ARMS producer on Twintelle, lack of a single-player campaign, comic, and Smash Bros.
Following his presentation at GDC last week, Polygon was able to interview ARMS producer Kosuke Yabuki. Yabuki was asked about a variety of topics, including the lack of a single-player campaign and the possibly of having the IP represented in Smash Bros.
We’ve rounded up some of Yabuki’s comments below. For the full feature, visit Polygon’s article here.
On designing Twintelle…
“On the other hand, one character that maybe took a bit more time and we were more worried about was Twintelle. The starting point for that, the initial concept was just ‘someone who fights with their hair.’ Ninjara was a very straightforward character for us to make, but Twintelle came out of a desire to purposely do something different… We didn’t want to just make a character that had a very Japanese background, we talked to people in Nintendo of America and Europe, people from different regions, to create this character who would have a different background.”
On whether Yabuki regrets the lack of cut-scenes/story/single-player campaign…
“I think there are lots of reasons [for not making a single-player campaign], but the thing I would say is, rather than single-player I think where we wanted to … focus on balance and making more characters. It was really just a question of focus. I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to make an excuse, but it’s more of a question of making sure the competitive aspect of the gameplay, that core of the game, was really, really solid. I could say there are lots of things we could do with unlimited time and unlimited resources, but for a competitive fighting game, the idea of creating these big single-player stages, the kind of thing you might do in Splatoon, just didn’t really fit this type of gameplay to me.”
On the ARMS comic…
“This is something I think we’ve seen work with other games before; in Japan, they have Splatoon comics. But in terms of what’s different [for the Arms comic], when we were kids, we were kind of into American superhero comics. We thought those were really cool. There’s lot of manga creators in Japan. It would’ve been a lot easier to just go that route, but because we wanted to make something different we decided we would ask an American creator. My hope is that people in America will see the comic and get more interested in these characters and want to check out the game. Even for people in Japan and Europe, having an American comic artist creating a comic for a Nintendo property will seem really fresh to people and give them a new perspective on the property.”
On whether ARMS will be represented in Smash Bros…
“I think the correct reaction is to say ‘I can’t answer that!’ Another thing I’d say is that Arms is so young — it’s only a year old — that maybe it’s too early to think about that. But I think it’s absolutely fantastic that there are people out there talking about Arms characters in that way.”
