Sakurai reveals the process of making the gameplay segments of the Smash Bros. reveal trailers
In his previous Famitsu column, Super Smash Bros. director delved into the creation of the series’ character reveal trailers when it comes to CG. But as we know, these videos also include gameplay segments. Sakurai explained how those sections are made in his latest column, which is much more involved that one would initially think.
Here’s our full translation of the column:
Last time I talked about the CG sections of the introduction movies, but this time around let’s talk about the in-game engine parts! These are built with the game’s standard graphics as their base. As the new challenger videos are built with still-in-development images, whenever there is a new release pretty much the whole team goes into a rush mode. There’s all the modelling, the motion, the stage, the effects, the music and sound effects, and in some cases even the UI. There are even sometimes things that don’t seem related, like balancing issues. Given that we’re still mid-development, we can afford some concessions, but we can’t have it giving off that half-finished vibe, so we have to make it look as close to perfect as possible. As a general rule the image capturing is done internally, but there are times when other teams such as Mario Club may help us out with certain parts.
Unlike the CG sections, here we don’t set out any detailed plot. The image capturing team just keep trying things out and choosing the bits that work best. But there is a kind of rule of thumb they have adhered to since the early days. For example, the first cut will always include a close-up of the character’s four Smash Attacks, and the first shot of the new stage will always be a long shot. Aside from that, we always include a couple of comical elements. Then the last cut is always the character’s Ultimate. The team has a lot of combined experience, and over time they have gotten used to making videos this way. Afterwards we match this part up with the CG part and also the sync the music, before changing anything that needs to be altered. It then becomes pretty much a daily process of passing back and forth to add polish. Discussions are often very clear and progress well. But there are times when another team’s work is not quite up to scratch and we have to redo it all.
Even when the CG and game engine sections are complete there’s still more to do. The next stage is altering the sounds effects, including the ones in the CG part. If any of the other sections progresses slower than expected, this is the stage that suffers the most. For example, if any of the character movement or effects were to change, then the sound effects would no longer match up. I’m someone who is quite concerned with the matching of the music with each cut. Even in the original Kirby game the intro section of a song and the intro of a stage always matched, and the dances always synced up with the music too…so I think matching these up can have a big impact.
Whenever we release a character introduction movie the response is always extremely positive. The CG movies in particular though require a huge investment. In reality, even if we didn’t release any new CG movies for the DLC characters at all, we’d still be pushing it. We are already way over the budget and, for me in particular, the huge increase in video work means my schedule is really tight. And with DLC we always have to think about the regularity of the release. But then when I see the support for the character and the unique sense of collaboration the video brings, I can see the value and indispensable nature of those videos for the player. I think the reason these videos work is because of the series history and background that comes along with each character. For example, when you see Hero, all the other aspects of Dragon Quest come packaged with him. And the reason there was such a great reception for Banjo and Kazooie was because of all those elements of depth in the original series. I’m very grateful we’ve been given the chance to handle these characters and, as long as there is the opportunity, I’d like to continue these collaborations in future.
Translation by provided by Corks on behalf of Nintendo Everything
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