Wii U

After you decided on creating an open-world setting, what processes did you go through when deciding on the other factors?

After we decided on creating an open world, we needed to begin creating a world that can withstand various situations, so we focused on creating the base of the story. From there, we had several meetings about the story with not only the scriptwriters, Takeda-san and Hyodo-san, but also with Kojima-san and Yokota-san.

Takeda-san, so how did you receive the requests from Takahashi-san about writing the script?

For this game, a large amount of the plot was written beforehand by Takahashi-san, so I started off by reading that.

Come to think of it, Takahashi-san wrote a lot. I've worked with Takahashi-san for a long time, but this was the first time I've seen him write so much for a game's plot. It was as if he was writing a novel.

Yes, it was like reading a novel.

It was quite a read on its own, so I even suggested to Takahashi-san to get it published.

In other words, you put together a script using the pages and pages of plot written beforehand.

That's correct. I carefully picked out the stories that fit with the game's content and scale and turned them into scripts.

Originally, was Takeda-san the only one assigned as scriptwriter for this game?

Yes, however the volume of the work was too big for one person if you include things like the quests! (laughs)

I see.

I thought, "This workload requires two people, so I need to find someone I can trust," so I asked for Hyodo-san's help.

Hyodo-san, what was your first impression when you were asked to join this project?

Well, I usually work on anime productions...

So you work with visual production.

So, this was my first time being fully involved in a game production. When I was invited, the first thing the producer from Monolith Soft told me was that the job's requirement was to not run away from the project! (laughs)

(laughs)

I think they were joking at the time, but I had a strong feeling that I should never run away from this project if I accepted it.

You've done a great job completing the project, and not running away. (laughs)

To be honest, I never felt the need to run away, because the team was so appealing that I felt as if I wanted to work with them forever.

Why is that?

As mentioned earlier, I was really surprised about the staff's passion when they first told me that they were creating a whole planet. And once the work began, I wrote several quest scenarios. While writing these up, I asked the staff if I could create additional characters, and they responded with, "Make as many as you want." I was first a little startled with their response about letting me create new characters, but their passion convinced me that everything would work out fine.

I agree with you. When writing the script, we thought of places that would be great to include in the game for the story, and the staff rarely said "no" to adding it in.

In comparison to how it was with Xenoblade Chronicles and also other games in general, we did not have to be so restrictive about the places to appear in this game.

This was probably because the volume of this game was big enough to fit it all in. After all, this is the same staff that was determined to create a whole planet. (laughs)

Yes, so I felt that we were able to put an exceptional amount of time into figuring out how to make the story more interesting.

Thanks to that, I felt I was able to participate in a boundlessly creative project.

So that's why you "wanted to work with them forever." (laughs)

Yes. I wanted to ask them if there was anything else I could do for them! (laughs)

For the script, how did you divide the work up between yourselves?

In my case...well, this is something that Takahashi-san and I share, but I like middle-aged male characters.

You like middle-aged male characters? (laughs)

Yes. I like including middle-aged male characters who play heroic roles in the story! (laughs) However, the audience will probably want young women to take on important roles, too, so in that way I was glad to recruit Hyodo-san.

I see. So that's how you balanced it out.

(To Hyodo-san) Isn't that right?

Honestly, I'm not a specialist in creating young female characters. However, from the audience's perspective, I thought it would be nice to have more women with active roles in the story, so I put in a lot of effort writing their parts.

Instead of finding someone to just cover a part of the workload, I thought it would be great to find a person that can also compensate for my weaknesses, so that's another reason why I introduced Hyodo-san.

How long did it take to write out the scenarios?

If you include the quests, it took at least a year and a half.

This one took a really long time...longer than Xenoblade Chronicles.

Is that because the story is very long?

Actually, the main story might be shorter than Xenoblade Chronicles. However, the quest stories are matched up with the open-world game design, so there's more depth to the quests.

How much more depth did you put into the quests?

Let's see...maybe 3,000% more than the previous game?

3,000 percent?! That means 30 times more.

That's right. During the first stages of planning, we discussed increasing the number of quests by 3,000%. However, this took place before the development process, so in the end, we ended up creating a similar number of quests as in the previous game. But we did put 3,000% of our hearts into creating them...

So you're saying that the quests are much more condensed.

That's correct. It's very different from Xenoblade Chronicles. If based on the play time, I believe that players can enjoy the game five times longer if they try to complete everything.

In the last game, there were the players that loved the world so much that they replayed the game over and over again and never wanted the game to end. I believe there may be even more players that'll feel the same way about this game.

Yes. I hope the players will enjoy playing through every detail of this world, too.