Iwata Asks: Dragon Quest X details (part 2)
Nintendo has published the second portion of the Dragon Quest X Iwata Asks discussion. Satoru Iwata, designer Yuji Horii, producer Yousuke Saito, and director Jin Fujisawa discussed the game’s online/offline components.
While the interview is only available in Japanese, a short summary of the talk can be found below.
– Beginning of the game is played offline
– Eventually forced to go online to continue play
– Fujisawa says that having to make the game’s local component took much of the development staff’s time and energy
– Hori repeatedly suggested that they make the offline component simpler
– Fujisawa and his staff felt that as the offline component had an important role in introducing players to the game
– Making the offline component took awhile because the game’s specifications were made with online in mind
– During online play, the servers and client (the Wii) split some of the processing work
– Wii handle’s the server load for offline play
– This caused some slowdown issues initially
– Staff was able to clean up the offline code so much that it moves even smoother than the online code
