Weekly Famitsu Interview to the Creators

[Vextor]

This week's weekly Famitsu featured Eiyuden Chronicles (Titled "Hyakueiyuden" in Japan) on its cover, and includes a 6-page interview with Junko Kawano, Osamu Komuta, and Junichi Murakami. I will translate the interview to the best of my abilities (these won't be literal translations, so don't expect that type of stuff. I am fluent in both languages so my focus would be to make sure the context / feel is correctly communicated):

Famitsu: So finally Hyakueiyuden will be released 4 years after the initial crowd funding effort. Can you explain how you are feeling now that the players can finally get their hands on the game.

Kawano: First of all, we really hoped to be able to share this milestone with Murayama, who was at the center of this effort. It is hard to express the feeling of regret there, but also we are very curious how the game will be received by the players, although we are half anxious and half scared about the feedback.

Komuta: We ended up making the backers wait for a long time, but finally the game will be released so please enjoy what we have put together.

Murakami: This game was created while we gave regular feedback to the players, which is a development style we have never experienced in the past. Now that the game will be released, we are wondering what type of feedback we will get.

Famitsu: So is the general feel different from the feel of your previous titles?

Murakami: This game was developed while we communicated "we will make this type of game" to the players, but once it gets into the hands of the players there is always the possibility of having feedback such as "this is not what you promised." In normal titles, we would release the details of the game after we have progressed with the development. However, with Hyakueiyuden we ended up adding more content than we originally planned, so there should be plenty of surprises and hopefully the game will bring a lot of enjoyment to the players.

Famitsu: The crowd-funding was 4 years ago, but when did the entire project start?

Kawano: It was about 6 months before we kicked off the crowd-funding. We moved quite fast after deciding to do this.

Komuta: Yes, and at that point we really had nothing done (laugh).

Kawano: Yes, we were at an absolute zero state at that point.

Murakami: We has to be able to show something, so we asked Kawano to draw some characters, saying "we can change it later if it doesn't work" (laugh).

Komuta: Murayama created the overall setting -- that was the start. Then a general image of "red and blue characters at the center" so we first drew those characters. We have agreed to use pixel art from the get-go, so Kawano and Murakami prepared the official art and pixel art for the characters while Murayama and myself worked on the overall planning of the game.

Famitsu: Since its first announcement, the reception was quite amazing. Was this expected?

Komuta: Yes, we were completely surprised.

Kawano: After that initial reaction, I really felt "Okay, I am allowed to make this."

Murakami: Initially we set our target at 50 million yen, but we reached that target within 1 hour after we kicked off the funding. In the end we were at around 10 times our initial target so we were totally shocked with the result.

Komuta: How the numbers increased in those first few hours were incredible, almost scary (laugh).

Famitsu: While developing this game, were there elements where you made sure you did not deviate from the original plan?

Komuta: The most important part was to make sure we maintained the graphics where we mix the 2D and 3D images. We continued having discussions between Murakami and myself as well as the art team to figure out how exactly to show the world.

Murakami: We definitely did not deviate from the initial plan to hand-craft each character pixel art. We certainly thought about giving up as we suffered through it (laugh).

Kawano: Yes, and at the early stages (laugh). There were just so many to work on.

Komuta: With higher resolutions these days, each character requires more pixels compared to the past -- roughly twice the amount.

Kawano: Meanwhile, when we make things too detailed they would look more like illustrations, so we had to hit the right spot to retain the pixel-ness.

Murakami: We experimented shrinking the illustrations and injecting them into the game, but the pixel art version definitely fit better with the overall feel of the game. In the end it just felt like the only way to go.

Famitsu: So other than pixel art, what were the difficulties working with a 2D and 3D graphics mix?

Komuta: It was difficult to make the pixel art character stand correcting within 3-dimentional space. Murakami was especially picky about this point -- the characters were not supposed to looking directly sideways. We made sure each character is standing with some depth and perspective, and making sure they are standing correctly within a 3-dimensional setting was our first challenge.

