Following the latest news about Crimson Dragon, I have decided to cover the game on The Will of the Ancients alongside the Panzer Dragoon series.
Some of you may be displeased by the news, fearing that Crimson Dragon is too different from Panzer Dragoon or that The Will of the Ancients will become too diluted with non-Panzer content. And some of you simply don’t like the look of the game. I want to address these concerns here.
Firstly, Crimson Dragon is a different franchise, but it also has many things in common with the Panzer Dragoon series. It is a rail shooter from the creators of original Saturn trilogy. It features dragons, and lock on system similar to the Panzer Dragoon shooters. There are clear differences too, but in many ways this is Panzer Dragoon in spirit. In that sense, it belongs on The Will of the Ancients.
Secondly, is the concern that The Will of the Ancients will lose what made it distinct in the first place: a resource covering Panzer Dragoon and only Panzer Dragoon. There is the risk of a slippery slope where more and more games are covered and it turns into a general gaming site. But I don’t think that needs to happen, nor will it happen. For example, while Jet Set Radio and Panzer Dragoon Orta were both developed by Smilebit, Jet Set Radio does not fit in with the themes of this site. So, we won’t cover it.
Thirdly, not all Panzer Dragoon fans are excited about Crimson Dragon. Some of you don’t like the different art style, and others simply don’t like Kinect. And that’s fine. When we add Crimson Dragon content to the website, you will be free to ignore it. I’m also in the early stages of creating a system where people browsing the website will be able to filter out content based the different fictional universes.
This decision didn’t come lightly. Only after weighing the pros and cons and discussing it with Geoffrey and Draikin, did I decide to cover Crimson Dragon on The Will of the Ancients rather than making a separate site. We considered setting up a separate domain for Crimson Dragon (and possible follow up games), but we felt that this would dilute our already small community. For that reason, I’ve set up a new Crimson Dragon forum as part of The Will of the Ancients’ community so that existing forum members can easily discuss Crimson Dragon without creating a separate account.
The Will of the Ancients began as a Panzer Dragoon website, and we’ll continue to improve and add to the Panzer Dragoon content here. But given the lack of new Panzer Dragoon games, I believe this change will enrich The Will of the Ancients and the Panzer Dragoon community.