IGA's E3 2018 Interview with Famitsu [Translated to English]
Jun 15, 2018 1:35:39 GMT -6
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Post by dareka on Jun 15, 2018 1:35:39 GMT -6
Translated by moi. I put spoiler tags on the story bits, for those who want to go into the demo "pure."
original article:
www.famitsu.com/news/201806/15159187.html
FAMITSU: Well, I played the demo, and the game felt nearly finished.
IGA: The opening portion [is what's nearly finished] - not the rest of the game. Almost all of the assets are ready, but there's still quite a bit left to do, so it's not yet finished by any means.
FAMITSU: How far along is it?
IGA: Well, at the end of the development cycle, is as precise as we can get. It's hell, I tell ya (*smiles*). I can practically hear [the dev team's] screams as we speak...
FAMITSU: Have you guys been able to lock down a release window?
IGA: Well, as to that, it’ll be just a bit longer, but I think we’ll be able to provide a release date.*You could say we’ve more or less locked the release window down.
*not just a release window, but a date.
FAMITSU: When I tried the game out, [the play control] felt as good as I expected. What are your thoughts?
IGA: It still has a little bit to go. It’s not quite there yet. There are lots of aspects I want to work on. Like, “you can’t do a backstep in this situation” and such. They’re really small details, but they’re details I really care about, so I’m not satisfied with [the play control] just yet.
FAMITSU: Are you making the adjustments yourself?
IGA: I’m also working on them, too, but the person who’s in charge is a game designer whom I’ve been working with for quite a long time now. We work by melding our respective ideas.
FAMITSU: So what are your priorities when working on these adjustments?
IGA: Well, the most important part is that you get a really good, smooth feeling when playing, but when making a game, you can’t just make it as smooth as possible. The player needs to feel some pressure. If you focus just on the smoothness, the game becomes too simple. You’ll soon end up with enemies that are too difficult, too tough.* And that’s not what I’m after. Enemies don’t need to be that tough to kill - what I’m striving for is a level of difficulty that’s just right, where you have controls that are smooth, while putting just the right amount of pressure on the player. So, one of the things is that we have different opinions on how to put pressure on the player.
* By "tough" he’s specifically referring to their HP. If you can do anything you want very smoothly, the enemies need to have more HP in order to present a challenge. Rather than having enemies with lots of HP, he prefers to manage the difficulty by restricting the player’s movement a bit, which keeps the game challenging without requiring enemies with loads of HP.
FAMITSU: You mean this is something you’re not willing to compromise on?
IGA: Both the lead game designer and I have very strong opinions on what we want, so we argue back and forth, and what we eventually settle on is what ends up in the game.
FAMITSU: Could you give us a concrete example?
IGA: On the trajectory of the jump, for example, our opinions will be divided like “this should definitely go a bit slower,” “no, no, it should definitely go a bit faster.”
FAMITSU: Very fine details, indeed. Will you be fine-tuning these until the very end?
IGA: Well, we can’t really make big changes. I mean, if you change the properties of jumps, you end up changing how far you can move and jump. We absolutely won’t do that, but that creates other issues, so that sort of thing has to be fixed to a certain degree, but we still make adjustments on a day to day basis.
FAMITSU: Another thing is I was quickly drawn into the game-world when I played it.
IGA: Thank you very much. On franchise titles, it’s normally a very easy-to-grasp setup. You have a hunter and the enemy. The hunter and the hunted – a very simple premise. Or maybe something like “well, he’s doing this because he’s a hunter – so that’s his job.” But in this game, the characters have personal reasons for fighting. Truth be told, both the main character and those around the person, everyone should have some kind of objective, something that drives them. If they lose their motivation, they lose their reason for being there, and I feel like I’ve managed to maintain each character’s motivation all the way through to the end of the story, and I’m quite happy about that.
FAMITSU: You mean you aspired to be thorough with your storytelling*?
IGA: I wasn’t really trying to be thorough per se. All of the story elements are elements of the game itself. The most important thing is that if you can sympathise with a chacter’s motivation, then you can get into the game. That’s more or less it.
* I believe he’s asking IGA if he wanted to have a polished story with no plotholes, and IGA’s like “nah, I just wanted the player to enjoy the game, and they enjoy it more if they can relate to the characters and their motivation.”
