who has time for a 70 hour game?
PlayStation Trails Of Cold Steel III Coming October 22 2019
- Thread starter cm2
- Start date
Well you spent 90 hours in DQ 11, when there's a will there's a way! lol
and there's still the second game, Ao no kiseki...
Some of Cold Steel III's VA comments from the anime expo 2019 panel:
Erica: "Vita is a very sweet person and she is absolutely what you see is what you get."
Carrie's description is 100% Sara.
Sean: "I like how you say that Sara makes you 'give it a shot.' But I feel like she'd actually say 'If you want to learn something, give ME a shot.'"
Sean also says Rean's speeches are so long, that Goku and Frieza's fight was shorter.
Sean's description of how DENSE Rean is made Michelle laugh is hard she couldn't talk afterwards. But she loves Millium thinking of how happy and witty and cheeky attitude. Millium reminds her of when she was younger.
Edward is talking about how he's nothing like Machias. And that he didn't like the antiquated views of women but he loves how Machias grows over it.
Erica is talking about about how she loves Max Mittleman playing McBurn and she can't believe how sexy Max sounds with the character. So her favorite is his "let's see how hot you can make me."
Jonah is talking about researching Randy and being surprised at a particular S-Craft from the Crossbell arc.
Erica: "Vita is a very sweet person and she is absolutely what you see is what you get."
Carrie's description is 100% Sara.
Sean: "I like how you say that Sara makes you 'give it a shot.' But I feel like she'd actually say 'If you want to learn something, give ME a shot.'"
Sean also says Rean's speeches are so long, that Goku and Frieza's fight was shorter.
Sean's description of how DENSE Rean is made Michelle laugh is hard she couldn't talk afterwards. But she loves Millium thinking of how happy and witty and cheeky attitude. Millium reminds her of when she was younger.
Edward is talking about how he's nothing like Machias. And that he didn't like the antiquated views of women but he loves how Machias grows over it.
Erica is talking about about how she loves Max Mittleman playing McBurn and she can't believe how sexy Max sounds with the character. So her favorite is his "let's see how hot you can make me."
Jonah is talking about researching Randy and being surprised at a particular S-Craft from the Crossbell arc.
Just read another Kondo San Interview, from tech-gaming:
For nearly forty years, Nihon Falcom has crafted a steady succession of enjoyable, consistently charming and wonderfully melodious role-playing and action role-playing games. In anticipation of the release of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, we had the opportunity to speak with Falcom’s president, Mr. Toshihiro Kondo on their formula for enduring success, the tension between creativity and commerce, and of course, the rich legacy cultivated by the company’s titles. What follows is part one of a two-part interview conducted before Anime Expo:
Tech-Gaming: Recently Nihon Falcom celebrated their 38th anniversary, which is quite a feat of longevity. What do you feel are some of the design philosophies that have contributed to the company’s endurance?
Toshihiro Kondo: From a design standpoint, we make would be considered as traditional games. But the truth is, we also put a lot of time, care, and effort to ensure the quality of these games, and that generally gets recognized by the players. You were kind enough to say that we have a lot of passionate fans over here in the West and in the same way we have these passionate fans in Japan. And we’ve heard of people who might have stopped playing video games, it’s not uncommon for them to want to pick up and play Falcon games as they come out. So again, that that care that goes into each and every game that we make is one of the secrets of our success and longevity.
T-G: Not long ago, I met with a team from HAL Laboratories, a developer that’s roughly the same age as Falcom. I was a bit surprised by the dedication to research, the time spent studying older titles and thinking about how to modernize some of their game mechanics. Can you talk about your company’s approach to honoring older properties?
TK: What you said right now about HAL laboratories really resonates with me. For our studio, just about everybody who joins, particularly on the development side, are really big fans of past properties, especially, Ys and the Trails series. These games mean a lot to us. And when we have meetings it’s not uncommon for the conversation to shift to what happened in the past, thinking about what we did in this game and what happened in that game. We’ll discuss things like where a treasure chest is placed, how the animations or the story parts play out, or even how information is given to the player. We consider our older games our textbook and our Bible, and that’s how we develop the games currently in the series.
T-G: Let’s talk about the Falcom’s output, which includes continuations of popular franchises like the Tales series, the occasional remake like Brandish: The Dark Revenant, and original titles like Tokyo Xanadu. Can you take us behind the scenes and discuss how the team determines their next project?
