Sony Gamers Day has finally brought us a Heavenly Sword video that doesn't focus on just kicking ass and taking genitals. Although, after seeing Nariko and her . . daughter? . . . I'm now confident that Andy Serkis's emperor erection is safe. The lookout scene starts with Nariko half naked as usual, you'll rewind and try to look down her towel skirt thing, you'll fail, then she'll help you out and shove her boobs in front of the camera, and just as things start to heat up she introduces us to her retarded child -- ugh, I hate it when chicks do that. Uhhh, yeah, sure, no problem Nariko, I'm totally into kids, I want lots of kids, let's just talk about it in the morning, okay? Wait, what? You want me to do what? Twing twang?! And you're inviting your Princess Mononoke mime feral daughter into bed? Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Wrong fantasy, wrong fetish, I'm out of here. You can save the world on your own, I'm gonna start hitting on Ellen from Folklore now.

Luscious mountain backdrops with waterfalls pouring into verdant valleys doesn't make Heavenly Sword a fantasy game. Flying through the air and killing dozens of enemies with ease doesn't make Heavenly Sword a fantasy game. Having Gollum himself walk out of Middle-earth and into a PS3 to talk about his genitals doesn't make Heavenly Sword a fantasy game. What makes Heavenly Sword a fantasy game, is fat people. Fat, double-folded man breasts on a twelve foot tall Goonie-loving-son-of-Sloth abomination, who jumps into the air and uses belly-flop seismic attacks. There's no way this game can fit on one Blu-ray disc with enemies like this in the game.

Ninja Theory's co-founder Tameem Antoniades gave a progress update when talking with Eurogamer recently, informing us that Heavenly Sword is 90% complete, and will be ready for its September release later this year. The full interview will be up tomorrow, but Eurogamer released this small piece of news to report on Heavenly Sword's multiplayer status:

"There's no multiplayer mode in Heavenly Sword as our focus was always to create an intense personal experience; it would have been too damn complex to deal with that as well. We did, however, develop the combat system using multiplayer test levels, as it's a great way of soak testing and balancing it. So who knows? Maybe we will decide to go down that route sometime soon. And when we do, it won't just be slapped-on to please marketing tick-boxes. You can be assured that we have our sights on multiplayer."

Well that's a big "maybe" to be talking about when it's one of PS3's most anticipated titles. Although for an action adventure game like Heavenly Sword, I don't think most players would even expect a multiplayer mode. Skipping it at the game's launch to ensure the story and controls are perfected, and then giving us a free, ahem, FREE, update on the PlayStation Network later would be great. If you haven't been following this game, be sure to check out the pictures and videos from the past and catch up.

Ok, the only news here is that the official Heavenly Sword site is now open, and can be accessed here. So I eagerly checked out the U.S. page searching for new pictures, and was foiled to find only a boring blank screen. Remembering that the developers were somewhere over in Europe, I checked out the French page and successfully found more details and images. Here's the translated official story details: 

Heavenly Sword is a history of revenge, courage and discovered self. The members of the clan tell that also far they remember, prophecies always spoke about a son, descendant of their chief, which will have to lead them to their place, to the paradise. But when the chief of the clan becomes the father of a small girl, prophecy never seems to have to be carried out… It is in any case what everyone thought… After the assassination of his/her father by a assoiffé rival of blood, Nariko is likely nothing any more but one last to be able to modify its destiny and to avenge death for his/her father. To achieve this mission, it must find the sword Heavenly Sword, a weapon so powerful that each blow carried brings it closer a little more death… Whereas it fights with rage, Nariko only will not learn that revenge is useless, but it will be discovered and found its place in the world. It is only whereas it can hold up the sword, to control it, raise the curse and to achieve its destiny…

Far from being a simple delicately woven history of courage and punishment, Heavenly Sword ventures to propose absolutely fabulous graphics with the service of an experiment of play out of the commun run, linking with brilliance numerical creation and dramatic performance. By capturing the movements, the facial expressions and the voices of various actors using microphones without wire, of hundreds of beacons thinking the light and cameras of infra-red, Heavenly Sword is on the point of defining a new standard of emotional performance in the video games. You for a epic adventure prepare, an experiment as you never yet lived about it!

