Panzer Dragoon Orta

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Panzer Dragoon Orta
System(s): Xbox
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Smilebit
Supporting companies: Wave Master (audio)
Distributor: Infogrames (EU)
Genre: Shoot-'em-Up
Number of players: 1
Official in-game languages: 日本語 English Français Deutsch Italiano Español
Release Date RRP Code JP 2002-12-19 ¥6,800 (7,140)6,800e Q63-00003 JP (Genteiban) 2002-12-19 ¥6,800 (7,140)6,800e Q63-00005 JP (Platinum) 2003-10-23 ¥2,800 (2,940)2,800e Y60-00001 US 2003-01-14 $49.9949.99 64023 DE 2003-03-21 ES 2003-03-21 FR 2003-03-21 UK 2003-03-21 FI 2003-03-21 IT 2003-03-21 AU 200x $99.9599.95 US ▼ 2018-04-13 $9.999.99

Panzer Dragoon Orta (パンツァードラグーン オルタ) is an Xbox video game developed by Smilebit. It is the sequel to the Panzer Dragoon game series for the Sega Saturn, and is the fourth game in the series. It is also known as Panzer Dragoon 4, and during development it was known as Panzer Dragoon Next.

There were two separate releases of the Japanese version of the game. The first (Shokai Ban) includes a bonus soundtrack CD with four tracks.

Story

Plot summary

The main story is takes place several decades after the events of Panzer Dragoon Saga, and is told through ten Episodes. The Empire has risen to power again, and has utilized technology from the Ancient Age to create genetically-engineered dragons called "Dragonmares", that they may rule once again with an iron fist. The dragonmares quickly cause widespread chaos and terror, separating the nations and people governed by the Empire.

The player learns through an opening narration that a young girl, Orta, has lived all her life imprisoned in a tall tower in a mountainous region near Yelico Valley. She is kept there by the Seekers, people who fear that she is a harbinger of doom. One night, a pack of Empire-led Dragonmares invade the valley; they destroy much of the city and make for Orta's tower. However, before the Dragonmares can harm her, a mysterious Dragon appears and eliminates them.

Frightened and confused, Orta quickly flees the Valley on the Dragon's back. Evren, a general in the Imperial Army and leader of the attacking Dragonmare Squadron, follows Orta and surrounds her. She is saved again, this time by Abadd, a former Imperial Drone turned traitor. He flies away, cryptically hinting at Orta's importance. Orta asks the Dragon to follow him. In her search, Orta meets Mobo, a friendly but reckless member of the Wormriders. Mobo leads Orta through a river valley and a sea of ash before returning to the Wormriders' village, built upon a gigantic hovering creature called a Lathum. The Empire quickly attacks the Lathum with their capital fleet, and in the ensuing battle to drive them off, Mobo is shot down. Evren's squadron reappears and engages Orta in a fight, and the Dragon defeats them. Though Evren is defeated, his Dragonmare self-destructs in a volatile explosion, sending Orta and the Dragon down to earth.

Though the Dragon is severely injured in the blast, its wings badly torn and useless, it can still run. The Dragon carries Orta across a snowy land long into the night, where its wings regenerate. An Els-Enora, a graceful flying predator, attacks the pair, and Orta wounds it in self-defense. It finally begins to fly away, and Orta sees its children fly up to it. She expresses sorrow for her actions, but Abadd suddenly reappears and kills the Els-Enora and its children with a single laser volley. Orta is hurt by Abadd's emotionless deeds, but is compelled to follow him, as he claims to know information of her birth.

The trio descend into the ruins of a Tower, and from there gain access to the ancient information network known as Setren. Deep within this network, Orta finds a hologram-like, left behind by her mother, revealed to be Azel from Panzer Dragoon Saga. She mentions that Orta is the child of a drone and a human, implying that Edge, Saga's protagonist, is her father. As the hologram ends, Abadd manifests himself inside the network and reveals his true plans - he is heading for the Cradle, a gigantic monolithic artifact of the Ancient Age suspended above the Imperial City. Orta orders Sestren to be transported as close as possible to the cradle.

A fight erupts above the Imperial capital as the Dragon heads for the Cradle. The Wormriders, led by Mobo, attack the remnants of the Imperial fleet at the City, leaving Orta to fly towards the Cradle. After finishing off the last of the Dragonmares, the Dragon destroys the Cradle's outer shell. A metallic cocoon-like object emerges from the Cradle's core, and Abadd's voice can be heard from within it. The cocoon erupts into a fearsome dragon, which Orta defeats after a long and dangerous battle. The dragon, severely wounded, flies slowly to the ground and collapses. Orta whispers to it in tears as the credits roll.

In a final post-credits scene, we learned that the Dragon has died, and the war has come to an end. However, the narration explains that the Dragon left behind an heir. The camera pans across a vast and lonely grassland. A baby dragon accompanies Orta as she silently walks toward the mountains in the distance, to an unknown destiny.

Iva's Story

Of particular interest is a detailed set of seven missions that chronicle the life of Iva Demilcol, a young Imperial boy whose father died in a battle with Orta's dragon shortly after a bitter argument with Iva over the morality of war. Iva is stricken with an unusual disease, and must take a strange pill each day to survive. He aims to find out more before all his pills are gone. Though he manages to make a few friends at the Empire's military academy, he becomes isolated once again when Orta's dragon shoots down his fleet, killing all of his friends. Iva himself only survives when he is rescued and revived by a group of Seekers. After proving himself worthy of the Seekers' trust, however, Iva learns that his father was involved with dragonmares, which shocks and angers him.

When the conversation turns towards the weaponry of the Ancient Age, one of the Seekers mentions a great weapon hidden in the nearby ruins; whoever hits it would be destroyed, along with everything in a wide radius. Another Seeker gets word of the Dragon, and Iva sets off after it immediately. He cannot catch it, however, and returns to the Seekers' den, where he shocks them by suddenly falling to the ground. It has been a long time since he has taken his medicine, and the Seeker that gives him the pill notes that it is the last one. A Seeker named Emil notices a peculiar amulet that Iva wears around his neck, and identifies it as a letter container used by nomadic tribes. Opening it, Iva does indeed find a letter to him from his father, who tells Iva that he will be dead by the time he reads it.

Iva's father tells him that Iva carries in his body a virus, when he innocently drank water from a poisoned well as an infant. Iva survived when his father made a medicine from the internal fluids of a bio-engineered creature. The medicine stopped the virus from spreading, but could not purge the disease completely, as the virus began to evolve into more resistant forms. Iva's father made medicines from more and more powerful creatures, but eventually there existed not a single creature from which a medicine could be made. This led him to join the people responsible for the dragonmares; the pills Iva took recently all came from one. He acknowledges that what he did was ultimately wrong, but he tells him that he continued to make the medicine so that he could be with him for that much longer. He tells him never to give up, that he has faith in him, and pleads Iva to forgive him.

The Seeker colony is suddenly attacked by dragonmares. Iva vows to destroy them all and bring the horrors of his father's work to an end. Iva finds the ancient weapon, shaped like a big drum, and activates it just as the dragonmares come tearing into the chamber. A giant beam of light shoots skyward from the drum, repelling the dragonmares; Iva is surprised to find himself still alive. The device was not a weapon of mass destruction, but instead a sound generator meant to ward off bio-engineered creatures. The shaft of light makes a great pattern of colors in the sky, and the many soldiers of the Empire and the Seekers lay down their weapons for a moment in awe.

Iva is rescued by the Seekers, and sits quietly with Emil underneath the branches of a great tree. He acknowledges that while humans have a very despicable nature in their tendencies to fight and ultimately kill each other, he is moved that they were yet able to make something so beautiful. He feels tired, and knowing that he may never wake again, he calls out softly to his father before falling asleep, and expresses his gratitude for being able to know the many people that befriended him on his journey.