Murakami: The perspective can move a bit, but we make each character stand a bit sideways based on an established axis. We're looking at them from a bit above, so we make sure we can see the top of their head and also have them stand with their feet opened so they look more natural as they stand. We spent a lot if time trying different things to get this right.

Komuta: Basically we make sure the hind legs are connecting with the ground. However, when we do it like that the leg on the front side will tend to go inside the ground below the ankles, but we worked around it to make sure the feet do appear above the ground to make sure it doesn't look strange. It will end up looking fairly natural but technically it was quite hard to accomplish (laugh).

Famitsu: You managed to not deviate from your initial dedication to pixel art, but on the other hand were there elements where you deviated from the original plan?

Murakami: Minigames and the specs surrounding them continued to increase.

Komuta: We didn't intend to have too much volume in regards to minigames. We planned to have simple games. However, our specifications ended up becoming more complex to the point we were almost developing separate games (laugh).

Famitsu: The card game is quite impressive, but who came up with the rules?

Komuta: I discussed the basic rules with Murayama, and in the end we had a dedicated team working on minigames. One of the team members was very knowledgeable about card games, and this member polished the game to its final condition.

Murakami: While not a minigame, we were also making the war engine during the same time. We didn't mean to make the war engine so detailed, but Murayama kept saying we must do it like this. As a result, we had to create a separate minigame team to make sure we can work on the war engine.

Komuta: These were minigames after all, so we were thinking lightly "we will make them on the side." However, our main battle engine, war engine, and our HQ structure all kept adding new things, and our 2D / 3D battle engine needed extra time to finalize so we definitely did not have the capacity to make minigames on the side.

Famitsu: While being an RPG, it seems this game has many other types of ways to enjoy. These days, new games seem to focus a lot on the world setting and background information. How was this approached for Hyakueiyuden?

Kawano: At the time of the crowd-funding, the biggest contributions came from the USA. Naturally we had to consider tastes of the fans of the world. Generally fans abroad seem to want higher levels of difficulty, so I was wondering how we can make this game difficult (laugh). Meanwhile in Japan, this genre has fans who favor easier difficulty levels, so we had to think of ways to satisfy both tastes.

Murakami: Initially I doubted games like this will be popular abroad. I personally don't really think too much about the tastes of fans in the world, because fans of these games probably like these "made in Japan" games made by Japanese people with Japanese tastes, so I wanted to make sure those tastes are included. Those who funded this project probably had a liking to Murayama's work, after all.

Famitsu: Were there any voices from abroad that took you by surprise?

Komuta: Regarding difficulty, we didn't expect so many wishes for a "hard mode." We were even told that "bullet sponge" style difficulties were not enough, and that there needed to be better AI with generally trickier enemy reactions. So hearing this we just had to think of some way to do this. We made it, but it is pretty hard, it is gonna be pretty tough (laugh).

Famitsu:　This game's story feels fairly orthodox while having moments of intensity, making it easy to understand while making the player wonder what will happen next. Are there any points you took extra care when crafting the setting, characters, and overall story?

Komuta: Our focus was how to make sure Murayama's story-telling is at the forefront, we really paid attention to that. Murakami was also extremely detailed with how to add intensity to important parts of the story, with the one-on-one duels being a prime example of that. In Murayama's scenario, he would write down the details of what leads up to a climax in the plot, but regarding duels he just mentions "one-on-one duel happens here." Thus, we had to think of the actual dialog during the duels as we developed the system, and Murakami focused on the cinematic aspect.

Murakami: Reading Murayama's script, it is obvious the characters can't just be standing there. Thus, we had to add new pixel patterns, move the camera, etc to make sure how to illustrate the scenario best. We put a lot of effort into tuning that aspect. Also, regarding duels, we wanted to make sure it would be a memorable experience so we paid extra attention to the pixel art during those sequences. We tried to avoid reusing pixels from other places and developed new ones for specific duels while arguing what is best within the development team.

