Well isn’t this a beautiful sight for sore eyes. After several, several years without a peep out of CyberConnect2’s beloved multimedia franchise .hack, to the point that the CyberConnect VP once told fans to beg Bandai Namco to make it happen, we finally have signs of life from the old single player MMO RPG in the form of .hack//Z.E.R.O.

Longtime fans of .hack will no doubt see many references to the original series of games (Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, Quarantine): a character that looks like Kite, two players fighting in a field that resemble Balmung and Black Rose, a red cross straight from Skeith, a mysterious white haired girl that resembles Aura gifting Kite the Data Drain ability. All things that resemble the classic original tetralogy, but not exactly and with some changes.

The teaser trailer is very nice to look at and brings a nostalgic tear to the eye, but we can glean some actual details about Z.E.R.O from the accompanying Famitsu article interviewing Hiroshi Matsuyama, President of CyberConnect2. There are some real interesting bits you can parse from the interview, though some things will naturally be lost in translation:

There is a message that says, “We restart .hack from scratch…I can’t say much about the characters and worldviews yet. All I can say is that it has not been a continuation of the past series.

So, taking the what we saw from the teaser with characters that look like the characters we know and love but with updated designs, as well as the quote from above, we can reasonably assume that .hack//Z.E.R.O. will be a soft reboot of the series, and that we’ll be playing as Kite, but a Kite with a different story and personality than the one we’re used to.

We’ll have to wait for more news, but breathing life into such an old deserted property is inspiring to say the least.