Today the developers of Muv-Luv Tactics: Nightmare of Kalidasa revealed even more details about the upcoming strategy/simulation JRPG.
The first detail is the return of Alfred Walken, a beloved character who appears in the original trilogy and in other games of the series.
This time around he’s a bit younger (28), since the game is set in 1995. His rank is also lower (Captain instead of Major, representing an earlier point of his career) and he doesn’t pilot his cutting-edge TSF mecha F-22 Raptor, but an F-15E Strike Eagle.
It’s worth mentioning that this is quite appropriate, as the F-15E Strike Eagle was deployed in 1995 in the Muv-Luv timeline, so Walken is still piloting the best of the best the US Army can offer.
He is in charge of the force executing the secret mission teased a few days ago when the first story details were revealed. He is proud to be an American soldier and carries out his missions with cold determination following his principles and the ideals of American justice.
He is a hard man who believes in rationality and perhaps he’s even a bit over the top, but he’s still flexible enough to respect courtesy and seek mutual understanding when necessary.
He’s 195 cm tall, his blood type is A, he loves self-discipline, order, and restoring vintage cars, and hates doing things the wrong way and corn soup.
We also get to see the emblem of the protagonist’s 429th Private Mercenary Company “Umibato” (Sea Dove), or better, its emblems.
On the left, you can see the original emblem designed by the protagonist’s father Sanza Minato. When Chisa took over the unit she dismissed her father’s feelings and decided that it was not cute enough, so she changed it to the design on the right.
We learn that the emblems were designed directly by Muv-Luv creator Kouki Yoshimune, and the note funnily mentions that it’s easy to understand the feelings of the soldiers who have to wear the new emblem.
While this may be a little shocking for newer fans of the franchise or those who aren’t used to its intricacies, Muv-Luv has always mixed this kind of wacky elements with its much more serious and tragic storytelling. It’s one of the series’ signature elements.
Lastly, we get a new representation of the Muv-Luv timeline, which is basically a multiverse governed by “probability space-time” branches. We see that Muv-Luv Tactics: Nightmare of Kalidasa has its own proceeding in parallel with the other universes.
The choice of hot pink as its color may not be random.
The game is currently being crowdfunded on Campfire with 32% of 60 million yen currently pledged and 10 days to go. If you want to contribute, you’ll be able to do so on the campaign’s official page.
You can also check out more information on the protagonist and her TSF mecha,and take a look at some battle gameplay.
If you’d like to know more, this is the beginning of a fairly extensive roadmap of Muv-Luv games envisioned by its creators. If you’re unfamiliar with Muv-Luv, it’s a franchise created by âge mostly focused on sci-fi visual novels that debuted in Japan in 2003.
The original game for PC (which actually includes two visual novels, Muv-Luv Extra and Muv-Luv Unlimited) was followed by Muv-Luv Alternative completing the original trilogy in 2006. It’s considered by many one of the best visual novels ever published.
The trilogy was then ported to several platforms including PS3, Xbox 360, PS Vita, Steam, and recently Nintendo Switch. It was also localized in English in 2016 following a very successful Kickstarter campaign.
Several additional visual novels have since expanded the franchise’s universe, and we also games from different genres like the action RPG Project MIKHAIL: A Muv-Luv War Story and the recent mobile game Muv-Luv Dimensions.
Incidentally, the enhanced edition of another of âge’s most popular visual novels, Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, which is widely considered Muv-Luv’s prequel, has recently been released on Steam with an English localization for the first time.
Full disclosure: the author of this article backed Muv-Luv Tactics: Nightmare of Kalidasa’s crowdfunding campaign.
