In today's edition of the Why Can't We Have Nice Things? Report, we bring you word (via Siliconera) that Phantasy Start Online 2 will allow to recruit plot centric characters to assist and travel with you on your intergalactic adventures.
These characters can give you items and information and the games producer, Satoshi Sakai, says most of them are even fully voiced.
The realities of Sega's current financial state make every bit of good PSO2 news hurt that much more. It's, at this point, highly unlikely we'll ever see the game on these shores, but the game certainly looks like it's going to be quite a bit of fun for the Japanese players that dig in. As it stands, the games PlayStation Vita version looks pretty bad, in my opinion (like, circa 2009 iOS game bad), but it was only 10% done when it was first revealed, so hope springs eternal.
Phantasy Start Online 2 is scheduled for a 2012 lauch with a beta kicking off soon. You can download an demo version of the games character creator now as well a benchmark tool to see if your PC has the guts to run the game.