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Plan of Attack
Nor are the armies static units as if on a chessboard; battles are free-flowing affairs, enabling you to drive characters deep into enemy lines. However careful planning is required: overextend your fighters and they can become separated and surrounded by opponent's blades. You'll need to coordinate attacks to create a fighting wedge through larger forces. Fortunately the camera keeps things in check, swooping and zooming to follow the disintegrating front line.



Central to the game's battle-system is the Morale meter at the top of the screen, divided between friend and foe and dependent on the number of troops currently active in the field. Higher morale means support troops work better, unifying attacks for potentially fatal blows. But start losing troops - and therefore morale - and you may need to call reinforcements. And from what we've seen so far, reinforcements range from other troop units to summoned monsters (similar to those in Final Fantasy) that can deal devastating one-hit blows to the opposing forces.



Quick and the Dead
The immediacy of combat is reinforced by Quick Time scenarios with correctly timed button presses guarding from energy-sapping attacks, chaining together attacks, or performing environmental-specific movements. This instant gratification and visual pay-off could sell the game to those put off by the genre's stagnant strategy in the past.



Remnant's resident bad ass made his debut in the closing seconds of the TGS trailer, smashing through a castle's fortified gates barehanded. His red garb apparently coloured by the blood of his enemies, his sole purpose is to take control of the world's Remnants, though there's suggestion that there's a connection between him and Rush (but we're hoping there are no "I am your father' moments). The battle lines have been drawn - The Last Remnant promises to be a truly unique converging of multiple game styles: the thrill-a-minute ride of the newly emerging action adventures, the depth and strategy of the classic role-playing games (without the tedious random battles!), and the grandeur and spectacle of an Unreal Engine 3-powered masterpiece.