Famitsu: Regarding the story, was the overall beginning to end created initially and the details added as the development proceeded?

Murakami: Yes, we initially had the overall plot and then the details were cascaded as we proceeded.

Komuta: The way Murayama worked was he first thinks of the backbone of the scenario and then lets the characters do its own thing within his head. After a number of different cycles like that he would write down what he thinks is the best script and sends it to us.

Kawano: And it tends to take a bit long before we get the initial script (laugh).

Murakami: As a designer, we want to focus on the most exciting parts of the game especially towards the end. However, we got the script sequentially from the start of the plot, so it took a while before we got to the climax (laugh). It seems to have taken quite a lot of time before the entire script was finalized.

Famitsu: In important scenes there were 10 or so characters on the screen, but each seemed to have had a reason to be there and it was convincing.

Komuta: That was one point Murayama was really careful about. He often said how he wanted to play the game with his favorite party. Besides characters who are required at each plot sequence, we have script patterns for every single character for all events in this game. We really made it for every character.

Famitsu: Oh! So that was actually true. I noticed how a character I put in the party myself had a script as I entered a dungeon, and was wondering why the character had a character-specific text -- but you are saying there's character-specific text for every character, wow.

Kawano: Yes, we do (laugh).

Komuta: The character who speaks for the main scenario portion is set, but reactions to these main events will be done by other party members selected by the player.

Kawano: It's probably impossible for one person to see all of the possible text, so please enjoy the game through multiple runs.

Murakami: I guess it is good we are releasing this in the internet age.

Kawano: Please use everyone's collective effort to see all of the possible text (laugh).

Famitsu: In this game we have 3 protagonists, Nowa, Seign, and Marisa. How did you arrive at having 3 characters?

Komuta: In the beginning there was no plan to have multiple protagonists. Seign and Marisa did exist as characters but the assumption was that Nowa is the only protagonist. However, as we proceeded with the development the idea of switching between Nowa and Seign came up so players can change the sequence of events. The idea was mentioned quite suddenly out of the blue (laugh). After that we somehow put together a system of swapping protagonists.

Murakami: It's same in the system side as the player character has the widest variation of pixel patterns. It was really difficult to make all of the patterns for Nowa, so when I heard we must make it also for Seign and Marisa it was quite tough to swallow (laugh). In then end we made it, but player characters can move in 8 directions including walking and running animations. I even mentioned how everyone will only be running anyways so let me just work on the running animation, but this was rejected, so we made both patterns (laugh). In the end we have parts where walking is mandatory so it wasn't a total waste.

Komuta: It really was suddenly mentioned in the scenario, "character control switches to Seign" or something like that (laugh). Our engineer had a lot to say against that sudden request, but I think this feature definitely added an additional depth of experience to the game. Also, people who like Seign as a character would likely want to finish his plot first.

Murakami: Also, for Nowa, Seign, and Marisa, the way they run has been tailored to each character. I mean, we have different characters with different personalities so might as well make sure they run differently as well to show their character. Their gait is also slightly different, so please pay close attention to these details.

Famitsu: This game is known for having many characters, so you probably used many voice actors. Were there any memorable episodes during the casting and recording phases?

Kawano: Komuta and myself mainly handled the casting. Regarding this Murayama totally left it up to us and he really didn't say much concerning this element. Regarding Perrier he had a few requests though, but he did give us an OK at the end so hopefully he was satisfied.

Murakami: Overall all 4 of us seemed to have had similar thoughts about casting -- we didn't have any real disagreements and in general it went like "this character definitely should have this voice" "yeah totally" and the like and the process was quite smooth. However, recording was really tough.

Komuta: For the Japanese version I went to the studio for the recording. The sheer volume of the work was massive, so overall it too a whole year to complete.

Famitsu: What was the reaction of the voice actors during recording?

Komuta: They were especially surprised about the theatre feature. "We will really do this for all characters" was the reaction. It seemed to be especially interesting for them as they get to act with great passion for each role within the play, and they all really enjoyed the process.

