Part 7 of Panzer Dragoon Remake's art reveals has been the source of some confusion. Just what is this mysterious object exactly? As always, we delved into the Imperial archives to find the answers in our latest article!
The latest artwork reveal of Panzer Dragoon: Remake is arguably the most intriguing one yet. While the tweet is labeled as “the Empire”, the object shown doesn’t actually look much like anything the Empire has used in the game. Upon closer inspection the artwork itself contains the label “E05.1_L06”, and following the pattern from previous artwork reveals this means it’s an enemy from Episode 6. As such, this can only really be showing us one of the drop pods that we encounter in Episode 6, which aren’t built by the Empire but are actually part of the bio-engineered army of monsters released from the Tower. Spoilers ahead, for those worried about them!
Those who played the original game may recall that during Episode 6, the awakened Tower launched a devastating attack on the nearby Imperial capital. It’s during this attack that these drop pods were launched into the capital. They’re designed to annihilate any remaining forces that may remain in a conquered area, and remain dormant until they detect nearby movement. When that happens, the device opens up and releases bio-engineered monsters known as “Pod Stingers” to attack anything nearby. You can see the pods in the original game in this video at the 41m45s mark.
The design in this artwork looks somewhat different from the original and it looks more like a stationary device rather than a drop pod, but this might be explained by the fact that we don’t actually see the pods launched into the area in the original game. As such the perception may be that they had always been there. Similarly, the fact that the artwork was marked as “the Empire” may be explained by the fact that the Episode takes place in the Imperial capital. It’s not always easy to distinguish the Empire’s forces from the ones of the Tower and with very little in terms of story, these details are easily overlooked. But the biggest tell that this artwork is indeed showing a pod is the overall design and the placement of the “eye”.
Episode 6 is arguably the most interesting and at the same time the most challenging episode to remake. Seeing the dragon race through the Imperial capital as it’s swarmed by bio-engineered monsters could be a sight to behold. In the original game, the developers added little touches like Kyle and his dragon flying through clotheslines hanging between people’s houses, a detail easily missed on the original hardware but one that will hopefully be preserved and improved in the remake.
On a closing note, it might also be worth mentioning here that many enemies (such as the aforementioned “Pod Stingers”) had English names even in the Japanese version. These name are written in Katakana, which is typically used to transcribe words from foreign languages.