Astral Chain devs on original plan for Legions, protagonists weren’t always twins, more
-Do you show your wife a lot of your work?
K: I do. And she’ll give me all kinds of feedback from “mmm, kinda lame” to “hey, I like it”. If there’s something that really bothers her I might fix it, but I fight back sometimes too (laughs).
-I think it’s apparent that the game was heavily influenced by Katsura-san’s art. How did you come around to inviting him on the project in the first place?
T: In my first and second years of high school I was really into ZETMAN. From there I started going back to his earlier titles. SHADOW LADY, D・N・A2, etc. I didn’t have the chance to experience them when they came out, so I just started with ZETMAN and backtracked from there. I was born in 1985, the same year that they serialized Vander (another manga by Katsura).
K: Don’t make me feel too old (laughs).
T: This game takes place in a sci-fi world with a police force as the main characters, but the original design documents were completely the opposite: a magical, medieval fantasy world. Nintendo stepped in and told us that the genre had been done many times before, and it lacked the hook this title needed. So we explored a lot of new ideas, and ended up with sci-fi. And the switch to sci-fi ended up being heavily influenced by ZETMAN, so I asked if we could have Katsura-san do the character design. I never expected him to accept, I mean, he’s like a legend to me. Just sitting next to him makes me tremble a little (laughs). But I remembered that he had done some Bayonetta art in the past, so I thought it might just be worth a shot.*
K: I don’t know if I’d say I’m a legend (laughs). I remember drawing Bayonetta. I remember thinking it must be hard to make so many little trinkets on a game character.
T: All you need to do is make it once. With manga or anime, you have to redraw every detail over and over again, but with a game, you just need to make it once, so you can really go overboard with the details.
K: The guns, the accessories, I just remember there was so much stuff. I would never do that with manga, giving a character so many decorations and clothes. But since it was just concepts, I could have fun with it.
T: On the game’s package we see the protagonists in their full gear, but Katsura-san did other versions with the armor off, and more. I wanted these to be implemented in game, so we’ve made the player’s outfit very customizable. You can wear just a collared shirt if you want; we’ve kept the designs just as they came in from Katsura-san.
K: Rather than just simply making designs, it was fun to visualize the character wearing different equipment over their uniform. How should I draw the collar so that it’s just visible underneath their armor? I thought it’d be easiest to answer that question if I went into full detail in my designs to convey that.
T: Breaking things down for us was definitely a big help, and everything we received we thought “well, this all has to go in” (laughs). Of course, all I have to do is give directions, for the 3D modelers who have to do the actual dirty work, (creating all the different variations) made them throw their hands up in the air a few times. But they enjoyed the work (laughs). I really appreciate the concepts from Katsura-san and all the work done by our development team.
K: I was told that the police will wear armor when in battle, so I thought I’d need to make their standard uniform pretty basic. I didn’t receive any instructions to do the regular uniform, but I thought there would be less complications later if I just went ahead and drew it. And I drew three different types of helmets understanding they might not be used at all.
T: We used all of the different helmet patterns though. We wanted there to be a lot of police but we couldn’t make faces for all of them, so we just had them wear the helmets to cover their face and, no problem (laughs). It’s a common game development tactic.
K: Good, I was kind of hoping they would be used that way when designing them. All they’d need to do is change the chin and they could pretty much get infinite reuse out of them. I like how they kind of look like masked heroes from the front, but it looks more like a gasmask from the side.
T: He would understand these were for models that would need to move and would write notes like “this part of the helmet is made of soft material”. It’s actually not that common to find a character designer that will think on that level for you, and that’s led to problems more than once before. That was just one reason that made working with Katsura-san so easy, and made me realize the difference of working with a real seasoned pro.
– (To Taura) Who would you consider your favorite character?
T: I like every character but, if I had to choose I’d pick Yoseph. The way Katsura-san draws an older man, there’s just always something hidden deep in their expression that I can’t get enough of. I really like the design of his coat too.
K: You have to picture what kind of brands would be popular in this world. What shop do the police buy their supplies from? These are the kinds of questions I would ask myself while drawing. That’s why all the characters associated with the police have this kind of cog-like emblem on their clothing. All you have to do is create a little keyword like that, and you can’t use it on anyone it doesn’t belong with, but you can use it to group characters of the same background, so it really feels like they’re all getting their clothes at the same place.
T: I really appreciated how you designed the characters to make them feel they’re a part of the same world, even without us asking.
K: That’s the fun thing about character design, thinking up all the details. If the enemies are wearing clothes that look just like the police, isn’t that kind of a downer? They’re supposed to be opposing sides of beings from another world. It doesn’t feel right to put them in clothes that have the same look and feel. If it’s someone from another world, I think they deserve to be given otherworldly clothes. That’s why on ZETMAN I did the design for all the heroes and let my friend do all the enemy designs. That naturally made both sides feel different. After that it’s just thinking about what the trends of this world might be at this time period and designing things out.
-Have you seen any footage of the game so far?
K: The world was so much more detailed than I’d expected, it looked great. I’m just a little worried that I’ll be able to properly handle the Legion when I play. How do you switch? Attacking with the Legion vs. attacking with your character. You have to switch them out, right?
T: Basically the two are controlled by the ZL and ZR buttons. The Legion gets the left side whereas the player character gets the right side. So really all you have to do is press those two buttons and you’ll be able to pull of some pretty cool combos. If you want to go beyond that, you can use buttons to switch out Legions too.
K: Just a matter of practice, huh.
-Taura-san, what do you think you wanted to achieve on this project more than anything?
T: My key motivation for the project was to create an action game where you controlled two characters connected by a chain. There are games besides this one that feature battles with multiple characters at a time, but I wanted to throw a chain into the mix and create mechanics like tying up enemies with it, so that’s what I did. I think that being able to control characters that Katsura-san himself designed should be a big push for this game too. He’s been doing art for decades, so he has fans older than me, and fans younger than me. I’m very grateful that we’ve been able to attract a lot of people to the title through his work.
-Wrapping things up, Katsura-san, do you have anything to say for everyone reading this blog?
K: I know it sounds like a sales pitch, but I really did give this project my best and had a lot of fun with it, so I hope that you’ll consider buying the Collector’s Edition so you can see all of the artwork in full detail. Thank you!
