The Radiant Historia Staff Answers Your Questions

Battles, character names and theme songs discussed below.

Atlus recently started accepting questions from readers at the Radiant Historia development blog. Today, the blog posted a few responses.

Responders for this first batch included director Mitsuru Hirata and battle planner Sawao Kato. Leading the session, which was set up like a conversation (pro tip, Atlus -- add some portraits like Sega has at the Valkyria Chronicles blog), was Aki from the game's PR staff.

Here's a summary of the responses:

1. The recently released promotional video (see it here) has the game's main theme song towards the end, complete with vocals. The game's composer Yoko Shimomura wanted the vocals, it seems. She also chose the singer. The singer's name is being kept secret for now, although they said that you can probably figure it out.

The theme song will be used not just in the promo videos, but in the game as well.

2. The game has encounter battles. When running about the fields, if you run into an enemy, the game will switch to the battle screen, rather than the battle taking place right on the field.

Regarding the battle system itself, Kato pointed to the time and positioning mechanics as the system's most special features. You can use special skills to push enemies into one location on the battle battle grid, then use a powerful skill on the whole lot. To actually get the enemies into one location, you'll have to make use of the "Change" command, which lets you play around with positioning on the movement timeline.

Further details on these areas of the battle system can be found here.

3. Don't like the name of main character Stok? Well too bad, because you can't change it! The names of the characters are fixed, said Hirata. They actually looked into giving players the ability to change character names, but killed off the idea in the end after reading the scenario repeatedly.

A second batch of responses is due tomorrow, so be sure and check back at the Radiant Historia blog.