FAMITSU: Is there any character that you feel went particularly well in that regard?
IGA: That’s a tough question, but probably Miriam, in that regard. At the end of the day, she’s the main character, so hopefully I was able to do her justice…
FAMITSU: Miriam’s voice was just wonderful. I felt drawn into the game-world just by listening to her voice.
IGA: We’re lucky to have Ami Koshimizu providing the voice of Miriam – my writing sounds worlds better when performed by a talented voice actress! (*smiles*). I’m always grateful for their help. Since the old days when I was working on dating-sims , I’ve always ended up going “man, my writing’s real hackneyed.” But when the actors bring the characters to life, it gets exponentially better.
FAMITSU: Really, is that right?
IGA: Well, since it’s what I do for a living now, I’m always striving for a level of quality that befits a professional, but I started off as a programmer, not a writer – in that sense, I still sometimes feel like an amateur writer.
FAMITSU: Well, I at least really got into the first dialogue, between Miriam and Johannes.
FAMITSU: How did you go about choosing the voice actors?
FAMITSU: The demo build’s has quite a lot of content, doesn’t it?
FAMITSU: So it’s quite a bit of content!
IGA: This build isn’t actually the most appropriate for a playable demo at an event. It’s too long. But I wanted people to try out the start of the game thoroughly. You can experience the game world and setting through the tutorial, the whole thing – and that’s what I wanted people to see. I believe the demo’s been mostly well received by the people from western media who’ve tried it.
FAMITSU: Lastly, a word to your fans in Japan who are looking forward with anticipation to the game’s release.
IGA: This build we showed here at E3 will also serve as a free demo to backers who pledged 60 dollars or more, so they can play it and give us feedback. In other words, development is far along enough that we can do that, so please look forward to it. The demo will be distributed June 21st.
If anyone finds another article in Japanese they'd like translated, you know where to find me...
original article:
www.famitsu.com/news/201806/15159187.html
FAMITSU: Well, I played the demo, and the game felt nearly finished.
IGA: The opening portion [is what's nearly finished] - not the rest of the game. Almost all of the assets are ready, but there's still quite a bit left to do, so it's not yet finished by any means.
FAMITSU: How far along is it?
IGA: Well, at the end of the development cycle, is as precise as we can get. It's hell, I tell ya (*smiles*). I can practically hear [the dev team's] screams as we speak...
FAMITSU: Have you guys been able to lock down a release window?
IGA: Well, as to that, it’ll be just a bit longer, but I think we’ll be able to provide a release date.*You could say we’ve more or less locked the release window down.
*not just a release window, but a date.
FAMITSU: When I tried the game out, [the play control] felt as good as I expected. What are your thoughts?
IGA: It still has a little bit to go. It’s not quite there yet. There are lots of aspects I want to work on. Like, “you can’t do a backstep in this situation” and such. They’re really small details, but they’re details I really care about, so I’m not satisfied with [the play control] just yet.
FAMITSU: Are you making the adjustments yourself?
IGA: I’m also working on them, too, but the person who’s in charge is a game designer whom I’ve been working with for quite a long time now. We work by melding our respective ideas.
FAMITSU: So what are your priorities when working on these adjustments?
IGA: Well, the most important part is that you get a really good, smooth feeling when playing, but when making a game, you can’t just make it as smooth as possible. The player needs to feel some pressure. If you focus just on the smoothness, the game becomes too simple. You’ll soon end up with enemies that are too difficult, too tough.* And that’s not what I’m after. Enemies don’t need to be that tough to kill - what I’m striving for is a level of difficulty that’s just right, where you have controls that are smooth, while putting just the right amount of pressure on the player. So, one of the things is that we have different opinions on how to put pressure on the player.
* By "tough" he’s specifically referring to their HP. If you can do anything you want very smoothly, the enemies need to have more HP in order to present a challenge. Rather than having enemies with lots of HP, he prefers to manage the difficulty by restricting the player’s movement a bit, which keeps the game challenging without requiring enemies with loads of HP.
FAMITSU: You mean this is something you’re not willing to compromise on?
IGA: Both the lead game designer and I have very strong opinions on what we want, so we argue back and forth, and what we eventually settle on is what ends up in the game.
FAMITSU: Could you give us a concrete example?
