One month before the Japanese launch date (can it really be that soon?) Square Enix has released new screenshots of Dragon Quest IX, with brief introductions to some of the cast. The game has quite a sizable ensemble of characters! Most of them are humans living in a village, but at least some portion of the game is also set in an "angel world" where angels feed a World Tree to get it to yield fruit.Some of the colorful cast of (human) characters introduced in today's update include Olga (Origa?), a young girl who frequently wades into the sea to pray; Lu Fin and Eliza, an archaeologist and wife, and Ratena, a mysterious, hooded girl who has some kind of sway over the hero. Dragon Quest IX's semi-sandbox structure means we could be engaging in various optional side quests for all of these people. We're willing to guess those archaeologists would pay for relics found in dungeons, for example.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments