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Chrono Trigger director explains why he got involved in Oninaki, and the advice he's been offering

by rawmeatcowboy
23 February 2019
GN Version 5.0

In the most recent Nintendo Direct, we found out that Square-Enix and Tokyo RPG Factory were working on Oninaki, an action RPG for Switch. Shortly thereafter, we learned that the creative producer on the project was none other than Tokita Takashi, the director of Chrono Trigger. In an interview with Famitsu, Takashi explains how he got involved with the project, and goes over the advice he's been offering.

Getting involved with the game

When Tokyo RPG Factory started and I heard they were making a new series of classical RPGs, I thought: “Well, well, sounds like you guys are getting into something interesting.” For a long time we worked together on some of the stuff for Chrono Trigger and also consulted on other projects, but I thought this time I would properly meddle in their plans! (laughs)

Advice he's been offering to the team

When you compare them to movies and manga, I don’t think games have that same feeling of excitement. So we can create that feeling of excitement in the boss battles and elsewhere in the game, we have to include sections that go against what he player expects. Then we have to decide how far we want that feeling of unpredictability to go.

Traditional games didn’t have the expressive power that they do today, so those more serious episodes just didn’t feel all that real. But sometimes the player could bring those images to life with their imagination and those sorts of mental pictures stayed with them. Because nowadays it’s not like we are trying to express everything through images – we can go ahead and keep making more and more of those impactful episodes. For sure what we really want to create is a work that will emotionally affect the player and also stay with them afterwards.

[Link]