Kawano: Some of them sort of got carried away from the original character, but even in those cases we can treat those as characters who change personalities when they are acting, so hopefully players can enjoy that aspect as well.

Famitsu: Different characters come under the limelight at different parts of the plot, and thus players will have their favorite characters for sure. Do you have any favorite characters yourself?

Murakami: I really like Mio and Hildy. They were one of the first characters we made, but I like their personalities and for Mio I made the base pixel art and gradually fine-tined her character so I have a particular attachment to her.

Komuta: For me I like Electra, the female general. Originally we did not plan for her to participate in regular battles but Murayama also wanted to have her as battle-capable. Thus, even though we were already towards the end of development I said "Murayama really wants her as a regular battle character" and managed to wedge her in. So I used Murayama as a shield to put through my personal wishes (laugh).

Murakami: We had a lot of similar stories (laugh). But yeah, Electra needs to be a regular combat character.

Komuta: Yes, in the end Murakami also agreed and she became usable in regular combat, so I really like her. Gigina is also very good -- the way he moves in battle is awesome.

Kawano: I want each character to be loved equally, so I don't have any personal favorites... which is what I often say (laugh), However, one character that sticks out in my mind is El Alicanto. Why is he in the Hyakueiyuden world? That type of impact. I received the order to draw him, but once I was done I really like him.

Famitsu: So the characters are full of love from the creators (laugh). I want to also ask about the HQ, but it was interesting how it gets larger not through recruitment but through accumulating resources. What was your intention with this change?

Komuta: We were discussing how we want the players to develop the town as they wish. However, if the recruits do not impact what stores you get in the HQ, they will not have a clear role there, so we ended up with our current structure. Basically you grow your HQ by collecting resources, but you can't access certain development panels unless you have specific characters. That way we encourage players to recruit more characters and add an element of fun where you wonder what part of the development panel will be released when you recruit a new character.

Famitsu: While developing the HQ, what element did you start from?

Komuta: We started from the characters. Blacksmiths, item shop, rune shop, etc... we went on like that to define what we need. About guild tasks, we only had the concept initially without thinking much about the tasks themselves. After some discussion we build on various specifications. The volume ended up getting quite large, and characters will say different things depending on who they are grouped with. Although we didn't go as far as putting voices on those texts, there are some special texts depending on the combinations so it would be great if players can investigate those aspects.

Famitsu: It was really enjoyable to feel actively building your own HQ and military force. We probably will end up with different experienced by each player as well. Especially the oracle room was very helpful.

Komuta: Without that it would be very difficult to find all of your characters. In this game there's no real time limit to gathering all characters. It's possible to start gathering everyone before the final battle so please play freely.

Famitsu: You can play many different minigames in the HQ, but the fact that every character has their own card deck is quite incredible.

Komuta: Why the heck do we need to buy a booster pack inside the game? (laugh) Initially with minigames, we started with the begoma, cards, theatre, race, and the cook-off. Begoma and cards were fairly similar actually so we were trying to think of ways to differentiate them. Thus in the end we made the player choose one begoma out of red, blue, and green and ask them to fight against begoma masters scattered around the world to become a begoma master (laugh).

Famitsu: Sounds vaguely familiar (laugh).

Komuta: Thus if we already have a game like that, it would be too similar if we do the same with the card games, so we thought why not make players fight against the heroes. The reaction from each recruit is also funny so I think it worked out well in the end.

Famitsu: You end up playing card games against characters you don't expect will play such games, and then realize they have rare cards which makes you think "this person actually is really into this card game" which is sort of a cool thing to discover.

Kawano: With begoma and the cook-off, you face off with rival characters, but it was surprising to see how fleshed out the characters are beyond being mere pixels.

Murakami: When we looked at the scenario of these games, there were many rivals with detailed settings (laugh). Murayama's instruction was that it is okay to reused the same NPC, but these characters were all too developed to use the same pixel art.