TK: One of these things you must remember about older games is that, while they might be lacking in things like graphics, they were very rich in ideas. Falcom, is not a large-scale company; we don’t have a ton of people. We don’t have the ability to be able to put so much energy into graphics and things like that. So, for us ideas are still very important, especially interesting ones. In game design, the idea part is often lacking, and developers can get a bit lazy when it comes to that area. I’d like to think that Falcon doesn’t skip out on this, we don’t try to hide weaknesses with graphics or things like that. We really want to get to get to the heart of what makes games enjoyable.
For titles that are continuations of series, those are kind of a given, if they’re well received. We basically just look at what was done in the past and then iterate and build off that for newer titles. You mentioned Tokyo Xanadu, which is a good example of how we looked at our past; games we’ve worked on before. We try to use that accumulated knowledge and put it to use for it for new things like capturing Tokyo’s energy. The Trails series is very narratively-focused, and we took what we what we learned from writing stories on the Trails series and put it in there. On the gameplay side, the action element is obviously from the Ys games.
The next challenge is figuring out what new things we’re going to do here; what are we going to try? So, someone said, we’ve never made a game set in a modern setting. That idea is fine and well, but what’s going to make it a Falcom game? What’s going to differentiate it from other modern games. You have things like Persona out there. So, we ask, “What can we bring to the table?” The planner had an idea, stating, “we have this Xanadu series”, which is this classic action RPG that we’ve made. Then you have Tokyo, and we’ve never really done anything with Tokyo. In this instance, the title of the game came first. That was the core concept, and the rest of the ideas fell into place.
Another example, this is a little bit older, the team has a graphical tool program and our artist was kind of playing around one day. He had a house on a fairly blank field and then put some basic lighting effects and added a character, and had that character walk behind (the house). Then one of the programmers asked, “Well, what can we do with this?” And just from those two people playing around that became Zwei. At that point the game was worked on by a fairly new employee, Makoto Shinkai, who because famous for (anime films such as) 5 Centimeters Per Second and Your Name. So that’s another way we have come with game ideas.
T-G: Profitability and creative expression are often viewed as oppositional tensions in art. How much does this factor into the company’s decision when tacking a new title?
TK: To begin with, a lot of the staff doesn’t necessarily think of the games as ‘products’. Falcon is an accumulation of people who want to make videogames. If you create games that don’t sell, or they don’t go to market, or they don’t even have a market, then of course you can’t keep doing that. There’s this understanding that you need to bring players something of value that they’re going to enjoy so much that they’re going to pay money, permitting the cycle to continue, and we can keep making games. Keeping this balance has allowed us to create games that have been liked over the years.
T-G: Perhaps, you can give us a figurative look inside the office. How big is the size of the company? How many different teams (or lines) are there? What’s in like to work there?
TK: The answer to the first question is 62 employees, with 50 of the staff working directly on development. As you can see, most of the company had a hand in development. As for lines, you could say there are three or four development lines, but one of the characteristics of our development is that we begin with very small core teams. We’re talking three to four members maybe. From there as the project ramps up and more details get decided the team will increase in size towards the finish line.
Another way to think about it is that you have for each project you have these core members that are there from start to finish and then you have people who will come in later on as things get more developed and fleshed out. As for office atmosphere, one thing that we’re often told is that our office is very clean and well taking care of and it’s also very quiet.
It’s so quiet that we’ve actually been told by new members to the company that they’re almost afraid to get up to use the rest because they don’t want to disturb the peace. Obviously, when there are meetings and things like that it gets a bit more lively. But when people from outside who come in they’re really impressed that it’s so quiet. So, we probably don’t even recognize it at this point, because that’s the environment we’re used to, but for employees of companies it’s quite a surprise. Another thing that is really surprising for people who I come to visit is that everybody wears suits including development stuff. Nobody wears (less formal) “outside clothing” as it were. At this point in game development, we’re probably the last company in Japan to do this, so sometimes we might look strange or mysterious (laughs).
Tech-Gaming: When a game is released, critics and consumers typically have a lot of say. How much of that is heeded and used for Falcom’s future designs, especially with sequels?
