I hate to say it... but storywise... I kinda preffered ZOE 1 and the Idolo movie.
Those two pieces of content felt so true to their franchise that both of them managed to affect me emotionally rather than the "oh yeh, I am GOD NOW!"

ZOE 2 was nice and so was Dolores i, but to be honest, ZOE 1 and Idolo had the "dark future feeling" that truly suits the ZONE OF THE ENDERS title.


ZOE 2 was wonderful, beautiful, outright the best piece of art Hideo Kojima has ever given us(seriously, his Ps3 games are just ps2 graphics with additional bump mapping and shaders).
However, as much as anime-styled ZOE 2 was, its story totally broke character.


In comparison to ZOE 1, 2nd runner was almost a "My Little Pony" paradise with infinite power, Godly control of the world around you, and no filler missions(thank God).

The first thing I saw of ZOE was this cover:



The star-lit background, the rusty-looking mech(it's missing 23% of Jehuty's detail, and has about 12% made-up detail of Jehuty).

That's what I originally wanted. It's BEAUTIFUL! I cry inside my mind every time I look at it.

Though let's be honest here: ZOE 1 practically was a failure gamewise:

*filler missions barely coherent to the plot
*repetitive fights
*weird map music in some levels[although most of the levels had good music[ (the town levels had the worst)

However, if Hideo Kojima was nice enough to perhaps make a CG animated movie of Zone Of The Enders 1 without the extra mission filler crap, I think that movie would be hella successful in Japan and maybe even in the US.

Recently with hollywood's embracing of high-detail mechs(dreamworks's Transformers) and the upcoming Neon Genesis Evangelion movie ALSO done by dreamworks, will be a boastful success.

A full CG animated movie of ZOE 1 would be as successful as Final Fantasy: Advent Children.

But umm... yes...


With the graphical power and shaders of the next-gen consoles, I'd like to see darker and somewhat realistic graphics for the mechs while maintaining ZOE 2's animated character cutscenes. At least a slightly darker story behind it, maybe.




ZOE 3 is held as a promise and these crazy Jehuty dolls are getting me hopeful.


I'm going to buy the Jehuty Revotech action figure/doll next week.
I need that model so that I can improve ZOEOA jehuty's detail a bit on my spare time.

It'd be cool if they started implementing the darker and more realistic tone for the mechs in the remake, imo. I know it's unlikely, but it'd be cool. But yeah, I sure hope they do write a more serious story for the next game. I mean, ZoE2 was pretty damn cool and all, but the plot was:
1) Basic as hell
2) Predictable
3) Easily told in the timespan of a trailer/intro vid
4) TOO MUCH ACTION, BARELY NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

While a lot of action isn't exactly bad for a game like ZoE, it's still important to keep some focus on characters. ZoE2 had nice characters, but, overall, they were basic, with barely no more than one dimension.
Nohman was the crazed guy who wanted to destroy everything.
Dingo was the anti-hero sort of character, who inadvertently got in the middle of a whole mess.
Leo isn't even in this list. He's a character who's actually changed. I mean, he went from Shinji to "I'M ON A LEV BUT I'M STILL GONNA ATTACK HEAD-ON AGAINST THAT ANUBIS YEEEAAAAAARGH" (and then gets blown to pieces, yeah).
Ken? Eh, I don't even know what's there to say about her. All she does is... being a spy and... telling Dingo to beat Nohman. That's about it, right?

So yeah, having a brand-spankin' new cast with better characters and some development would be definitely awesome. And I think that will be a viable chance if they choose to put some fucked up twist on the "THIS IS THE WILL OF METATRON" or insert some sort of conspiracy within the UNSF.

Idolo and ZOE1 were the darker parts of the series (except, I'm sorry, Leo's constant whining... I must be a damn serial killer in the waiting because at 14, I did not cry that damn much), Fist of Mars had character development and Xenosaga-style plot twists going for it, Dolores, i was clearly the family comedy of the group. What ZOE2 really needed was a better translation. I'll point out two examples that prove this.

1.) Dingo: "Taper, the train carrying the Orbital Frame is [either headed for you or coming to you] now!"
- What Orbital Frame? When was it mentioned? And why, on a train that damn long with so many backup Orbital Frames is only *one* Orbital Frame going to attack Taper and his LEV unit?

2.) Dingo "Are you from Marinaris?"
- He says this to Ken, asking her if she's from a place that her family either named in the first place, or was named after.

There are other moments of pisspoor translation that I could mention (I think), but these stand out as the most obvious. I loved ZOE2's story, and I do think that Dingo had a great arc (he starts out as a simple worker, then we find out some complex things about his past, and then he has to learn how to go from being the loner to the leader), but there were some obvious translation errors.