The 3rd Birthday Bares it All

So The 3rd Birthday, the PSP followup to Parasite Eve 1 and 2, is nearing completion. Hajime Tabata, the game's director, has been releasing update after update on the game's twitter page as the Tokyo Games Show (TGS) approaches. Here are a few of those updates that may be of interest to some of you. First are the controls that people can expect in the TGS demo and in the full game.

Credit to Andriasang for translations:

L: Reload

L (Hold): Open weapon change menu

D-pad: When in lock-on mode (R pressed and held), switch off between lock-on targets. In other situations, free camera control.

Analogue pad: Player movement

R: Camera reset

R (Hold): Ready weapon/lock on

Triangle: Overdive. If you hold this down, you can press left or right on d-pad to select target and press down to cancel out.

Circle: Hand grenade

X: Evade and various actions

Square: Shot

Triangle + Circle: Engage Liberation

Start: Pause

When you unleash Liberation by pressing Triangle and Circle together, you go into a special attack mode where your shots become special for a limited time. During this time, Aya will automatically evade enemy attack.
Seems like standard fare for a third-person shooter game. With the extreme emphasis on shooting the dialing back of Aya's powers are no surprise. Outside of Liberation and Overdrive it seems like no other powers will be returning. Tabata states that the game's strategy comes in troop placement through the use of Overdrive. We'll see how that plays out soon enough.

Continuing with gameplay mechanics, Tabata seems to love showing off the damage system. For those who don't know, when Aya is attacked her clothes will get damaged. More clothes means more defense. But it also means less skin. Interesting idea for a trade off. Rips, tears, and holes will appear on her clothing and the more damaged her clothes are the more damage she takes.  So how far can that go?

Hmm.

The last thing to note is that the target figure for 3rd Birthday is 500,000 units. The target figure, as explained by Nomura, is "an ideal sales figure image from the producer to help determine the scale of the project." In other words the target figure determines staff size and game content. It is not necessarily the sales target. Regardless, 500,000 is a pretty steep number, one I'm sure they'll have trouble reaching. I guess we'll have to wait and see how far the Parasite Eve pedigree takes them before fanservice fills in the rest. So good luck 3rd Birthday. You're going to need it.