XSEED tease looks like The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
The second chapter of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky may finally be localised, if some clever Internet detective work proves correct.
North American The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky publisher XSEED released a couple of teaser images on its Twitter account today. While three were skin-coloured squares - a favourite tactic of XSEED's current Twitter manager - one offered a glimpse of the edge of a piece of clothing and what looks like a fold of skin.
The image is easily interpreted as a woman's thigh in a short skirt, if you're the kind to see women everywhere, but in a classic ruse it actually seems to depict a man's arm, as spotted by NeoGAF. Keep looking. You'll get there.
The image it's taken from is promotional material for the second chapter of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, a three-part JRPG first released on PC before porting to PSP and later PS3.
The first chapter was localised for the west by XSEED and released on PSP in March 2011 in North America and November 2011 in Europe. Although the publisher had initially said it would pursue the remaining two chapters, it has been silent on the subject recently; the tease suggests an official announce is on the way.
The first chapter was very well received by fans, and holds a 79 Metacritic average. The second chapter has been long and vociferously-requested, as XSEED's infinitely patient staff's social media accounts will attest.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, which as just discussed is a three-part release, is the sixth game in Nihon Falcom's The Legends of Heroes series. The seventh game was a two-parter and the eighth game, Sen no Kiseki or Trails in the Flash, is due in Japan in September for PS3 and Vita.
The sixth, seventh and eighth games (which, let me remind you again, are actually six individual releases, only one of which has made it west) are collectively part of a sub-series called the Trails series, because there's nothing Japanese game publishers like better than a big old writhing mess of naming conventions for me to sort out on a Friday afternoon, apparently.
Thanks, Kotaku.