The Last Story - tons of details, prototyping, removed mechanics and more

- development studio behind The Last Story is AQ Interactive
- it seems that now defunct Artoon was in on development as well
- AQ’s Takuya Matsumoto says that this is the first time he’s worked with Sakaguchi since Blue Dragon
- AQ is handling the system/programming side of The Last Story
- Matsumoto and Sakaguchi decided to work together after a meeting at a restaurant
- Sakaguchi was working on a design document for The Last Story at this time
- both devs had regrets about Blue Dragon, and wanted to work on a new style of game
- both devs saw an unnamed game that surprised them, and they then knew that they wanted to surprise players with new ideas
- the pair worked on a prototype for a year that they called “Tofu”
- this ‘Tofu’ prototype helped lead them to the battle system that The Last Story uses
- the two also prototyped collision work on the fields of play
- it was made so that players could explore the reaches of fields of play which consist of complex land formations
- this design allowed for hiding in shadows, turning horizontally when trying to fit through spaces, entering doors after pushing them open with their hands.
- this also allowed players to climb over walls or hide in spaces
- work on the story side of The Last Story took place in three steps
- first was a general outline, then character exchanges that took place within the dungeons, then finally they handled the details and voice acting
- Matsumoto would take Sakaguchi’s general outlines and incorporate the land formations into them in the form of events
- Matsumoto’s elements lead to character traits, such as Elza’s habit of kicking doors in order to open them
- Matsumoto felt the Gathering component was the toughest to deal with
- the strength of the Gathering command would have to change depending on the enemy and the current battle conditions
- you can also kill off enemies without using the Gather tactic
- some other allies have similar Gather abilities
- it’s up to the player to decide how they want to fight
- in the dev team, some members used the guard/gather commands, and others jumped right into battle
- Matsumoto was of the former type
- Matsumoto put together the game’s tutorial, which suggests using guard
- the game once had a rewind feature that let you check out the last few seconds of battle, but this was removed due to pacing issues
- when putting in commands, the action freezes and you’re given a birds eye view
- the ability to climb was added in later, which lead to major redesigns for early dungeons
- there is also an auto-attack that will function as long as you press in the direction of the enemy
- auto attack is the “Normal” setting for battle
- you can change it to “Manual” that allows for button commands for attacks

Link