Dear Reader:
Platinum talks Astral Chain's development, trial and error, working with Nintendo, game difficulty, and more
Famitsu recently ran a feature with Astral Chain director Takahisa Taura and supervisor Hideki Kamiya. We've already covered a wealthy of details from this interview, but now another wave has come in. Check out the tidbits below, as translated by NintendoEverything.
- Taura knew that directing was a tough and lonely endeavor, but it was even tougher and lonelier than he expected
- since it was a new IP, it was hard to define what was right and wrong to do, so he tried out a lot of ideas during production
- Taura gained even more respect for Kamiya since he’s been a director so many times before
- Kamiya is confident that Taura’s going to have a very successful career moving forward
- Taura said he didn’t feel pressure with Astral Chain’s release following NieR: Automata’s
- since Yoko Taro isn’t involved in Astral Chain, Taura sees the two games as completely unrelated
- Taura noted that he was allowed to make the kind of game that he, himself, wanted to make
- Taura has a ton of experience in project planning, which gave him an edge
- Taura helped Kamiya out on The Wonderful 101 in regards to planning
- Taura said since he’s worn several different hats in development, it helped him to give direction
- Kamiya said Taura is particularly skilled at listening to feedback and negotiating
- Taura says he always saw the plans he directed to others through to the end because he genuinely enjoyed them
- Taura wasn’t planning on making the game particularly difficult, but Nintendo was
- this is why there were difficulty levels included
- post-production is neither Taura’s nor Kamiya’s favorite part of the directorial process
- pre-production started with Inaba Atsushi, PlatinumGames chief creative officer, asking Taura if he had any ideas
- Taura gave him a proposal, and they put together the basics of a medieval fantasy game in about one month
- the team size at that time was about three or four people
- the original idea was set in medieval Europe, with swords and magic
- Nintendo asked him to propose more ideas other than medieval European fantasy, and they went with sci-fi
- Taura, Naka Akiteru (game designer) and Kimura Hajime (art director) worked together to create the story, world and plot
- they worked with someone from Nintendo who was well-versed in creating good stories, too
- once they decided on the father working together with his twin children, they came up with plot points easily
- Astral Chain was not a dual action game originally, but a triple action game
- they ended up changing it early on because the controls became a little too confusing
- Kamiya was extremely impressed with the first prototype he saw and said it was unlike anything Platinum had ever made
- he was so surprised by the gameplay that he wondered what Taura’s mindset was that lead him to create this
- he looked at the proposal documents and felt like Taura had two different brains
- after changing to sci-fi, they thought about doing the character designs in-house
- Nintendo suggested getting an outside company to do the designs
- since Taura is a long-time fan of things like “ZETMAN”, he approached Katsura Masakazu
- Katsura came up with the main characters quickly, but took some time to come up with the Legion designs
- at this point in development, Legions were going to be monsters that appeared in the world that the player would catch
- after consulting with Nintendo regarding problems they were running into, they decided to change the idea
- they decided to focus on the quality of the action rather than the quantity, which lead to five different Legions
- Taura suggests fans check out the art book that comes in the collector’s edition to see how different Katsura’s sketches are
- Katsura’s female butt designs are popular with fans
- Kamiya says he would’ve put a good butt in the game whether Katsura designed one or not
- this is because it's Platinum’s destiny to show off a good butt
- Taura said they had planned to have the option to choose male/female from the beginning
- Taura likes games where you can choose and customize your characters
- Taura wanted both male and female singers for the main theme song
- Nintendo got in touch with avex (huge Jpop music label) and sent Taura several different samples
- it was an easy decision for him when he heard the sample with Aoyama William (from INTERSECTION) and Beverly
- Taura said it fit the style of the game perfectly
- there’s a featured song in the game that will have either male or female vocals based on the gender of character chosen
- even though they’re the same song, Taura thinks they have a different feel with the different vocalist
- there are currently no plans to release a standalone soundtrack, outside of the collector’s edition
- Kamiya aided in keeping gameplay diverse with things like investigations, field puzzles, and the motorcycle shooting scene
- Taura has always loved games with strong RPG elements, so he wanted to include these elements in Astral Chain
- all of the variations in gameplay fit the narrative of the main characters being police officers
- Taura and Kamiya talk that about 10 percent of development was Kamiya’s influence, the other 90 percent was Taura’s
- Kamiya said it’s hard to provide a trial and error environment for developers
- he says you need to make something really special nowadays in order for it to get attention
- Taura mentions how there aren’t many games that have done dual-action, so they had to experiment with what worked
- in the final game, Legions operate semi-auto because that’s what they found was the best balance
- in the beginning the player controlled them 100%, but as was mentioned, controls were too complex
- the team tried issuing commands to the Legions, but that didn’t come together as they had hoped.
- Kamiya mentioned how he’s had those kinds of times where he’s felt lost in the director’s seat
- the chain connecting the player and the Legion was originally included just because it looked cool
- Taura is really happy that fleshed it out, because it’s now so integral to the battle and narrative
- Platinum implemented the Unchained Mode because they want all kinds of players to get their hands on Astral Chain