TK: We generally look at feedback for things that we ourselves may have noticed. Let me give you two examples, which are both from the Trails series. One is that things like movement had a tendency to be a little bit slow, so we implemented a “high speed mode” which is something that’s exactly like it sounds, you press a button, and everything moves much quicker, speeding up the pace of things.
The second was that combat was also kind of criticized for not being active enough. So, we took that into consideration as well, which you’ll see soon with Cold Steel 3. Battle is much more dynamic and speeder. On the other hand, we also receive feedback like, “Well, I don’t really care for this character”. We look at those things too, but honestly speaking, that ends up being a matter of personal preference to the player and we can’t really make a game dictated on what some people may or may not like. With things like that, we look at it, we consider it, but at the end of the day, especially when it comes to story or character, we going to make the kind games that we want to make.
T-G: Currently, many role-playing games sell just as well in the West as they do in Japan. Has this had any influence on your output?
TK: Well, we are Japanese developers and we develop from a Japanese perspective and a Japanese point of view. Honestly, sometimes we don’t quite understand the feedback we receive from Western fans. Let me give you an example from the Trails series. We often get requests to turn the series into an open-world style game. That’s something we can’t wrap our minds around because these games are so story focused. Events need to be seen in a certain order to get that emotional payoff that we want people to have. You wouldn’t be able to do this with those kind of things with an open-world style. With things like that we really just shrug our shoulders because we don’t know how to handle it.
On the other hand, when we received feedback on combat being slow, that was quite helpful. When feedback is related to the system it’s much easier to understand and ultimately to address. And that’s what we have actually done.
Another thing is character ages. This is actually something that we hear from quite a lot. Generally speaking, the ages of Japanese characters tend to skew a bit younger whereas people in the West kind of prefer older characters. It could be because I am getting older, but that’s something I am beginning to understand more. And since our games are well received in Japan, why don’t we consider making characters that are a bit older now? It’s exactly like you said, sales figures are increasing in the West. And honestly not just in the West but also across Asia. Our fanbase is growing to the point that you can’t ignore those voices. And who’s to say what will happen in 5 or 10 years from now, particularly with the way the Japanese market is trending. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, we’ll be making games predominantly for the West rather than now, where they’re made predominantly for Japan.
T-G: Often it takes months and sometimes years to localize a game for different territories? Has Falcom taken any steps to help reduce this interval?
TK: These are things that we are considering as we go forward in game development. To give you a little bit of background to why this is, well most of our games have an absolutely huge amount of text. I also think that in general, we develop games on a pretty quick turnaround time. The amount of time we actually have for development is on the shorter side, and therefore it’s not uncommon for us to be changing numerous things, as we get into the later stages of development. For those reasons we actually have a policy of not talking about localization or project partners, until the game is completed. Things are in such flux during development, so we don’t want to offer something that might end up changing later on.
In the past for Cold Steel I and II, we actually had a simultaneous release with Asia. But the truth is that the ones who localized it were Sony, actually. We had a ton of changes right up until the very end. It put a lot of pressure and stress on their localization teams, at least the people they were using for localization. If anybody knows anybody who can handle that, and wants to do publishing, we’d love to meet them. But by and large, we don’t like to put people through that. (laughs). After that, Sony never approached us for a simultaneous release. So that was something we need to work on.
To give you another example, with Tokyo Xanadu, the development time was only about a year. Within that, the first two and a half months or so was devoted to creating the scenario. But sure enough, as we developed the game, as we implemented different systems, we had to change a lot in regard to the [game’s] scenario. And that’s just not really tenable when working with a partner. So again, it is something that we need to address in the future but that’s the reality of how we develop games right now.
T-G: Let’s talk about role-playing games, a genre that that the team understands quite well. Naturally, they’re a synthesis of different elements, combining things like story, characterization, and battle mechanics. But if you had to choose the most important component what would it be?
TK: You know the thing about RPGs, even within these sub-genre of RPGs you can compartmentalize that even further into different types of role-playing games. I’d have to say that every game needs something different. So, I can’t point to one specific element that’s going to apply in every case when making a game. For example, I can tell you within our two flagship series, looking at the Trails series, it’s obviously the story. We believe that the players are there for the characters and the story. As such, we focus on those most of all to make a really good story with great characters. And actually, that story does come first and then informs different elements of the gameplay, in terms of combat, and the setting, and things like that.
