Splatoon 2 producer talks a ton about weapons, mobile app usage, graphics, HD Rumble, more

Will the weapon combinations be locked, like in the first game?

Main Weapons, Sub Weapons and Special Weapons all come as a set, but since we’ve reworked the Special Weapons, we’ll be revising the combinations.

I’ve also heard that there are new hair-styles and bottoms available.

The hair-styles and bottoms will be available to change, just like the skin color and eyes in the first game. They don’t affect your battle performance, they’re just extra ways to accent your style. On the other hand, headgear, clothing and shoes all have gear abilities.

Will there be more gear abilities too?

I can’t say anything about that yet, but there are adjustments being made.

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You said all of the weapons are being adjusted. What sort of guidelines are you following for those adjustments?

The most important aspect we’re taking a look at is what makes the weapons desirable to use. Whether it’s cool, or feels good to use, things like those are what we’re focusing on the most. I think people will want to use the Dualies because they look strong, but it would also be fine if they chose it because they think rolling is cool, or that it will feel nice to use. Of course, we’re making sure we adjust things like their performance as well, but the emphasis is on their desirability.

You’ve already shown the Dualies, but will there be even more new weapon types available?

I wonder… These things are still being researched, so I can’t say much about them, but even things that were announced here will probably be subject to change in the future.

I suppose that’s true. With the first game, there were big changes made to the stages and such between E3 2014 and the final release.

Indeed. We changed many things. We studied various things from the first game, and acquired a lot of know-how. So, we will be spending a lot of time playing this title, so that we can give fans the most balanced game we can.

Does Nintendo do a lot of internal testing?

All the time. Playing the game is the best way to check whether adjustments you’ve made to weapons and stages are balanced.

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The girls at the recent event were saying “If they’ve got this much ready, why don’t they just release it already!” (Laughs)

That’s what everyone said after E3 2014 as well. (Laughs) But most of the game still needed to be finished after that, and the same goes for this game too. (Dry laugh)

Two years passed in the real world, and two years passed in the squid world

Let’s turn to the setting of the game. It’s been established that two years have passed in the in-game world. There are much grander settings in foreign shooting games, so I think it’s a little uncommon to have such a down-to-earth game world.

I wanted to make it feel connected to the real world, where two years have passed since the first game. I mentioned this when the first game came out, but the younger Inklings are obsessed with the trendy cutting-edge Turf Wars. There’s a whole culture surrounding it with the gear and everything. I wanted the changes in these fads to parallel the changes in the players over these two years, so we set the game two years later.

The protagonist Inklings were around 14 years old in the first game, so now they’d be around 16…

The previous playable Inklings would be around 16 now, so the new 14 year old Inklings will step up to the plate. The playable Inklings will still be around 14.

There were a number of interesting shots shown in the second half of the announcement video… I’d like to know more about them, especially since the Octarians seem to be back.

Of course. We’re planning on bringing back Hero Mode, and of course, there will be villains. However, this is still under heavy investigation by the squid researchers. (Laughs)

And something that seems to be Judd’s child makes an appearance.

We don’t know for sure if it’s Judd’s child yet, but since they judge matches along with him, they may be related. We may find the answers to this someday, too.

We also saw the back of a character that looked like Marie. They seemed downcast, so I was wondering if maybe the Squid Sisters disbanded…

Callie will definitely appear as well. (Dry laugh) She was a little busy, so she didn’t show up in the video. I hope you look forward to finding out she was up to.

I also found it interesting that Crusty Sean showed up with a food stand.

Oh! Good job spotting such a small detail. (Laughs) I wanted to have characters like him show up in this game too, but since we’ve changed the location from Inkopolis Plaza to Inkopolis Square, their roles have also been changed. For example, Crusty Sean worked as the manager of a shoe store in the first game, and now he’s running his own independent shop.

He’s not selling shoes there, is he? (Laughs)

It’s probably just a normal food cart. (Laughs) We’ve changed the roles of the characters around a bit, like with him.

So players can have fun trying to spot all of these changes.

I hope that everyone will enjoy finding out how the squid world changed after two years. We’ve made the kind of changes that would happen during a two year gap in the real world, to try to make the squid world feel more real. This way, players may feel like the IP is growing along with them. […]

Moving on, I’d like to hear about how the game controls. Are all of the controllers types supported?

Yes, we’re making it possible to play the game using all available controllers. The Joy-Con are bundled with the system, so it’s possible to play only using them. But the standard for Splatoon 2 will be docking the Joy-Con inside the grip to play. There’s also the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. It’s sold separately, but it’s very nice to play with, so I’m thinking about recommending it to Splatoon 2 players. And of course, you can play it in portable mode as well.

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I get the impression that the Super Jump is something that’s changed the most in this game.

Right. We’d like to have it work similar to the previous game, where you would have to look between the map on the GamePad screen and your character on the TV. We’re considering having players be able to press the X button to switch to a map screen, where they can then select a teammate to jump to, like before.

If we get good at it, will we be able to jump to our teammates instantly?

I think you would be able to do it faster than the previous game, in that case. Each of your teammates, as well as the starting point, are assigned their own button, you see. We’ve also made the upper part of screen display what weapons your allies and enemies are using too. So, if you want to jump to someone with a Charger, all you have to do is press the corresponding direction button and you’re on your way.