Komuta: There were female cooks, the four master chefs, and even a robot (laugh).

Murakami: Even if we can't use the same art for these characters, the main team is way to busy to work on them so I just said "I will take care of it!" and directly worked on designing and arranging the pixel art for the cooks.

Kawano: And, when I looked at the final pixel art they were not at all copy / paste designs (laugh). I took those pixel art and drew the character portraits based on those sort of like reverse-engineering. Also regarding the cook-off, I made the pixel art for the all of the cook-off dishes.

Murakami: We were so short on staff, we needed help (laugh). There were over a 100 dishes total, but she completed all of them by manually dotting the pixels. Of course, being such a legend from the pixel art era, there were almost no edits necessary.

Kawano: It was sort of like a break from all the character design work I had to do, so it was a fun way to refresh my mind (laugh).

Famitsu: So it was clearly a major effort all over the place (laugh). It was mentioned earlier that Electra was also added as a regular battle character, but was there a certain number of regular battle characters selected from the start?

Komuta: We had a fairly small number at the start.

Murakami: With pixel art there is a limit to how many you can make per day, so based on some calculation we were able to derive how many characters we can manage with the number of staff we had and budget available. However, we ended up adding more characters (laugh).

Kawano: It was like, we can add more, more (laugh).

Murakami: Murayama will say "it looks a bit sparse..."

Komuta: In the end we ended up with more battle characters, but otherwise we would have had difficulty providing other characters a reason to exist, so in the end things balanced out, I think.

Famitsu: Regarding casting, you mentioned a bit about the theatre, but this itself can almost be its own game due to the sheer volume of text. Are there any episodes you would like to share from developing this feature?

Murakami: We already had the plan to make this feature something we enjoy through combining different characters.

Komuta: Yes, we wanted to install this theatre and make sure all characters can participate and also make sure we had voice acting -- we had that decided from the very start of this project.

Murakami: So we were discussing how we need to choose plays / skits that would work well with voice acting.

Famitsu: In the theatre you see distorted chibi-style characters who does the actual acting, which is quite cute.

Murakami: Initially we were told still images were enough. Voice acting will be the main content and it would be way too difficult to have full blown plays for every single character, which is why the assumption was anything complex will be too time-consuming. However, as we proceeded with the recording it became clear that still images would not cut it.

Komuta: We started discussing whether it would be possible for the characters in the still images to move left or right, and then we started saying "well, we can have a bit more animation" and then... (laugh)

Murakami: In the end we realized if we distort the characters we can keep the cost low, so we took that route.

Famitsu: Regarding battles, you adopted a traditional turn-based battle which is also fast with many characters involved which is a huge draw for this game. How did you end up with this set-up?

Komuta: Murayama's vision was to make sure first-time RPG players can finish the game without too much effort. Based on that vision, a turn-based battle system seemed to be the obvious choice. Orthodox turn-based battles have a timeless element to it, so we wanted to develop this as deeply as we can. There are sequences by which characters can act, and each character also has armor values, and there are various other elements to think about but they all exist along the central core of a turn-based battle system.

Famitsu: It definitely does feel familiar. How about the special battle element, the war battles?

Murakami: Murayama wanted to make the war battles in that particular style where you can get a more raw, live feeling.

Komuta: He definitely did not want to make it into an RTS though, he wanted to make sure soldiers were placed on grids but once they are placed, they fight in cinematically. He really wanted to perfect that aspect and we gave a lot of special attention to that aspect.

Kawano: The war battle sequences don't happen too often, but we definitely focused a lot of effort on making this work.

Murakami: It may seem difficult at first, but none of the war battles or duels have anything truly difficult to them, but are basically elements that enrich the overall drama. We wanted to make sure they exist as functions to add substance to the central core plot.

Famitsu: Yes, it seemed difficult at first but actually it wasn't too difficult.

Komuta: The reason why the war battle screen ended up like that is because Murayama said "I want to see a large force advance in formation as the appear from a hill." That was the start of everything.

