Star Ocean: The Divine Force Announced for PC and Consoles Next Year - State of Play October 2021

In a surprising announcement during today's State of Play, Tri-Ace and Square Enix brought out the big space guns with an announcement of the next entry in the Star Ocean series, entitled Star Ocean: The Divine Force.

The Divine Force looks to follow in the footsteps of Integrity and Faithlessness as an action RPG, and appears to feature two heroes: a blonde man and a white-haired woman, among other party members. While the trailer was light on info, we got plenty more details in a PlayStation blog post that revealed our heroes as Raymond and Laeticia, a space captain and a crown princess who come together on a quest to save Laeticia's kingdom and find Raymond's crewmate Chloe.

Returning to the series is the "double hero" system, which will put players in the shoes of both Raymond and Laeticia, with different story elements unfolding from each of their perspectives and the choices made in each impacting how the story unfolds.

We got a look at some combat and exploration in both natural environments as well as an enormous city, and also saw the main cast drive around their cool big spaceship. The PlayStation blog indicates that The Divine Force will boast "one of the largest fields ever in the series" through which players can travel three-dimensionally via air travel.

We're sure to see more of The Divine Force fairly soon though, as it's currently planned for release on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via Steam in 2022. We've historically enjoyed the Star Ocean games, particularly Till the End of Time and The Last Hope, but the most recent entry, 2016's Integrity and Faithlessness, we found to be a merely serviceable RPG with uneven production values and poor AI.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

source https://www.ign.com/articles/star-ocean-the-divine-force-announced-next-year