In a distant cyberpunk future, humans have colonised our neighbouring red planet Mars. War in name and now in nature, all is far from civil after a huge catastrophe has left the settlements in chaos. Tensions between huge corporations have reached boiling point as water, the planet’s most precious resource, is being fiercely fought over and in the midst of all the disorder, roaming the darker, more dangerous places that Mars has to offer is adventurer Roy Temperance.
An expert in pre-Turmoil relics who can navigate his way with ease through the sinister shanty towns of Shadowlair, Roy’s past is murky. Originally from Aurora, his real name is Temperance, but he broke with the traditions of his guild and chose the name Roy. He’s reluctant to talk about his past, and the little information known about him is what he chooses to give, though this in classic RPG style, following a chance meeting in a prisoner of war camp with young man called Innocence, Roy becomes a role model and mentor, opening up character development that influences both the game’s narrative and combat. Roy can diffuse a tense situation with a few well-chosen words, avoid a fight or, conversely, provoke the other person into launching hostilities whilst the real-time combat is tactical and quick.
Launched back in late April on PC, initially fans liked the game itself but were disappointed with the narrative element because the English version strayed too far from the original French. “The general feeling was that the translation didn’t stick closely enough to the original French story and dialog” Luc Heninger, Director of Production at Focus Home Interactive, explains. "Mars contains a vast amount of dialog, even by RPG standards. The plot has numerous strands and the dialog often has many variants to mirror the hero’s changes in reputation. The tight deadlines between the game release dates meant that the initial English translation lacked depth and contained a number of errors; it was then sent to the recording studio, making the job of the actors extremely difficult. The actual game was thoroughly tested and released with very few bugs on PC, but unfortunately the procedures for the audio and text QA failed and allowed many English localization issues to slip through. We realized the extent of the problem after seeing the first feedback from the press and gamers. The result was so far removed from what we usually produce that we took the decision to halt the submission process for the console version, which was due for release only weeks after the PC title. We have re-written the game text and dialog and, of course, recorded the actors again, replacing the sections that weren’t true to the characters in Mars.”
All the problems Heninger outlined have now been fixed and Mars War Logs is available NOW on XBLA and will be available on PSN from August 7th, so finally new players can encounter the most terrifying creatures and even more frightening corporations, where every decision they made will determine the fate of the colonies of Mars.
