Actraiser Renaissance
Image: Square Enix

Actraiser Renaissance certainly came out of the blue when it was announced earlier this year. An update of the legendary SNES title, it mixes action platforming with world-building to excellent effect – so much so that we gave it a high recommendation in our review.

The game's director, Hideo Iwasaki, has been speaking on the Square Enix blog about the game and reveals that a system was almost included where you could 'be the bad guy' and earn a special title based on your in-game actions.

When asked if there was anything that had to be left out of the final game, Iwasaki replied:

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We were able to achieve most of what we had in mind but there was one thing that didn’t make it to the final cut.

At first, we were considering a system where a different title would be given to the player’s alter ego, the Lord of Light, depending on their actions. For example, if you chose a play style which resulted in excessive destruction of the village, you would be called the “God of Destruction,” while if you minimised the destruction or gave alms to the people, you would be called the “God of Goodness,” and so on.

However, in actuality, there wasn’t much difference in play style between different players, as was the case with the original version, so we ended up dropping the idea.

Those of you who have played the game will be aware that you're often encouraged to destroy the houses of your people so they will rebuild them in an even stronger fashion, so perhaps this morality system wouldn't have worked out so well.

Would you have liked to have seen more freedom in Actraiser Renaissance, or do you think it would have been hard to balance the game had the player been given the option to be evil? Let us know with a comment below.

[source square-enix-games.com]