Sweet, a few gaps have been filled in, but nothing drastically new besides some new wallpapers in the gallery below. Then I decided to snoop around a little more and try out the good ol' "view page source" trick to see what I could find. Here's where the rumor comes into play.

As you can see in the picture above, the meta tags (key words to help get found by search engines) list both "anime" and "PSP". I rarely watch anime, but the style of Heavenly Sword, plus the action Nariko brings to the story, would be a great feminine Samurai Champloo-ish show that I'd love to see. And what about the PSP tag? They probably just slipped it in there to help get more traffic - I don't even want to think of how much extra work it would be for Ninja Theory to dumb down the graphics and physics for a PSP version, although we also didn't believe the God of War PSP game rumors either when they first started. Heavenly Sword is definitely looking like the woman equivalent of God of War so far, so even if none of these rumors are true, it's still good to see the site up and know the game is on track for a Fall release. Here's the four 1024x768 concept art wallpapers, some of which we've already seen. (Right click and save them to get the full resolution size.) I love the crazy king picture, I can't wait to attack his genitals.

Here's a few new images of Nariko kicking ass as usual, plus old pictures in higher resolution, and an amazing piece of concept art. I'll never get tired of looking at this game, it'll be 2010 and I'll still be posting pictures of Heavenly Sword, I can't wait to cut off an evil ruler's genitals in September when this game finally comes out on PlayStation 3.

Nothing big is revealed in these images, we just get to see some areas from new angles and get closer views of places we could only see in the far background of old pictures before. So far the environments look awesome in their size and what they offer for gameplay, but they don't look especially memorable.  However, the smoke effects are something I'm anxiously awaiting to see more of. Hopefully I'll be able to get some hands-on time with this game later in the year at a random event. I wish more companies would do video documentaries like Bungie does every now and then, I'm sure it helps hype the game and brings in more sales. Quit being lazy Ninja Theory, your Kung Fu Chaos game on Xbox was pretty lame, yet you've got us by the balls by your second game release - show us more!

Update: Nothing huge, just a few more details from a recent interview:

• Artificial Intelligence To keep up with the hundreds of on-screen enemies, Cell treats distant armies as a singlular "hive mind." As they approach Nariko, Cell splits their intelligence across squads, and finally, individual troops.
• Graphics Wind gusts swirl Nariko's hair and clothes, and bazooka blasts send out showers of dust and rubble. 1080p support is still a question mark, though.
• Physics When firing a cannon, Nariko can influence the trajectory of the projectile using the Sixaxis. Ninja Theory claims it needs the Cell to handle these complex calculations.

They've been lucky enough to get their hands on an updated version of the game, expect more details coming later this week.

A new motion capture video is out showing a two and a half minute acting performance from the evil ruler in Heavenly Sword. You don't see any in-game footage or have developers yapping about what you'll see in the game, it's just uncut Andy Serkis dialogue that you can be sure to see in the game. If you thought the royal villain in the trailers was a weirdo in short glimpses, prepare to see his face covered in balls as he goes borderline Gollum in delusional rants about society's filth and his sacred genitals.

You might want to turn the volume down a bit before starting the video, he plays the role of a psycho pretty well. I hope Ninja Theory really pushes the evil king's ability to get nations following his monstrous utopian plans of grandeur, it could make for a great chaotic world to explore from start to finish. It's good to see a game company spending so much time on story and character development too, combine that with the awesome gameplay we've already seen, and you've got a game of the year candidate.

Yesterday I found new Heavenly Sword details and pictures, and Students of the Strange just pointed me to a new video giving an inside look at how the game's animations were made. It starts off with clips of the scenes we've seen through photograph before, but seeing it all in motion is a lot more enjoyable. The majority of the UK PlayStation video focuses on the motion capped animation technology at Weta Digital in New Zealand, showing how the teabagged faces full of balls tell the computer to scruntch up the 3D game faces. The developers feel confident that they'll set a precedent for PS3 facial emotions, and I don't doubt them. The faces still don't look "real" but the wrinkles and stretches still surpass most of what we've seen on Xbox 360.

