Valkyria Chronicles 3 Trailer Contains No Gameplay, But Lots of Drama [Update #3]

At their press conference at the Tokyo Game Show yesterday, Sega gave attendees their first look at Valkyria Chronicles 3 in video form with a debut trailer.

Judging from the trailer, Valkyria 3’s story seems to be taking on a much grimmer, more serious tone than its predecessor. Although Valkyria Chronicles 2 is a fantastic game, a lot of the series’ fans were turned off by its change to a school setting with a relatively lighthearted air.

It appears as though Valkyria Chronicles 3 is looking to rectify that by taking an alternate, much more fatally-aware look at the Europan War of 1935. The main squad in the game, Squad 422 — or “the Nameless” — seems to contain both a Valkyria named Riela Marcellis and a Darcsen named Imca as main characters. If the trailer is any indication, it doesn’t seem like they’re going to get along too well…

Valkyria Chronicles 3 will be out in Japan on January 27th, 2011. That’s the upside of a faster development cycle typically associated with portable platforms.

Update: 4Gamer have off-screen ingame footage of the game, along with a couple screenshots. We’ve also managed to restore the original trailer, thanks to a tip-off from Chris Taran!