Soul Calibur: Lost Swords Announced, Will Be Free To Play

The tale of souls and swords continues with a brand new offering in the beloved weapon-based fighting game as Soul Calibur: Lost Swords is officially announced for the PlayStation Network.

Sadly, we don’t have many details to share with you at this time, other than the fact that Namco Bandai announced Lost Swords this morning and that, at the moment, it’s only been confirmed for the PlayStation 3 and Europe. It’s hard to imagine the game won’t be coming to other regions, though, so we’ll go ahead and put a U.S. launch in the “highly likely” category. The publisher promises more information will be revealed later this month at the Tokyo Game Show, however, so we can expect a media blowout in the not-too-distant future.

“The next exciting chapter in the Soul Calibur franchise will be a free-to-play single player experience and will feature numerous famous fighters including Siegfried and Mitsurugi,” according to the exceptionally brief statement from Namco Bandai. Otherwise, that’s all we have to go on at this time.

So let’s let the wild speculation begin, shall we? The only real details that we have to work with are the fact that the game is single player, is f2p, and features “numerous” fighters from the storied franchise. I don’t know about you but, to me, nothing here leads me to believe that Lost Swords is going to fit into the typical Soul Calibur mold. It’s hard to believe they would make a straight-up fighting game without an online component. If they’re looking to make money on additional costumes and weapons, what would be the point in buying them if you can’t show them off while doing battle online?

The same goes for the way they say “numerous famous fighters.” If this was a traditional fighting game, they’d usually tout “38 characters of sheer awesomeness” or something like that. Only having some of the traditional roster once again makes me feel like we’re not talking about a regular fighting game here.

Finally, as we revealed last month, the publisher already has a remake of the hugely popular Soul Calibur II coming down the pipeline, so what would be the point of releasing an HD remake of a fighter alongside a brand new free-to-play fighter?

Basically, what I’m saying here is that I don’t think we’re looking at a fighting game (I’ve made that clear at this point, yes?). So that begs the question: What, exactly, is Lost Swords going to bring to the table? Could it be a puzzle/gem fighter? That actually sounds pretty awesome now that I think about it. What about a light RPG featuring a handful of cast members as your party options? Perhaps a rhythm game featuring the latest music the dubstep community has to offer?

If I had to make a real guess (And remember, this is entirely speculation and based on next to nothing), I’d guess we’re looking at some sort of a beat-em-up game here, similar to Dragon’s Crown or (dare I dream) Dynasty Warriors. Microtransactions would plug in nicely to that sort of a game, multiplayer isn’t a necessity and it wouldn’t be too surprising for such a game to only feature a handful of the most beloved characters right out of the gate.

Whatever it is, we don’t have very long to wait before we find out what, exactly, Lost Swords has to offer. Tokyo Game Show begins in just one week.