Judging by the short in-game studio clips, it looks like the video that was on Heroes last night was from a seen just under twelve hours into the game. And that evil emperor dude - you're probably going to have to seduce him at some point . . . although I don't think his girly dancing animation will make it to the final cut of the game. You can watch the video here, and there's even an HD version you can access if you're that ritzy.

Heavenly Sword is supposed to come out this month, but many of the sites out there are reporting that it won't be out until June. Hmmm. They probably all screwed up their info, but I decided to go snooping to get some more details, and Best Buy has it scheduled for a July 15th release. I did some more looking and decided to sneak into the Heavenly Sword forums, and the members noticed the same thing, except the SKU print-out photo you see above is from EB Games. So don't be surprised if March comes and goes and there's still no PS3 candy in your hands.

More importantly though, I stumbled upon a new interview with one of the people who worked on the game. The interview is in Norwegian, but there's a few new small pictures included, and after the interview Nina Kristensen answered some reader questions. Here's what she had to say about the game:

• Q: Tilt functionality - will the game use a lot of tilt functionality of the Sixaxis? Could you give us examples please?
• A: We do make use of the Sixaxis in Heavenly Sword. For example if you are firing a bazooka you have the ability to go into AfterTouch where you follow the projectile and guide it - tilting the Sixaxis directs it. I think feels quite natural and satisfying.
• Q: When? I see some sites have set the 6th of March as release date for the US version (dont know if this is true, I'll let you decide :D), which makes me wonder - when can we see the Heavenly Sword title on european PS3-machines?
• A: Yes, I've been sent quite a few questions about the release date this morning, all I'm allowed to say right now is that it will be out before Christmas.
• Q: Sword fighting. Can you explain a bit more how the sword fighting is performed?
• A: Hi Sindre, in Heavenly Sword, you can use just about anything as a weapon but the most important one is of course the Heavenly Sword itself. The Sword has three configurations or "sword stances" (Speed, Power and Range) each with distinct attack strategies. You need to choose the best stance or combination of stances to destroy the enemies. Each stance includes extensive combos, counters, evades etc and you can switch stances mid combo. So for example, you could begin a ranged combo in order knock enemies back and switch to power, for a big finisher to wipe them out.

Here's the new small pictures - I also threw in some screenshots of tonight's gameplay glimpse on the new Heroes episode. Now that we're looking at still pictures you can notice that there's a whole sexy level tucked away on the mountain spire in the background. And look at those sexy, sexy waterfalls. I don't honestly care if the game's delayed or not, PS3 has been dry for a while anyways. As long as it's as good as I'm hoping it will be, I won't mind if it takes an extra few months to reach store shelves - God of War II can tide be over until Summer.

Today's episode of my favorite prime time TV show Heroes has a sneak peak clip of Heavenly Sword's PS3 gameplay, so don't miss tonight's episode. It's not a long clip, but the Heroes scene starts by focusing right on the TV screen for a few seconds of rope walking gameplay and fun looking hair physics, then zooms out a bit to show the TV in the room, but still giving you a good enough view of the screen while Ali Ugly fights a dozen enemies at once. Using video games as a metaphor of her inner rage, how cute. It looks like the gameplay is still extremely similar to God of War, small obstacles trigger a button pressing event, and the gameplay focuses on brutal kills up close on screen. If God of War's Kratos knocked up Heavenly Sword's Nariko, I'd gladly adopt their baby and use it to take over the world. There's a reason you'll never see Kratos in the Super Smash Bros. games, and it has nothing to do with the Sony Nintendo console divide, it's because it wouldn't be fair. PlayStation consoles get all the coolest heroes - Snake is either going to be the best character by far, or a total let down.

Heavenly Sword is one of the games I'm most looking forward to for the PlayStation 3. You can see the heroine on heroin kicking ass in two new pictures below. Nariko is by far the coolest woman to ever own random generic chain-weaponry wielding foes. The game's supposed to come out in March this year, but I highly doubt it will make that target release.