First Day of E3 (16)

The reviewer stopped writing, seeing the trick behind it.

"They added visual assists. That highlighted ring under the protagonist's feet is always projected vertically onto the ground at the current height. The floor materials at different heights have strict grayscale distinctions in brightness. A very clever solution."

The demonstration continued.

The core gameplay was laid bare: hardcore action stage-clearing.

No puzzles, no complicated maze exploration.

Joe Musashi darted through the stage, drawing his blade or throwing shuriken the moment he encountered enemies.

The action feedback was extremely solid.

The hitstun when enemies were struck and the frame count of the protagonist's attacks had a rigor that surpassed conventional action games.

"The impact feels strange." EGM's editor-in-chief leaned forward, carefully observing the close-combat hit detection on the screen. "It's different from action logic written from scratch. Look at that enemy's launch trajectory, and the positional changes in the hurtbox when he's hit."

He turned to look at the deputy editor.

"They directly brought over the underlying library from a fighting game. I'm eighty percent sure it's modified from the Virtua Fighter set."

"If there's something mature and they can move it over directly, that is indeed a kind of cleverness," the deputy editor commented.

On the screen, Joe Musashi was surrounded by small fry and unleashed ninjutsu.

Jupiter's capability for handling translucent textures and particle effects was now being displayed without reservation.

The fire-style blaze effect took up half the screen, with multiple translucent layers stacked together, and there was no sign of dropped frames.

This visual spectacle was exactly what Koji Oba had promised to realize in the Development Department before.

A three-minute demo explained, with perfect clarity, the running, jumping, and fighting that action-game players cared about most.

The big screen went dark. Koji Oba bowed to the audience