Now on the other hand you take a series like Ys and it’s actually the exact opposite. The most important things for Ys is the responsiveness of combat; how combat feels, movement, and things like that. Therefore, we take that opposite approach. We think about the systems that we want to incorporate in a new Ys title, particularly, asking what kinds of things Adol will be doing from a gameplay perspective. And that informs what we’ll be doing for the setting and the location in the story.
But if I had to choose a single element, I’d say it’s more from a game design perspective. You know we are making players do lots of things, and often, overcome difficulties in that pursuit. Whether there’s a story payoff for some kind of gameplay path or something else, the thing is you need to give players a goal. Internally we call them, “treats”. For example, let’s say you have a large city in a Trails game. You’ve got a big map and you’ve got say, a distant back alley that’s part of the map. You have to give the player some kind of reward or a payoff for going back there, whether that be a treasure box or maybe some NPC standing there with an interesting story to tell. What we always tell our game designers is that you need to give the player a sense of reward. So, creating the game, thinking about how the player might respond in a given situation or where they might go on a map and having a payoff for every part of that is a very important element of game design. That doesn’t matter whether it’s the Trails or whether that’s Ys, it’s something for all our games.
T-G: While the game industry and its output are gradually maturing, it often seems that games might not have the respect given to other mediums, like literature or film. Yet, the quality and quantity of dialogue across the Kiseki series is excellent, rivaling the best works in other mediums in both quantity and quality. How can games garner more respect?
T-K: What I’d like to think is that when someone comes to the end of their life and they’re looking back on things, being able to say we made a really great game is what the goal would be. Every creator is going to have a different approach for how to reach that goal, but the truth of the matter is that so many games come out. When you look at something like smartphone games, I mean I doubt that anyone at the end of their life is going to say, “that was a great smartphone game”.
In order to get that respect, perhaps creators need to make something that will stand the test of time. That someone, at the end of their days, when they’re looking back at the cool things that they experienced, might be able to say, “that was gratifying”. Of course, it kind of depends on the game and everyone might think separately. And again, for say, the Trails series, it might be a story that resonated within you. For the Ys series, it might be the recollection of “that game was great. I remember how I felt when I played it”.
For nearly forty years, Nihon Falcom has crafted a steady succession of enjoyable, consistently charming and wonderfully melodious role-playing and action role-playing games. In anticipation of the release of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, we had the opportunity to speak with Falcom’s president, Mr. Toshihiro Kondo on their formula for enduring success, the tension between creativity and commerce, and of course, the rich legacy cultivated by the company’s titles. What follows is part one of a two-part interview conducted before Anime Expo:
Tech-Gaming: Recently Nihon Falcom celebrated their 38th anniversary, which is quite a feat of longevity. What do you feel are some of the design philosophies that have contributed to the company’s endurance?
Toshihiro Kondo: From a design standpoint, we make would be considered as traditional games. But the truth is, we also put a lot of time, care, and effort to ensure the quality of these games, and that generally gets recognized by the players. You were kind enough to say that we have a lot of passionate fans over here in the West and in the same way we have these passionate fans in Japan. And we’ve heard of people who might have stopped playing video games, it’s not uncommon for them to want to pick up and play Falcon games as they come out. So again, that that care that goes into each and every game that we make is one of the secrets of our success and longevity.
T-G: Not long ago, I met with a team from HAL Laboratories, a developer that’s roughly the same age as Falcom. I was a bit surprised by the dedication to research, the time spent studying older titles and thinking about how to modernize some of their game mechanics. Can you talk about your company’s approach to honoring older properties?
TK: What you said right now about HAL laboratories really resonates with me. For our studio, just about everybody who joins, particularly on the development side, are really big fans of past properties, especially, Ys and the Trails series. These games mean a lot to us. And when we have meetings it’s not uncommon for the conversation to shift to what happened in the past, thinking about what we did in this game and what happened in that game. We’ll discuss things like where a treasure chest is placed, how the animations or the story parts play out, or even how information is given to the player. We consider our older games our textbook and our Bible, and that’s how we develop the games currently in the series.
T-G: Let’s talk about the Falcom’s output, which includes continuations of popular franchises like the Tales series, the occasional remake like Brandish: The Dark Revenant, and original titles like Tokyo Xanadu. Can you take us behind the scenes and discuss how the team determines their next project?
