Kubota Osamu on being a game composer/musician

If you’ve been playing Granado Espada up until now, chances are you’re most familiar with the music behind the dark, dangerous maps to the more laid back, pristine ones. Admittedly, GE is one game that has a plethora of musical scores that will get you in the mood, whether it’s just power levelling or going on raids.

Here’s a rather interesting article I was able to read in the net about one of GE’s music composers, Kubota Osamu. The interview, done by Jayson Napolitano of OSV, did a spectacular job on detailing his life and works. For the uninitiated, Kubota-san was also behind the music of the PlayStation game, Beatmania, among others.

Here’s some interesting tidbits about Kubota-san, as based from the interview:

• GE’s creator, Hakkyu Kim, is a fan of Kubota Osamu’s music and has contacted him to create music for the game.
• Kubota-san worked with the Asian Philharmony Orchestra in China to come up with the orchestra scores for the game.
• Kubota-san’s wife plays Granado Espada.
• He’d like to bring his music to cinematic MMORPGs, something similar to Final Fantasy or Evangelion.
• He experimented with the use of vocals in his music (check out Odyssey and Maya, the background music for the Al Quelt Moreza and Ustiur jungle maps respectively). The consonants and vowels used in the vocals do not mean anything in any native language.
• Granado Espada is his favourite project!
• Kubota-san speaks English, French, Japanese, Korean and Chinese! He’s a French literature graduate.
• His current projects include the Korean MMORPG, NED Online, as well as a Japanese video animation, entitled switch.
  

Read more about the interview here!

Rumors on cGE

Granado Espada's publisher in China, The9, is engaging in talks with Hanbitsoft and IMC Games to get the rights to develop the game to fit the Chinese market. Here's the direct quote from the news I got off the web:

According to insider sources from The9, the company has agreed engaged in talks with Hanbitsoft and Granada Espada IMC to attain developing rights to Granada Espada. The9 is hoping to improve upon Granada Espada and alter the game to fit Chinese tastes if it acquires the development rights.

Improve the game? To what extent? How will this affect the other regional publishers of GE? I wonder what will be the repercussions if such a thing were to push through.

Thoughts, anyone?

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In other news, we all know that kGE is way ahead of us in terms of content roll out. GE Hanbiton is a huge mine of information for the stuff we only see in Doratomo. Here, I was able to get a first hand look on the new costumes and hairstyles.

Elem Fairy Bob hair, new Grace & Fighter costume, & female Fighter's pony

Gayest looking Wiz...ever!

New 'do for the scout. FAIL!

Sources:
Redline China
GE Hanbiton Fanarts

[Just for Kicks] The rendezvous

Once upon a time in Granado Espada

Long before the edict of the Queen of Vespanola
Way before the strife of the Old and New
There lived a love so true
Between...

Edward, the White Baron

and

Selva, the brave mistress of rapiers


One day, they made a vow
To meet underneath the tree in Bahama
In this tree they will renew
Their love so beautiful & true.


And so they finally meet
With hands intertwined, they whisper sweet nothings.


Little did they knew
They were being watched by Montoro the cruel
But what the evil Viscount missed
Was the fact someone else too was pissed.


The lovers were much oblivious
Little Gavin was there to give Selva something precious
But what he saw tore at his heart
And so Montoro said, "Hey, dude let's eat this piece of art!"

Okay, so I had nothing else to do. XD I know the last line totally sucked but I was out of options for a the appropriate rhyming word. Haha.

GE clay sculptures source:
GE Hanbiton Fanart

Very, very random post

It's 14 August and guess what?

Bai Hu's coming to town today!

And guess what?

I has no GP.

Get your own family portrait!

While doing my usual blog rounds, I read an update from Starstorm, a SEA/ANZ GE gamer who's recently tried his/her hand in playing Sword of the New World. I've been following his/her blog ever since, and I'd just like to share this nice discovery: the GE Family Portrait Generator by Another Lonely Soul.

You have to register to the forums first before creating your family portrait. It's a small thing to do, and it wouldn't hurt if you also participated in the discussions there as well.

So without much further ado, here's my family portrait:

Go and create yours too! It's a lot of fun! And do give Starstorm a visit when you have the chance. ^^

For the win!

Finally, my Vicente is veteran! *weeps tears of relief*

My veteran Vicente...let me show you him.

After finally promoting him to Vet, I decided to get his Veteran stance, Serenade, as well. Seeing that the guide in the forums was simple, I thought maybe it would be an easy task.

