Square Enix on Bravely Second – player feedback, character designs, job classes, future

With Bravely Second having just launched in North America, Game Informer spoke with co-producer at Square Enix Masashi Takahashi for an interview. The two sides chatted about player feedback, the new approach to character designs with this game, how the job classes are decided, and the series’ future.

You can find comments from Takahashi about all of these comments below. Head on to Game Informer here for the full interview.

On player feedback…

We put together a survey to collect user opinions on 100 proposed improvements. Despite the sheer number of questions, a great many players took the time to answer. In the end, we were proud to implement 80 of these improvements (with seven proving too difficult to address, and another 13 deemed better as is). They were reflected for the international release of Bravely Default, and now in Bravely Second. They range from extremely fine details, like skippable logos when starting the game, to now-standard features, like the auto-advance mode for cutscenes.

On how the characters look more proportionate this time around…

I’m so happy you noticed the difference! Compared to the original Bravely Default, we made a point of making the characters more life-sized this time around. One part of it was, of course, that we wanted to portray the characters as a bit more adult given the time that had passed since the first game. More than anything, though, it was influenced by Magnolia, one of our new characters. Being the more mature young lady she is, her proportions just grew naturally during the design process, and we ended up adjusting the proportions of all the playable characters to match. Despite being a relatively minor change, it allowed us to add even more density and creativity to the costumes, which bring so much color to the job system. In that sense, we think we were able to find the perfect fit for the Bravely series.

On how the team decided on the job classes…

There are two parts to the process: first we come up with the job itself, then we create a character for it. With the jobs themselves, there was a sense that we had pretty much exhausted all the traditional RPG jobs in the original Bravely Default. Any new jobs would have to be usefuWhl and powerful, or we’d run the risk of players ignoring them. So we focused on coming up with jobs that players would be excited to use and combine with existing jobs, and thought up the names and abilities accordingly.

For the asterisk holders (job bosses), we wanted to bring out the interpersonal drama between the characters, so we put them in pairs. You have the lord and servant relationship of Bella and Cú Chulainn, the lovers Aimee and Angelo, and so forth. As for what they’re like, you’ll just have to play the game and get to know them for yourself! Like the first game, we recruited a team of talented illustrators from outside the company to give these characters unique visual appearances to match their personalities.

On the possibility of taking the Bravely series to future hardware…

Unfortunately, I can’t make any official promises, but Bravely Default was the first RPG I worked on since joining Square Enix, and the series has grown very near and dear to my heart. Personally speaking, I’d love to see it happen. I’d also like to offer my heartfelt thanks to all of you around the world who have played and loved the Bravely series. For me, there is no greater happiness than to be able to join with you to make the world of games even more fun.