TK: One of these things you must remember about older games is that, while they might be lacking in things like graphics, they were very rich in ideas. Falcom, is not a large-scale company; we don’t have a ton of people. We don’t have the ability to be able to put so much energy into graphics and things like that. So, for us ideas are still very important, especially interesting ones. In game design, the idea part is often lacking, and developers can get a bit lazy when it comes to that area. I’d like to think that Falcon doesn’t skip out on this, we don’t try to hide weaknesses with graphics or things like that. We really want to get to get to the heart of what makes games enjoyable.
For titles that are continuations of series, those are kind of a given, if they’re well received. We basically just look at what was done in the past and then iterate and build off that for newer titles. You mentioned Tokyo Xanadu, which is a good example of how we looked at our past; games we’ve worked on before. We try to use that accumulated knowledge and put it to use for it for new things like capturing Tokyo’s energy. The Trails series is very narratively-focused, and we took what we what we learned from writing stories on the Trails series and put it in there. On the gameplay side, the action element is obviously from the Ys games.
The next challenge is figuring out what new things we’re going to do here; what are we going to try? So, someone said, we’ve never made a game set in a modern setting. That idea is fine and well, but what’s going to make it a Falcom game? What’s going to differentiate it from other modern games. You have things like Persona out there. So, we ask, “What can we bring to the table?” The planner had an idea, stating, “we have this Xanadu series”, which is this classic action RPG that we’ve made. Then you have Tokyo, and we’ve never really done anything with Tokyo. In this instance, the title of the game came first. That was the core concept, and the rest of the ideas fell into place.
Another example, this is a little bit older, the team has a graphical tool program and our artist was kind of playing around one day. He had a house on a fairly blank field and then put some basic lighting effects and added a character, and had that character walk behind (the house). Then one of the programmers asked, “Well, what can we do with this?” And just from those two people playing around that became Zwei. At that point the game was worked on by a fairly new employee, Makoto Shinkai, who because famous for (anime films such as) 5 Centimeters Per Second and Your Name. So that’s another way we have come with game ideas.
T-G: Profitability and creative expression are often viewed as oppositional tensions in art. How much does this factor into the company’s decision when tacking a new title?
TK: To begin with, a lot of the staff doesn’t necessarily think of the games as ‘products’. Falcon is an accumulation of people who want to make videogames. If you create games that don’t sell, or they don’t go to market, or they don’t even have a market, then of course you can’t keep doing that. There’s this understanding that you need to bring players something of value that they’re going to enjoy so much that they’re going to pay money, permitting the cycle to continue, and we can keep making games. Keeping this balance has allowed us to create games that have been liked over the years.
T-G: Perhaps, you can give us a figurative look inside the office. How big is the size of the company? How many different teams (or lines) are there? What’s in like to work there?
TK: The answer to the first question is 62 employees, with 50 of the staff working directly on development. As you can see, most of the company had a hand in development. As for lines, you could say there are three or four development lines, but one of the characteristics of our development is that we begin with very small core teams. We’re talking three to four members maybe. From there as the project ramps up and more details get decided the team will increase in size towards the finish line.
Another way to think about it is that you have for each project you have these core members that are there from start to finish and then you have people who will come in later on as things get more developed and fleshed out. As for office atmosphere, one thing that we’re often told is that our office is very clean and well taking care of and it’s also very quiet.
It’s so quiet that we’ve actually been told by new members to the company that they’re almost afraid to get up to use the rest because they don’t want to disturb the peace. Obviously, when there are meetings and things like that it gets a bit more lively. But when people from outside who come in they’re really impressed that it’s so quiet. So, we probably don’t even recognize it at this point, because that’s the environment we’re used to, but for employees of companies it’s quite a surprise. Another thing that is really surprising for people who I come to visit is that everybody wears suits including development stuff. Nobody wears (less formal) “outside clothing” as it were. At this point in game development, we’re probably the last company in Japan to do this, so sometimes we might look strange or mysterious (laughs).
Tech-Gaming: When a game is released, critics and consumers typically have a lot of say. How much of that is heeded and used for Falcom’s future designs, especially with sequels?
TK: We generally look at feedback for things that we ourselves may have noticed. Let me give you two examples, which are both from the Trails series. One is that things like movement had a tendency to be a little bit slow, so we implemented a “high speed mode” which is something that’s exactly like it sounds, you press a button, and everything moves much quicker, speeding up the pace of things.
