You control one character while the other two fight on their own, following your general commands - attack, withdraw, etc. - if you choose to issue them.

Upon targeting a creature, hitting X brings up a list of commands and attacks you can scroll through. Selecting one while close enough to an enemy to attack will launch said skill, after which you must wait for a circular meter to fill before you can act again. It's not quite turn-based, as positioning comes into play, but it definitely isn't an action RPG either.

The level of monsters we were facing seemed a bit low, with my AI companions generally finishing them off before I had a chance to swing. Soon enough, however, we came across a towering ogre that required more than a few quick swings to take down.

This gave me an opportunity to use the main character Leonard's transformation skill. A meter on the side of the screen slowly fills as you do battle, and once it has enough points you can use skills that require said points. The transformation skill changes Leonard from a small yet capable fighter into the powerful (and titular) White Knight. Easily three times the size of his companions, the White Knight is extremely powerful, felling the ogre and clearing the area of enemies way before the timer for the power ran out. Once the area was cleared, Leonard suddenly became Leonard once again.

I switched to the female member of my entourage, Yulie, and gave the combo system a spin. There's a huge focus on customization in White Knight Chronicles, and creating custom combos is just one aspect of that focus. A character can create a combo of up to seven skills, with the number of skills dictating the number of ability points needed to pull off the combo. Creating custom combos allows you to forgo selecting your attack skill every cycle of your timer, instead simply hitting the "X" button at the appropriate time to trigger the next attack in the sequence.

I tested out Yulie's combo on another giant create, a treant, targeting its knees to immobilize it before finishing it off. Quick and easy.

The third character in my party was the custom character that each player creates at the beginning of the game. The custom character travels with the party for the entire length of the game's story, and is also used in White Knight's online co-op modes.

The helpful lady walking me through the game let me go into character creation, where the amount of customization options is quite extensive and easily exploitable by members of the press who've had one too many Red Bull and vodkas. My demo-driver watched in horrified amusement as I set the body to extremely small, made the head impossibly huge, and gave my creation a chin that would make Jay Leno feel like a male model. I named her Kotaku.

As you can see in the image above, our little Kotaku appears in the game's cut scenes along with the story characters, allowing you to come up with your own reasons as to why your custom character is with the party. In Kotaku's case, she doesn't realize how hideous she really is, and often spouts out "Love me!" at inappropriate times.

Leonard just doesn't seem to know what to make of her, but figures it's probably best to keep her close. Maybe he'll get lucky and a monster will eat her. After fighting a few starting enemies with her new friend, Kotaku got distracted by the cookies on the dessert cart at Sony's Comic-Con 09 cocktail mixer and wandered off.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is complete and released in Japan, so in that country at least I'd say it's pretty far along. We're looking at a 2010 release in the states, so there's still plenty of localization left to do.

What Needs Improvement?
A Little Slow: The frame rate in the build I was playing seemed a bit choppy now and again. Nothing too huge, but definitely enough to be noticed.

Active Turn Based?: I love turn-based roleplaying games. It's only been over the past few years that I've really begun to appreciate a good team-based action RPG. What I am still having trouble with is attempts to combine the two formats into some sort of hybrid. I wasn't all that fond of the Final Fantasy XII battle system, and White Knight Chronicles seems to lack the polish that Square Enix put on theirs. Watching a white circle slowly drawing itself on your screen just doesn't seem like a fun way to spend several hours battling the forces of not good.

What Should Stay The Same?
Deep Character Customization: I'm a sucker for adding a little bit of myself to a game I'm playing, even if that little bit is slightly tipsy. Not only do you get pages worth of options for tailoring your character's look to your taste, once a cut scene kicks in you get to see them actively participating in the game's story. Then you can use your imagination to fill in the blanks. You can even be comic relief!

Looks Just Lovely: White Knight Chronicles is very easy on the eyes. The monster designs particularly stand out, with massive, gorgeous creatures towering over you and your party making you feel like you've actually accomplished something in taking one down.

Final Thoughts
White Knight Chronicles seems to capture the grand scope and epic feel I enjoy in my roleplaying games, but the hybrid battle system just didn't feel all that satisfying to me. Perhaps once I have the game's full 100+ hours laid out before me and my little mutant Kotaku girl by my side for the long haul I'll feel differently.

Since the Don "The Movie Voice Guy" LaFontaine passed on last year, Sony had to go with "In the land..." instead of "In a world...", but this White Knight Chronicles trailer still manages to give off a truly epic vibe. There's action, adventure, potential romance...they even threw in a dramatic eye flash at the end to seal the deal. I'd definitely pay $10 to see this in a theater. I'm just not sure if I'd spend $60 to play it yet.

