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Platinum talks Astral Chain's development, trial and error, working with Nintendo, game difficulty, and more

Another huge rundown of info
by rawmeatcowboy
14 September 2019
GN Version 5.0

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

[Link]