As far as I'm concerned, nobody has the right to laugh at you if you picked the Sega Saturn as your horse in the 32-bit console race. The Saturn was home to Panzer Dragoon, a series that wholly deserves to be thriving today. Unfortunately, even the memory of Sega's dragon-shooter is filmy; though game nostalgia is big business, Panzer Dragoon games have not haunted us beyond a weak attempt here and there, and we're sadder for it.
3D games in the 32/64-bit era tended to be afflicted with the Uglies. It was an awkward, transitional phase for gaming that was worsened by developers who fought against console limitations instead of working with them.
Panzer Dragoon worked with the Saturn's limitations. The shooter's visuals might not be as impressive as they once were, but there's no mistaking the care taken with the art direction, especially in the opening cutscene (thanks in part to creative contributions made by French artist Moebius, whose Arzach comic series served as the main inspiration for Panzer Dragoon's arid, rocky world).
The game's opening cinema doesn't burden the player with much in the way of text beyond a brief summary of events. Despite the brevity and the relative blandness of the character models (intentionally dull colours, low polygon count and textures, jerky movements), the hostility and danger of the environment is conveyed perfectly. Early in the cinema, a friend of the hero's is picked off by a scuttling crustacean with a large stinger. The hero chases the sand-crab into some ruins, where it's quickly preyed upon by a much bigger, even deadlier shelled beast. But within seconds, that monster is slain in the crossfire of a dragon fight, which is merely one far-reaching tentacle of a world-consuming war.
“No,” Panzer Dragoon says to the player, “the world you're about to explore is not pro-human.”
I've always loved the dragon designs in the Panzer Dragoon series. They're elegant without being flowery. Most dragon-riding fantasy books tend to turn the beasts into pretty pretty ponies, but the helmeted/horned masked dragons of Panzer Dragoon are mysterious, compelling—and unquestionably bad-ass.
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