We got a chance to go hands-on with a mostly-localized version of the game at Sony's PlayStation Gamers Day this week, my first tangible experience with White Knight Chronicles since fumbling about with the Japanese demo at Tokyo Game Shows past. Like many role-playing games, White Knight Chronicles will likely take dozens of hours to complete, weeks worth of leveling up and online adventuring to fully experience.

A fifteen minute demo may not offer the clearest of perspectives on how ultimately enjoyable the final version may be.

But we adventured nonetheless, experiencing White Knight Chronicles's blend of real-time action and turn-based attacks. The characters on hand were nearly maxed out, with skill points spent on nearly every unlockable spell, combo and attack. Our quartet of characters, as we cycled through each, was essentially unstoppable.

The actual gameplay in White Knight Chronicles is mostly straightforward, in keeping with genre conventions. Simply walk within range of one of the oversized wasp-beasts or masked field gnomes and issue an attack. Wait for the attack meter to recharge, then attack again. We faced no equal on the battlefield.

Even the towering Treant-like monster was little challenge, especially when the main character, Leonard, can transform into a giant white knight, then decimate his foes with an equally massive blade. Sure, we probably could've survived by taking the wood giant out at the shins, but we were in a hurry for some cave-dwelling.

What White Knight Chronicles does look to offer is attack variety. Four rows of customized attacks are available for each character, each with its own damage and magic attributes. Switching between them was initially awkward, but offered a slightly more action-filled feel than simply navigating menus.

Hopefully, Sony will offer a White Knight Chronicles demo to PlayStation 3 owners, so they can spend a little more time learning the intricacies of the battle system and character progression prior to launch. But new media may suffice, for now, to give players a better feel for the game.

The American version may not.

Tsubasa Inaba, who's producing the US version of White Knight Chronicles, tells the PlayStation.Blog: "We realize the necessity of voice chat. We're trying to get this in before release in the US market. We're working on it."

While Japanese gamers aren't exactly known for favoring voice chat, the feature really should have been in the game when it launched in The Land of the Rising Sun last December. Another thing that should have been in the game is worldwide online play. Once again, Inaba to the rescue!

"We're looking into it," says Inaba. "We're doing online testing domestically and also overseas. It is in our mind set, we're just trying to make it happen."

White Knight Chronicles will be out this winter in North America.

White Knight Chronicles - Your Questions Answered [PlayStation.Blog via Siliconera]

Some used games (like DS title ASH -Archaic Sealed Heat-) were as low as ten yen, which is the US dollar equivalent of 10 cents! Ojamakan typically has a few good deals, but during this sale there were tons of great deals. The Legendary Starfy 4 for ¥380 (US$3.82) anyone?

There was one deal in particular that causes much head scratching: PS3 title White Knight Chronicles used was priced at ¥980 ($9.85), which is down from its usual Ojamakan price of ¥1,880. M'kay, fantastic, people could pick up a solid RPG at the nice price.

Here's the bewildering part — in the same ad, Ojamakan is buying back the game for ¥1,000. Meaning you could actually buy the game at discount, sell it back to the same store AND MAKE A SMALL TWENTY CENT PROFIT. Surely this was an ad misprint!

春休みにPS3の『白騎士物語』が980円で売ってたらしいんだ [my game news flash]

This time, Level5's Akihiro Hino talks up the PS3's power near a construction site while the White Knight from PS3 exclusive White Knight Chronicles walks into the frame. Check out, Hino's feathery hair! Amazing.

Next up Metal Gear Solid 4 designer Hideo Kojima and Final Fantasy character designer Tetsuya Nomura?

ソニー公式の「プレステ誕生秘話」が本格的にひどい [はちま起稿]

When asked if this was in the cards, Level 5 president and CEO Akihiro Hino replied, "Yes, it should be, but the launch date has not been determined yet." What's more, it also hasn't not been decided if the game will feature cross-region multiplay — or if multiplay will be region restricted.

Does this really surprise anyone? Let's hope Level 5 figures all this out faster than Square Enix takes to release its games in the UK. Donkey's yonks, folks, donkey's yonks.

White Knight Chronicles [GT via Shacknews]

You know Level 5, developers of the best selling Professor Layton series for the Nintendo DS, entrusted with Square Enix's most recent Dragon Quest entries. They know how to make million sellers.

While first day sales of 130,000 copies may not have seemed to reverse any fortunes for Sony's PlayStation 3 in Japan, the first week's worth of sales for the Level 5-developed title bode better for the game.

White Knight Chronicles raked in an estimated 203,000 copies during its first seven days on sale, according to a typically reliable Japanese blog. That's despite middling Famitsu reviews.

That's good. In fact, it's the third best debut for a PlayStation 3 game behind Metal Gear Solid 4 and Devil May Cry 4. Better than Yakuza KENZAN and Shin Sangoku Musou. In other words, not bad for a non-sequel.