Gameplay

Bonus Features

Panzer Dragoon Orta has many unlockable bonus features which are opened after certain achievements within the game, such as beating it on a certain difficulty or with a clearing the game with a high shot-down ratio. These features are contained in Pandora's Box, a feature returning from Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, and include a detailed encyclopedia of the Panzer world, a bestiar of defeated enemies, an archive of concept art, extra bonus missions that expand the story of the main game, statistics tracking, a cutscene viewer (including movies from earlier Panzer Dragoon games) even a complete port of the original Panzer Dragoon.

Orta's unlockables are also unique in that they are time-sensitive. Accumulating twenty hours of play time will unlock everything, regardless of other circumstances.

History

Development

According to Takayuki Kawagoe, despite fan pressure, there were no plans in place to bring a Panzer Dragoon title to the Sega Dreamcast, with the team suggesting the original Saturn trilogy had reached a "logical conclusion". The idea of bringing a game to the Xbox came following Smilebit's research into the console during the development of Jet Set Radio Future and Gunvalkyrie.

All previous Panzer Dragoon games had been developed by Team Andromeda, an internal division within Sega CS1, however by the early 2000s, the team had been disbanded and its members spread across Sega as a whole (save for the likes of concept artist Manabu Kusunoki and programmer Hidetoshi Takeshita who had left Sega for Artoon). "About 30" people were put on the team for Orta, with 10 originating from Team Andromeda (although six others were working on other projects for Smilebit so were still able to offer advice).

Production credits

Main article: Panzer Dragoon Orta/Production credits.

Magazine articles

Main article: Panzer Dragoon Orta/Magazine articles.

Promotional material

PDF

US fact sheet

File:X02 PanzerDragoonOrta Panzer.wmv

US trailer

File:X02 PanzerDragoonOrta Panzer.wmv

Print advert in GMR (US) #1: "February 2003" (2003-01-07)

Artwork

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Physical scans

Sega Retro Average
Publication Score Source

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Based on 0 review

Sega Retro Average
Publication Version Score Consoles + (FR) PAL 95 Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) NTSC-U 88 GameNOW (US) NTSC-U 100 GamePro (US) NTSC-U 93 Game Station (UK) 90 GMR (US) 90 Hyper (AU) PAL 88 Le Magazine Officiel Xbox (FR) 80 Official Xbox Magazine (UK) PAL 88 Xbox: The Official Magazine (US) NTSC-U 93 Play (US) NTSC-U 100 Quit (IT) 80 Xbox Zone (DE) PAL 90

	90
Based on 13 reviews

Panzer Dragoon Orta

Xbox, JP
Cover

Xbox, JP (Shokai Genteiban)
Cover
Disc Die Panzer Dragoons Chronik

Xbox, JP (Platinum)
Cover
Disc Manual

Xbox, US
Cover
Disc

Xbox, UK
Cover
Disc

Xbox, FR
Cover
Disc

Xbox, DE
Cover
Disc

Xbox, ES/IT
Cover
Disc

Xbox, AU
Cover
Disc

Technical information

Main article: Panzer Dragoon Orta/Technical information.

ROM dump status

System	Hash	Size	Build Date	Source	Comments
?	CRC32 a8399a5a MD5 2c4c147a7f8a4a77fb6fe7a3d85d1f7a SHA-1 302c737242ad55d0e1a4d05c1df8fa489cc67c81	7,825,162,240		DVD-ROM (US)
✔	CRC32 c77916a1 MD5 5fef04999e2f0ae1f925f95ad11b938b SHA-1 c16710336c7d5b143148b94deef6610670054d71	7,825,162,240		DVD-ROM (EU)
✔	CRC32 ed8d42bd MD5 66a91d200d2c458c3d241323bec558b0 SHA-1 3f6899ef0a123a77d2445cc16b4d2c20ebb1ae6c	7,825,162,240		DVD-ROM (JP)
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2002-12-24	DVD-R				Page
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2003-02-03		Demo build			Page

External links

• Sega of Japan catalogue pages (Japanese): Xbox (archive)
• Official website on Sega.com (archive)
• Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox.com: US (archive)