Arakawa: How about the game world?
Kando: Well, we still have a lot of old Square Soft employees (before becoming Square Enix), and we noticed that we don’t have a lot of games that take place in the present. The closest candidate is Front Mission.
Arakawa: Just barely, really.
Kando: So we thought that it’d be interesting to make a game set in modern-day Shibuya, which is a lot different from the usual fantasy worlds.
Hasegawa: Definitely a change compared to our other games.
Arakawa: Everyone’s working on FINAL FANTASY, so it’s nice to work on something else once in a while (laugh).
Kando: We’ve been working on big titles like FINAL FANTASY and KINGDOM HEARTS for a while now, so with this smaller title on the unique DS system, we’ve taken the opportunity to explore a little more than usual in terms of direction. We still put as much effort into it as some of the bigger titles.
Arakawa: They sure give us a lot of freedom on this title… They gathered the three sci-fi monster movie geeks to work on it (laugh).
Kando: Monster geeks! (laugh) You make us sound like oddballs! (laugh)
Hasegawa: There’s no way that they grouped us together for that reason (laugh).
Kando: In any case, it went something like this.
Arakawa: I remember how we all planned about the DS for the first month.
Kando: It was purely research in the beginning.
Hasegawa: We set forth to shatter the idea of the conventional video game.
Arakawa: They gathered us, three graphic artists, into a team so we thought that we should make something visually striking. I remember consciously reminding myself that.
Kando: I’m sure that they found the idea of grouping three graphic artists interesting. We did a lot of brainstorming and planning, and by the end of the year we were increasing in team size, and they started to join the brainstorming.
Arakawa: We’ve been working with [the game studio] Jupiter for a while now. We’re pretty in sync with Jupiter.
Kando: That’s for sure, it’s as if we were working on parallel schedules.
Arakawa: The meetings were mostly brainstorming sessions.
Kando: Our staff and the Jupiter staff, just brainstorming.
Arakawa: We spent two and a half years like that (laugh). The conception of the game took the most time. We sure had a small team in the beginning.
Hasegawa: It was harmonious.
Kando: When we took a step back, it was surprising how much we had to do. For maps, Shibuya isn’t particularly large, but there were a lot of elements within that, such as battle locations, field areas, shops, badge items, etc.
Arakawa: There are a lot of things in this game.
Kando: Mounds of it.
Arakawa: It started out as such a compact game (laugh). But once we opened the flood gates… Well, it’s still a very tightly knit game, I think. There was just a lot to do development-wise.
Kando: We kept adding things that we wanted in there.
Arakawa: We sure did (laugh).
Hasegawa: There were things that we thought of giving up on, or scrapping an idea altogether, but most everything was implemented.
Arakawa: I debated on scrapping a few things, but no one wanted to do that (laugh). They kept saying how they’ve done so much already and that it’d be a waste not to keep it, so I had no choice but to agree. I remember how we considered scrapping items altogether (laugh).
Kando: Then we’d say something like “no we should keep it.”
Arakawa: And we go, “yeah well, of course we should.”
Kando: But the end result is good, and that’s what counts.
Arakawa: That’s true. I’m glad that everything made it. It’s just that the more we put in, the more adjustments we need to make (laugh).
Kando: Fine tuning is definitely important. Even the music, they were made with the game’s story and ideas in mind.
Hasegawa: The music really goes well with the game.
Kando: The music goes great with the game. I think it’s a major attraction of the game (laugh).
Arakawa: It’d sure be nice if everyone could listen.
|
Fantasy Violence |
Mild Language Mild Suggestive Themes |
Platform: Nintendo DS™
Genre: Action RPG
For more information on the World Ends with You, visit the official site at www.theworldendswithyou.com
