Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode development details
The director and producer of Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode recently took part in interviews with Famitsu and Dengeki Online. Most of the discussion was devoted to development – why the 3DS was chosen, adding new items, appealing to a different audience, and more.
For a summary of what was shared during the interviews, read on below.
– Going with 3DS was simple
– PSP was chosen for the original game because it had a strong audience with Digimon fans
– Was a powerful system that had a big portion of children and parents
– By going to the 3DS, the producer and director hoped to attract new fans and exploit the system’s functions to make Re:Digitize more in-depth
– Dual screens are used to make choices such as in the training mini-games and to input during battle
– The new Digitter function is also displayed
– Originally planned to make a straight port
– Director and producer felt they were given a new opportunity, so they wanted to add as much content as time allowed
– They did so to the point that even they felt a “sequel” might fit better than just a port with “additional content”
– Everything that’s new was created after the PSP game had been released, so even they felt that they had pushed their limits
– Director and producer feel as though they were learning about Digimon and its material for the original PSS game
– For the 3DS version, they had already grown attached and were focused instead on making the game more “Digimon”
– “Decode” is originally “a program that decompressed data back into information”
– For 3DS, they used it to mean “to analyze a previous work and reconstruct it in a better incarnation”
– Decode also refers to the new Decode function of the main character
– This “reconstructs a Digimon’s soul [after death] and gives them stronger abilities”
– Digimon World Re:Digitize was for those who played the original PlayStation game
– Decode is to focus on an enormous increase of content, on fine-tuning what already existed based off player comments, and on making changes the developers had wanted to previously, but couldn’t fit into the PSP game either due to space or time restrictions
– Team also wanted to reach a wider audience
– Focus on high school students and higher, since “the majority of Digimon fans are now in their twenties”
– Character designer Suzuhito Yasuda was therefore asked to create catchier, more unique designs such that players could tell the approximate age and personality of the character just from a glance
– Ex: new character Rina Shinomiya was asked to be a “lively, active girl”