The second was that combat was also kind of criticized for not being active enough. So, we took that into consideration as well, which you’ll see soon with Cold Steel 3. Battle is much more dynamic and speeder. On the other hand, we also receive feedback like, “Well, I don’t really care for this character”. We look at those things too, but honestly speaking, that ends up being a matter of personal preference to the player and we can’t really make a game dictated on what some people may or may not like. With things like that, we look at it, we consider it, but at the end of the day, especially when it comes to story or character, we going to make the kind games that we want to make.
T-G: Currently, many role-playing games sell just as well in the West as they do in Japan. Has this had any influence on your output?
TK: Well, we are Japanese developers and we develop from a Japanese perspective and a Japanese point of view. Honestly, sometimes we don’t quite understand the feedback we receive from Western fans. Let me give you an example from the Trails series. We often get requests to turn the series into an open-world style game. That’s something we can’t wrap our minds around because these games are so story focused. Events need to be seen in a certain order to get that emotional payoff that we want people to have. You wouldn’t be able to do this with those kind of things with an open-world style. With things like that we really just shrug our shoulders because we don’t know how to handle it.
On the other hand, when we received feedback on combat being slow, that was quite helpful. When feedback is related to the system it’s much easier to understand and ultimately to address. And that’s what we have actually done.
Another thing is character ages. This is actually something that we hear from quite a lot. Generally speaking, the ages of Japanese characters tend to skew a bit younger whereas people in the West kind of prefer older characters. It could be because I am getting older, but that’s something I am beginning to understand more. And since our games are well received in Japan, why don’t we consider making characters that are a bit older now? It’s exactly like you said, sales figures are increasing in the West. And honestly not just in the West but also across Asia. Our fanbase is growing to the point that you can’t ignore those voices. And who’s to say what will happen in 5 or 10 years from now, particularly with the way the Japanese market is trending. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, we’ll be making games predominantly for the West rather than now, where they’re made predominantly for Japan.
T-G: Often it takes months and sometimes years to localize a game for different territories? Has Falcom taken any steps to help reduce this interval?
TK: These are things that we are considering as we go forward in game development. To give you a little bit of background to why this is, well most of our games have an absolutely huge amount of text. I also think that in general, we develop games on a pretty quick turnaround time. The amount of time we actually have for development is on the shorter side, and therefore it’s not uncommon for us to be changing numerous things, as we get into the later stages of development. For those reasons we actually have a policy of not talking about localization or project partners, until the game is completed. Things are in such flux during development, so we don’t want to offer something that might end up changing later on.
In the past for Cold Steel I and II, we actually had a simultaneous release with Asia. But the truth is that the ones who localized it were Sony, actually. We had a ton of changes right up until the very end. It put a lot of pressure and stress on their localization teams, at least the people they were using for localization. If anybody knows anybody who can handle that, and wants to do publishing, we’d love to meet them. But by and large, we don’t like to put people through that. (laughs). After that, Sony never approached us for a simultaneous release. So that was something we need to work on.
To give you another example, with Tokyo Xanadu, the development time was only about a year. Within that, the first two and a half months or so was devoted to creating the scenario. But sure enough, as we developed the game, as we implemented different systems, we had to change a lot in regard to the [game’s] scenario. And that’s just not really tenable when working with a partner. So again, it is something that we need to address in the future but that’s the reality of how we develop games right now.
T-G: Let’s talk about role-playing games, a genre that that the team understands quite well. Naturally, they’re a synthesis of different elements, combining things like story, characterization, and battle mechanics. But if you had to choose the most important component what would it be?
TK: You know the thing about RPGs, even within these sub-genre of RPGs you can compartmentalize that even further into different types of role-playing games. I’d have to say that every game needs something different. So, I can’t point to one specific element that’s going to apply in every case when making a game. For example, I can tell you within our two flagship series, looking at the Trails series, it’s obviously the story. We believe that the players are there for the characters and the story. As such, we focus on those most of all to make a really good story with great characters. And actually, that story does come first and then informs different elements of the gameplay, in terms of combat, and the setting, and things like that.
