PAX West 2017

What was the thought behind making the protagonist female, and especially the design on her esthetic? What were your goals there in the departure from the traditional strong male esthetic?

IGA: There were many thoughts that were going through our mind trying to make this main character (Miriam); She is a very powerful, strong female lead. During this time (making the game) there was a trend of very strong power female characters, and we wanted to do that as well for this game. And the design of (Miriam) – in the game her body slowly crystalizes, and we wanted to be able to show that. In a lot of the games that I have worked on, the female characters don’t expose a lot of skin. The design is based on the gothic style – it doesn’t go towards gothic lolita, but we wanted to have a gothic feel with her design and show the crystal design on her body, so that’s how we designed her.

And actually, when we went to design the character, the first plan was to create a male character – and in between processes, we decided to change that and go with a powerful female lead. What’s different from the previous games… From the very beginning, all the male characters that I designed haven’t been very “manly”, or they have their feminine side too. So that part hasn’t really changed much, because if you changed those characters to a female, it wouldn’t change all that much. For story line, if it’s a male character I could make up a reason (for a conflict) like “oh I hate you, I want to destroy you right now”. But a female lead, I wanted to come up with a more complex story for her, and as this is the first time I am creating a female lead, I wanted to make it right. That’s also the part that is challenging.