Murakami: Maybe he was reading manga with that type of scene (laugh). He was really focused on specific situations that he wished to re-create. I was thinking more from the perspective of developing the war battle system to add a deeper strategy battle element, but he said "that's not what I have in mind."

Komuta: We did put a lot of effort into this element though. Such as when we have cavalry charges from the flank they turn around and charge, but Murayama mentioned how he wanted the cavalry to turn more smoothly and I was thinking "do we really want to spend our time there?" But in the end after the product was finished it all came together and we all agreed "well, it's pretty good." That's sort of how this project kept getting bigger, and that's the story of Hyakueiyuden.

Famitsu: In May 2022 you released the prequel "Hyakueiyuden Rising", but what was the reasoning behind releasing this?

Kawano: We knew from the start that it would take a lot of time before we have anything we can show from Hyakueiyuden, so we needed to release something else first. We were discussing making a spin-off at that point, and during that discussion Murayama said he wanted Satomi to write the scenario (Scenario writer for "Persona" and "Caligula"), and that the game should be an action RPG.

Komuta: The reason why we went with an action RPG is because we didn't want to deviate too far from the RPG genre while making it easier to release quickly. We did initially discuss making an RPG, but if we took that route we would end up making everyone wait even longer (laugh).

Murakami: We wanted to make sure the overall feel of the world must be the same, and we added the action game element because the developer Natsume Atari was good at making action games. By going with their forte, we wanted to shorten the development time.

Komuta: We also wanted to make sure some of the aspect of developing the HQ can be added, so Hyakueiyuden Rising has that feature as well.

Famitsu: Are there any particular reasons you selected CJ, Ishya, and Garoo as the main characters?

Kawano: We left everything up to Satomi, so these characters were his creations for Hyakueiyuden Rising. I made the illustrations for them based on orders from Satomi.

Famitsu: In that case, thinking about how they would be integrated into the main game would require some tailoring right?

Kawano: I think Murayama had difficulty with that task.

Komuta: The initial story of recruiting them in Hyakueiyuden was way too simple, so I told Murayama that players from Rising will be unhappy about such lack of development. We made the prequel, so I wanted to make sure the story has some connection with the main plot. He re-wrote the recruitment plot as a result.

Famitsu: Of course, fans probably have already played Hyakueiyudne Rising, but for those who haven't yet it would be great if they give it a try. You also already have some DLCs on sale right?

Komuta: We will have stories about Seign, Marisa, and Marcus as DLCs.

Kawano: Murayama wrote stories for all three of them so your understanding of these three characters will become deeper after you play them, so I hope many people will try.

Murakami: In the Marcus story, the reason why he looks the way he does will be explained, and for the other DLCs it would basically show the backstory of these characters in a "meanwhile..." style setting while the main scenario is going on. It should be very engaging to play.

Famitsu: We're approaching the end of this interview. Do you have anything to say to everyone who participated in the crowd-funding as well as others who learned about the game later, and all other JRPG fans who have been looking forward to this game?

Murakami: We made everyone wait for a long time, and as a result we have been able to add a lot of content which would hopefully satisfy everyone. Just by playing casually you would discover many interesting things for sure, and through publications and from other players you may learn of other deeper elements in this game. Hopefully players can enjoy this game for a long time.

Komuta: The game will finally be released, but I think we were able to make a title that people will say "I am glad they were able to make a JRPG like this." Otherwise, it would be great if everyone can immerse themselves in the game world. The game is designed to react in different ways to how you play the game, so please enjoy your individual experiences.

Kawano: Now that our work is out in the open, it will become complete once it is played by everyone, so there's not much else I can say beyond that. I just hope everyone will enjoy playing it.

[Antimatzist]

Thanks so much for translating! There are some interesting insights (like the Rising trio being completely Satomi's invention).

Kawano: Please use everyone's collective effort to see all of the possible text (laugh).

Seems like a very suikosource thing, lol