The release date for the Valkyria Chronicles Remaster (February 10!) is fast approaching. With that in mind we’re going to see more promotional pushes for the game until the day arrives.
First, Sega finalized the product design for some of their preorder goods and posted them to the official Valkyria Project Twitter account. Follow it now if you haven’t already done so! The Valkyria Project Twitter account showed finalized goods design packages for three offerings earlier today:
Number 10 (Game Shop Takarajima):
Lastly, there’s a new large promotional page for Valkyria Chronicles Remaster on Sony of Japan’s website. It debriefs you on the story, the CANVAS graphics engine, and the BLiTZ battle system. It also offers a bunch of screenshots for Valkyria Chronicles Remaster, like the one chosen for this article’s featured image.
However, there’s a problem. There’s nothing that differentiates this screenshot that we used for the featured image above (also reproduced placed below as the first of two screenshots, courtesy of Gematsu) and this second screenshot below, originally retrieved from IGN.
“New” Screenshot
Old PS3 Screenshot
The second one is for the PS3 version of the game. Besides offering a complete package in the form of trophies and the original version’s DLC, Valkyria Chronicles Remaster is advertised as being graphically enhanced (output at 1080p) and so exact similarities like this should not be possible. Some words from my colleague Draikin to shed more light on this situation:
For the game’s cutscenes, it could make sense that they look exactly the same as those of the PS3 version. The same was true for the PC version. While the majority of those scenes were rendered “in-engine” (using the same graphics engine as the one used for the game itself), they were actually pre-recorded and stored as movie files on the disc. It seems the developers couldn’t recreate those scenes, and had to reuse the same movie files. Of course, the difference in quality between the higher resolution in-game PC graphics and the lower resolution, aliased PS3 videos was very apparent. It looks like the PS4 version won’t have these scenes redone either, which is a shame, given the price they’re asking for the remastered version.
However, while this could explain why some of the remaster screenshots look like the PS3 version, even the in-game screenshots being used appear to originate from the PS3 version. As listed above, some are clearly taken from old press material. While this doesn’t necesarilly have to mean anything, it’s odd that we haven’t (to my knowledge) seen any actual 1080P screenshots from the PS4 version. The one trailer we got didn’t have the quality needed to really compare the PS4 remaster’s graphics to those of the PC version. It seems we may have to wait for the game’s release before we can judge the quality of the PS4 port.
We invite additional thoughts and/or critical eyes on this matter! Let us know what you think and see. It’s only about a month until Valkyria Chronicles Remaster is released in Japan.