Project X Zone 2 producer on the story, characters talk
Siliconera caught up with Project X Zone 2 series producer Kensuke Tsukanaka at E3. The story and selection of certain characters were among the topics discussed.
We’ve posted a few of the interview excerpts below. For the full interview, head on over to Siliconera.
On the story…
Tsukanaka: When you compare the scenario and story of Project X Zone and Project X Zone 2, I think that the first title was much simpler. The game had a definite formula of people meeting, getting transported somewhere else, fighting a powerful enemy, and then repeating that process. Some fans weren’t so hot on that, and fans said they wanted to see more depth and complexity. Naturally, we’ve tried to move away from the simple patterns that haunted the last game. We added some more complexity to the story line, including making the player wonder who is going to join the team next, which we didn’t necessarily do in the previous title. The volume of the game, in addition to having more crossovers, actually made it a bit easier to develop a story.
On characters in this game that they really wanted to use, but didn’t get the chance to…
Tsukanaka: It’s hard to say, really. When we first select the characters, we think about a few things: equal representation from all of the publishers, but also making sense of the character choices in terms of story. I don’t feel we’ve shoe-horned anything in for the sake of fan-service (he chuckles here), everyone has some pull to the story and the roster reflects that. Some suggestions get shot down, but really the ones that wind up in the final game are characters whose worlds have some common ground. This is actually why some of the pairs got mixed around – originally, the pairs were assigned differently. When we were thinking about what we wanted to do with the story, we noticed that using the same pairs would limit what we could do drastically. In fact, it was after re-organizing the pairs that we saw the story unfold, and we used that freedom to make the title better.
On the inclusion of Kazuma and Goro from Yakuza Dead Souls…
Tsukanaka: They definitely came into the story as a result of looking at where the scenario would crossover. For example, and we haven’t officially announced anything like this yet, but Kazuma and Goro have some common ground with some of the characters from Resident Evil, don’t you think? Zombies are a key factor in those games, so maybe you’ll see some kind of collaboration or crossover between these two characters. You’ll be able to find out when you play it!
On how Summon Night’s Aty became a part of Project X Zone 2…
Tsukanaka: So with Aty, you know that she comes from a world that’s pretty heavily based in fantasy, right? Well, there are a couple of other characters in the game that come from a fantasy world—Yuri Lowell & Flynn Scifo—so she came into the picture because the categories of Summon Night and Tales of Vesperia overlapped. Another reason is that Summon Night is an important intellectual property of Bandai Namco’s.
On forming a move set for a character like Phoenix Wright, who hardly moves in the games he stars in…
Tsukanaka: Right now we’ve only released screenshots of Wright and Maya talking to other characters. You’ll get to see how he plays in a trailer we’ll be releasing soon, but just to give you peek, we designed his move set closely around how he moves and acted in the courtroom in Ace Attorney games. We’re going to reproduce some of his famous actions in battle, and I think big fans of the game will be really pleased with it.