Now that PlayStation 3 games are starting to have better sales legs in Japan, we'll be keeping an eye on sell-through of the game to see how well it holds up. Keep in mind these are unconfirmed figures and we'll wait for Media Create numbers to confirm.

PS3「白騎士物語」初週で約20万本を販売、他 [忍之閻魔帳]

The game went on sale Christmas Day in Japan.

Granted, this isn't terrible for a PS3 title in Japan (or Xbox 360 title, for that matter), it is lower than probably Sony and Level 5 expected.

Reviews for the game has been so-so — check out Tim's reading of the Famitsu review here.

To put the game in proper perspective, here are the PS3's biggest sellers in Japan to date:

1. Metal Gear Solid 4 476,000 copies
2. Devil May Cry 4 212,000 copies
3. Ryu Ga Gotoku KENZAN! 178,000 copies
4. Shin Sangoku Musou 5 176,000 copies
5. Hot Shots Golf 5 176,000 copies
6. Pro Evo 2009 175,000 copies
7. Gundam Musou 171,000 copies
8. Gundam Musou 2 162,000 copies
9. Pro Evo 2008 145,000 copies
10. White Knight Chronicles 131,000 copies
11. Grand Theft Auto IV 122,000 copies

The official sales figures will be released later this week.

PS3「白騎士物語」初日で約13万本を販売、他 [忍之閻魔帳]

The breast size slider in question is shrewdly titled "glamor".

For years, players have toiled with character creation tools that allow them to customize nearly every minute element of their character — from the distance between the character's eyes to the chubbiness of his or her ankles — and though it's often been possible to make a female character's chest proportionally larger by increasing her body size, we've never had an explicit breast size slider.

White Knight Chronicles changes this, making it possible to make a female character who is amazingly short, with 0% body fat, with a head as large as her torso, and breasts the size of watermelons.

Or you can do what I did, and make a girl who looks just like Caska from the manga "Berserk".

That's not all White Knight Chronicles does different when it comes to character-creation, though. It's actually very clever about the whole thing, on paper at least: the avatar you create is the tagalong character who for some reason sticks with the main character from start to finish.

When you choose "New Game", White Knight Chronicles segues immediately from the title screen to the character creator. The process is exhausting — and that's not just a color adjective. I really mean it. I was literally sleepy by the time I finished. Once you've finished your character, you can start the game.

Around fifteen minutes of cut-scenes ensue. There's a princess. It's her sixteenth birthday. We see a flashback in which her mother is murdered. We see the king planning her birthday parade. We see a shady evil knight looking over the city on a horse. We see a mysterious old man use The Force to make his way past some castle guards. We see a king of a far-off land being carried into town; he makes small talk with some soldiers. We see the owner of a winery, yelling at his lazy employee, who just so happens to be the hero of the game: the princess's birthday parade is our big chance! I need you to go get the wine from the wine cellar! And bring this new guy with you!

The hero of the game goes over and introduces himself to the new guy. The boss yells: no time for chit-chat! We see that the "new guy" is the avatar we created.

It's wonderfully clever, in theory — until we see how ugly our character looks compared to the professionally designed hero. A man got paid thousands of dollars to design that hero; meanwhile, we paid money to design this avatar. Seriously, I was so frightened of how abnormal my character looked next to the fresh-faced hero that I had to start over. I started over three times before thinking "Forget it — I'm going to make a girl". That's when I discovered the breast size slider. Ahh, it was all downhill from there.

"GLAMOR"

It might interest you to know that "glamor" is one of those gray-area loan words in Japanese that has a meaning distinctly similar to its English meaning, though is very often soaked in the connotation of something slightly unrelated. "Glamor" in Japanese can mean just that — fancy dresses and diamond earrings — though if you type "グラマー" into Google Images, you're going to get several photos of large female breasts. Curious!

The term "glamor line", for example, describes a girl with feminine curves and ample bosoms.

Even more curious is that the "glamor" slider exists for creating male characters, as well, though as far as I can tell, it doesn't do anything. I thought maybe it would create some kind of crotch bulge, just to be fair, though it's impossible to tell, seeing as the female and male characters all wear the same clothing (a big ugly potato-sack-esque dress-like peasant tunic).

I will work around the clock to determine what a "glamor" slider setting of 100 means for a male avatar.

Anyway, because the governing rule of the internet goes something like "pics or it didn't happen lol", I have taken photographs. Note the "グラマー" ("glamor") slider at 0, 50, and 100. Hot stuff!

Warning: the following photos might not be safe for work, if you work in a Sunday school. If you work somewhere like where I work, chances are they are very safe for work ("vsfw"). In fact, they might even get you a promotion — or, at the very least, a raise (we call that a double entendre right there).

Either way, if you're at work on the day after Christmas, you probably deserve a look at some very clothed cartoon boobs, seriously.