Boy, was I so very wrong.

The last task in getting the Serenade dealt with fighting the Mercenaries of Katai. Needless to say, my girls did not stand against a 52 and 56 AR/DR enemy, despite the fact that two of my main characters had decent armors.

The Mercenaries were quick and merciless. It took me three tries, using my Musketeer and Elementalist, hoping to nuke the dudes crazy, but I underestimated them.

Epic phail!

But a stroke of brilliance hit me that time. The enemies were mainly close combat fighters, and they can't very well hit an airborne character now, wouldn't they? It was at this moment when I thanked God I had a Wizard.

And true enough, I didn't even break a sweat. Although my Wizard's AR wasn't that significant, a continued bombardment of Photon Splashes did the job. Now, my Rio had his promotion AND his vet stance. Happy Anne is happy. ^_^

Revenge is sweet.

And just yesterday, I got another pleasant surprise as I finally received Rio's exclusive Bach costume! Finally, all those weeks of hard work finally paid off. ^^

Another pleasant thing that happened to me today came in the person of GM Eulalie who happened to drop by to visit our server. She conducted a trivia contest, in which I was lucky enough to answer one of the questions.

This week has been a great adventure for me. Hopefully the coming week ahead would yield the same, even better results.

Hope your week was a blast too! ^_~

Things to get excited about

RCM Hrin updates her blog with really juicy information. Read all about it here.

It looks like there are a lot of things to look forward to as the content for v.2.6 is already being rolled out bit per bit. On a personal note, here are some things that I'm reeeeaaally excited about:

• Bai Hu's going to be released on Aug. 14! I've never been a real fan of close combat characters, but I made a great exception for Bai Hu. I'm really looking forward to recruiting him, but that is, after I collect the MPs needed to get him.
  

• New Veteran Stances for Fighters! Well, mine's not yet Veteran, so why am I rejoicing over this? Hehe...I kid, I kid. Looks like fighters are going to be beefed up to become leaner and meaner killing machines. I suddenly feel very afraid for my Elementalist.

• Idge the Battlesmith is going to be available! This is by far the best news I've received, being the Idge fan that I am. Initially, ITB RNPC card became available as the January 2008 IOTM, but I'm really thrilled to know that there's a chance for me to recruit her in my barracks in this particular server (my ITB was initially housed in my Caravaggio barracks).

• Family Name Change, Character Name Change and Gender Change features! Not that I'll be changing my Family Name, but I do have plans of turning my male wiz to a pretty female. ^^

• GE Girl Gamers! As originally spearheaded by pCM Veya, this is a great opportunity for GE's femme gamers to bond together. I'm looking forward to the related events of this promotion.

• Enchantment Chip Packages! FINALLY! I'd rather buy the much-coveted level 100 chips in the Item Shop than burn my vis on the skyrocketing prices of these items. In essential, the price for lvl 100 chips in Carracci has gone down (from 40-50M to 30M each), but hopefully this package will turn around the economy across all servers. It's about time such issue was addressed.
  

Perhaps the best part in all these information that Hrin mentioned was the announcement of v.2.9's roll out. Of course, everything's still subject to changes, but then again, this is good news in terms of game updates. We're finally getting around.

GE PH site now up!

Finally, we now have our own local Granado Espada website!

Visit now @ http://granadoespada.e-games.com.ph!

Comments, feedback regarding the website design, functionalities, etc. are most welcome!

This is so surreal...

My Vicente is but 5 more notches before Veteran, and yet I'm feeling a tad bit lazy to level him up. I must control the urge to slack off. *repeats mantra to herself*

I'm currently parked in Zone 2 in the Island of Fire, and while on AFK mode, I chanced upon this item that I was able to pick up for the first time.

Curious to know what this Mystic Ampule was, I clicked on it and later on found out that it was a 3-in-1 potion that gives you intensify, acceleration and meditation buffs. Neat-o.

Oh and that's not just the only observation I had.

Of course, we all know that the Chaos Requiem map is now out, not to mention the mysterious Tierra del Amor location that NineMoons noticed before. But look at the area just above Chaos Requiem.

Tierra Putrefacta, a lvl 118-122 map. Hmmm...I wonder what that place looks like.

And did any of you notice the screenshot? Yep, I just took that picture today, and you guessed it right...the colony maps have not been reset.

And today is the first Sunday of the month, Colony Wars day.

WTH is going on?