Rodea: The Sky Soldier devs on how the game came to be, why it took so long
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii, Wii U | 2 Comments
By the time Rodea: The Sky Soldier hits store shelves in Japan, it will be about 3.5 years since the game was originally announced. So what took so long? Prope’s Yuji Naka, along with director Jin Hasegawa, commented on this and more at Kadokawa Games’ “Rodea: The Sky Experience Tour 2014 ~First~”. You can find a summary of what was shared below, courtesy of 4Gamer and Siliconera.
– The Rodea discussions began with “what thoughts went into the creation of Rodea?”
– Director Hasegawa always wanted to make a game where you can fly
– He’s dreamed about doing this since he was a kid
– Before making Rodea, Hasegawa had always been involved in the development of games with violence, so making an all-ages game is something he’s been wanting to do for a while
– These two thoughts prompted Hasegawa to meet up with Yuji Naka
– After they met, he felt like he might be able to make two of his wishes come true
– Naka says a sequel to NiGHTS was highly demanded around the world, but it was never made sort of for the same reason that Steven Spielberg never made a sequel to E.T
– Naka: “I didn’t want to do anything that could possibly take away from the good that was NiGHTS”
– Naka instead was doing research and development for a game that would allow you to fly around the skies more freely
– Making a game that lets you freely fry around in 360 degrees proved to be difficult, even with access to a gyro sensor-equipped controller
– Naka came across the Wii while going about his usual trial-and-errors for finding a way to make something work
– By using the Wii Remote, he felt that he might be able to make a new type of action game that would give you the freedom of flight in 360 degrees
– Naka now needed to get a game company to get on board with his project
– Naka crossed paths with Kadokawa Games when it was determined that the game could happen
– Development began, but opinions held by the developers at Prope clashed with those of the publishers
– Naka says out of the 9 years of existence since the establishment of Prope, they’ve never had as many arguments as they did while working on Rodea
– In the end everything worked out and both the publisher and developer were able to come to an agreement
– Naka still remembers all the trouble that went into the making of the game
