Splatoon 2 team on busy dev cycle, Rank X, plus Octo Expansion difficulty, Agent 8 design, more

The Climactic Scene Once Again in Comic Form

Can you tell us about the design choices behind the male and female version of Agent 8?

Nogami: We really wanted to capture the aspects of a real, living octopus, such as the wriggling motion and the overall roundness. And we also wanted them to be different from the Inklings personality-wise. So while the Inklings are obviously fun-loving, the Octolings are more serious.

From the Octoling logo, art and music I get an eighties vibe.

Nogami: Because this is a story of the Octolings who have lost their memories and are setting out into this new, strange world, we wanted to reinforce this feeling of being out of place. We weren’t committed to the eighties, but we wanted to choose a forgotten generation. Because of that, the stations also have completely alien names. The aim was that, just as Agent 8 has no memories, the player will also have the feeling of something being forgotten. We thought this would make the player feel more immersed in the story. The way people see past generations is different, but we thought, for example, that even people who don’t really know what Game & Watch is can still get that feeling of nostalgia. That’s the sort of felling we wanted.

Yeah, there are people who find the Game & Watch nostalgic, but also those who feel that way about the Nintendo 64.

Nogami: Exactly. We thought it’d be great if we could create all those different feelings of nostalgia.

The ending of Splatoon’s Hero Mode was drawn as a comic by Mr. Inoue. Will this also be the case with the Octo Expansion?

Inoue: Yes, I’m drawing this one too. But this time it was more a case that Nogami gave me a text with what he wanted and I drew the pictures.

Nogami: When I was overseeing Salmon Run I jotted down all my wild ideas for the story and dialogue, then I handed it over to Inoue and said, please make this cooler. (Laughs)

Inoue: Last time I did the art with a brush, but this time everything was done on computer.

But it’s still amazing!

Inoue: Regardless of whether I can do it or not, I just draw what I want to draw, and then I think about 80% makes it into the final game. Even though there were already an additional 30 pages, due to the short development time, there were still things left I wanted to include.

It seems you’ve managed to keep the style consistent.

Inoue: There are lots of different ways to do that, but I think the most important thing is the layout of the columns on the page.

Amano: Because I think the gameplay and the story complement one another, we made the story while talking to the level designers. This time we were a little obsessed with numbers and there are 80 challenge stages and 8 individual story stages, making 88 in total. Also, whether it’s the final boss, an infiltration mission or obtaining an energy core, we tailored the accompanying dialogue.

Nogami: Because from the early stages onwards we always seemed to be coming back to the number eight, we showed off the game at Nintendo Direct, calling 2018 the ‘Year of the Octoling’.

Ah, so that’s why.

Nogami: We even decided the last battle would be XXXX (Omitted for spoilers). Meaning this was the battle Agent 8 was meant to fight from the beginning.

Wow, so there’s even that meaning in there too!

Amano: There are also battles where you get to paint over huge objects from the first game with ink.

Inoue: Almost like an anime version of Splatoon, the story diverges a little bit from the original, even though it still culminates in a battle with your nemesis. We created the game so that even players who are not familiar with the conclusion of the original could enjoy the expansion in its own right.

Nogami: I think an anime adaptation is the right way to describe it.