IGA: On the trajectory of the jump, for example, our opinions will be divided like “this should definitely go a bit slower,” “no, no, it should definitely go a bit faster.”
FAMITSU: Very fine details, indeed. Will you be fine-tuning these until the very end?
IGA: Well, we can’t really make big changes. I mean, if you change the properties of jumps, you end up changing how far you can move and jump. We absolutely won’t do that, but that creates other issues, so that sort of thing has to be fixed to a certain degree, but we still make adjustments on a day to day basis.
FAMITSU: Another thing is I was quickly drawn into the game-world when I played it.
IGA: Thank you very much. On franchise titles, it’s normally a very easy-to-grasp setup. You have a hunter and the enemy. The hunter and the hunted – a very simple premise. Or maybe something like “well, he’s doing this because he’s a hunter – so that’s his job.” But in this game, the characters have personal reasons for fighting. Truth be told, both the main character and those around the person, everyone should have some kind of objective, something that drives them. If they lose their motivation, they lose their reason for being there, and I feel like I’ve managed to maintain each character’s motivation all the way through to the end of the story, and I’m quite happy about that.
FAMITSU: You mean you aspired to be thorough with your storytelling*?
IGA: I wasn’t really trying to be thorough per se. All of the story elements are elements of the game itself. The most important thing is that if you can sympathise with a chacter’s motivation, then you can get into the game. That’s more or less it.
* I believe he’s asking IGA if he wanted to have a polished story with no plotholes, and IGA’s like “nah, I just wanted the player to enjoy the game, and they enjoy it more if they can relate to the characters and their motivation.”
FAMITSU: Is there any character that you feel went particularly well in that regard?
IGA: That’s a tough question, but probably Miriam, in that regard. At the end of the day, she’s the main character, so hopefully I was able to do her justice…
FAMITSU: Miriam’s voice was just wonderful. I felt drawn into the game-world just by listening to her voice.
IGA: We’re lucky to have Ami Koshimizu providing the voice of Miriam – my writing sounds worlds better when performed by a talented voice actress! (*smiles*). I’m always grateful for their help. Since the old days when I was working on dating-sims , I’ve always ended up going “man, my writing’s real hackneyed.” But when the actors bring the characters to life, it gets exponentially better.
FAMITSU: Really, is that right?
IGA: Well, since it’s what I do for a living now, I’m always striving for a level of quality that befits a professional, but I started off as a programmer, not a writer – in that sense, I still sometimes feel like an amateur writer.
FAMITSU: Well, I at least really got into the first dialogue, between Miriam and Johannes.
IGA: For Johannes, I asked for kind of a sheepish feel to the character, and I’m really happy with the results. Voice acting really helps with world-building.
FAMITSU: How did you go about choosing the voice actors?
IGA: We provided our short-list of casting choices, to a certain extent. We made our final decision after listening to voice samples, but when I heard Koshimizu-san’s voice, I just said “she’s the one…” Based on her background, Miriam has to come off as somewhat aloof, but I wanted her to be more emotive, to have a funny, silly side as well. And she was by far the best choice to bring that out.
FAMITSU: The demo build’s has quite a lot of content, doesn’t it?
IGA: This demo let’s you play until almost all of the characters make their first appearance. There’s Miriam and Johannes, and then Gebel, an antagonist, appears, together with his confidant Gremory, and then there’s this girl Anne, who’s attacked, and that’s where Dominique comes in and helps. Then we have Alfred, who’s Johannes’ teacher, one of the Alchemists responsible for the incident 10 years ago, and then lastly a Samurai appears. You get to understand who the characters are and what their roles in the story are.
FAMITSU: So it’s quite a bit of content!
IGA: This build isn’t actually the most appropriate for a playable demo at an event. It’s too long. But I wanted people to try out the start of the game thoroughly. You can experience the game world and setting through the tutorial, the whole thing – and that’s what I wanted people to see. I believe the demo’s been mostly well received by the people from western media who’ve tried it.
FAMITSU: Lastly, a word to your fans in Japan who are looking forward with anticipation to the game’s release.
IGA: This build we showed here at E3 will also serve as a free demo to backers who pledged 60 dollars or more, so they can play it and give us feedback. In other words, development is far along enough that we can do that, so please look forward to it. The demo will be distributed June 21st.
If anyone finds another article in Japanese they'd like translated, you know where to find me...
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