Developer : Sega
Release date : March 21, 2003
Synopsis :
Panzer Dragoon Orta is a rail shooter developed by Smilebit and published by Sega for the Xbox. The fourth entry in the Panzer Dragoon series, it was released in Japan in 2002 and in North America and Europe in 2003. The story follows a girl, Orta, who is freed by a dragon and embarks on a quest to prevent the abuse of ancient technology. The gameplay features the player moving an aiming reticle and shooting enemies while the dragon flies through 3D environments on a fixed track.
Production began in 2001. The developer of the previous Panzer Dragoon games, Team Andromeda, had disbanded after the release of Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998). Around a dozen staff members returned to work on Orta, including the artists Takashi Iwade and Kentaro Yoshida, the composer Saori Kobayashi and the battle designer Akihiko Mukaiyama, who directed Orta. While the greater power of the Xbox allowed for more freedom in gameplay and graphical design, the production was troubled by a lack of art design direction and problems with the team’s graphical and gameplay ambitions.
Panzer Dragoon Orta sold poorly, but received positive reviews, with praise for its gameplay and art design. Several publications have named it one of the best Xbox games, and it is remembered favorably for its gameplay and technical achievements. Panzer Dragoon staff have voiced mixed feelings on the game for its continuation of the story after Saga. After Orta, the Panzer Dragoon series was dormant until the announcement of remakes of the original Panzer Dragoon and its sequel Zwei in 2020.
Panzer Dragoon Orta takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans struggle to survive amidst a population of bio-engineered mutants, remnants of the war which decimated Earth. A faction called the Empire had unearthed technology from the Ancient Age, only to be stopped by the appearance of the Dragon of Destruction and eventually brought low after the Tower, a centre of the Ancients’ technology, is destroyed and the Ancients’ hold on the world is broken during the events of Panzer Dragoon Saga. Since then the Empire has rebuilt itself, breeding dragon-like beings called dragonmares as an aerial army using an Ancients remnant called the Cradle. Orta, implied to be the daughter of Saga protagonists Edge and the Ancient drone Azel, is kept prisoner in a tower by a tribe called the Seekers as they fear she is a harbinger of doom. Orta is freed when the Empire attacks the Seekers’ city with their dragonmares in search of Orta due to her potential heritage from Azel, and she escapes on the current incarnation of the Dragon of Destruction.
During her escape, she runs into the drone Abadd, who is also fleeing the Empire and offers her aid finding her origins in exchange for access to Ancient Age technology. She also meets and is befriended by a tribe called the Worm Riders, who are taming the land’s monsters. After an Imperial fleet attacks the Worm Riders, Abbad leads Orta to a ruin linked to the Ancients’ Sestren Network, where Orta receives a posthumous message from Azel and takes up her mission to restore the world. Abadd, who wanted to use Orta’s DNA to breed a new drone army and was using the Empire to further his plans to cleanse the world since the Ancients can no longer return, turns on her and is fought off. Orta heads to the Empire’s capital and destroys the Cradle while stopping the dragonmares army with the Worm Riders’ aid after Abadd turns them against their controllers, then defeats Abadd and his dragon born from the Cradle. The Dragon of Destruction then succumbs to its wounds. Post-credits scenes reveal the dragon left a child, with the final scene showing Orta and the newborn dragon travelling through a rejuvenated landscape.
The sidestory unlocked during the campaign follows Iva Demilcol, the son of an Imperial soldier who was killed during Orta’s escape; Iva is given a necklace of his father’s after his death. Iva is sick, and it is revealed his father was complicit in dragonmare production as a means of crafting Iva’s medicine. The sickening Iva is taken in by Seekers, forming a close bond with one of their number called Emid, who helps him find a final message from his father in the necklace. When the Empire attacks again, Emid helps Iva locate a supposed Seeker weapon. Iva activates it, revealing it to be a non-lethal repellent against mutants, with it also prompting the Seeker and Imperial soldiers to stop fighting. Iva is implied to die from his illness in Emid’s arms.
Source : Wikipedia