Now on the other hand you take a series like Ys and it’s actually the exact opposite. The most important things for Ys is the responsiveness of combat; how combat feels, movement, and things like that. Therefore, we take that opposite approach. We think about the systems that we want to incorporate in a new Ys title, particularly, asking what kinds of things Adol will be doing from a gameplay perspective. And that informs what we’ll be doing for the setting and the location in the story.
But if I had to choose a single element, I’d say it’s more from a game design perspective. You know we are making players do lots of things, and often, overcome difficulties in that pursuit. Whether there’s a story payoff for some kind of gameplay path or something else, the thing is you need to give players a goal. Internally we call them, “treats”. For example, let’s say you have a large city in a Trails game. You’ve got a big map and you’ve got say, a distant back alley that’s part of the map. You have to give the player some kind of reward or a payoff for going back there, whether that be a treasure box or maybe some NPC standing there with an interesting story to tell. What we always tell our game designers is that you need to give the player a sense of reward. So, creating the game, thinking about how the player might respond in a given situation or where they might go on a map and having a payoff for every part of that is a very important element of game design. That doesn’t matter whether it’s the Trails or whether that’s Ys, it’s something for all our games.
T-G: While the game industry and its output are gradually maturing, it often seems that games might not have the respect given to other mediums, like literature or film. Yet, the quality and quantity of dialogue across the Kiseki series is excellent, rivaling the best works in other mediums in both quantity and quality. How can games garner more respect?
T-K: What I’d like to think is that when someone comes to the end of their life and they’re looking back on things, being able to say we made a really great game is what the goal would be. Every creator is going to have a different approach for how to reach that goal, but the truth of the matter is that so many games come out. When you look at something like smartphone games, I mean I doubt that anyone at the end of their life is going to say, “that was a great smartphone game”.
In order to get that respect, perhaps creators need to make something that will stand the test of time. That someone, at the end of their days, when they’re looking back at the cool things that they experienced, might be able to say, “that was gratifying”. Of course, it kind of depends on the game and everyone might think separately. And again, for say, the Trails series, it might be a story that resonated within you. For the Ys series, it might be the recollection of “that game was great. I remember how I felt when I played it”.
More Kondo interview video:
Zero and Ao are being teased by Kondo for a modern port and english localizations of both games, nice:
Easy Allies: I know you get this question a lot, so this is not going to be a new one for you, but I know a lot of very passionate Legend of Heroes fans would love to play the Crossbell games (The Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki and The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki). Is there any chance of getting an official localization that people could enjoy?
Kondo: “The thing about both of those games is that they were originally developed for PSP in Japan, and then later on they received what’s called the Evolutionversions of them in Japan, but the point is is that they’re no longer able to be played on modern console(s). So what we want to do as a company—what we’re actually starting to prepare for—is to be able to bring both of those games to modern console(s). So right now it’s still in the very early stages and there’s not much to be said about it, but as we do this and as those plans become a little bit more solidified, we would like to absolutely start talks with foreign publishers and things, and get that conversation going to bring these games finally out to fans here in the west.”
Zero and Ao are being teased by Kondo for a modern port and english localizations of both games, nice:
Easy Allies: I know you get this question a lot, so this is not going to be a new one for you, but I know a lot of very passionate Legend of Heroes fans would love to play the Crossbell games (The Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki and The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki). Is there any chance of getting an official localization that people could enjoy?
Kondo: “The thing about both of those games is that they were originally developed for PSP in Japan, and then later on they received what’s called the Evolutionversions of them in Japan, but the point is is that they’re no longer able to be played on modern console(s). So what we want to do as a company—what we’re actually starting to prepare for—is to be able to bring both of those games to modern console(s). So right now it’s still in the very early stages and there’s not much to be said about it, but as we do this and as those plans become a little bit more solidified, we would like to absolutely start talks with foreign publishers and things, and get that conversation going to bring these games finally out to fans here in the west.”
time grows closer.
Whats with the glasses?
Seems rather dumb.
More Kondo interview from rpgsite:
RPG Site: I guess the best place to start would be – how would you describe Falcom’s philosophy as a game company?
Toshihiro Kondo: While this hasn’t necessarily been written anywhere, or enshrined anywhere within the company, I believe that we all – first of all, we’re fans of all that we produce, and we join the company because we are fans, but we want to make things that we are proud of. Things that we believe in. I honestly believe that a lot of games that are created nowadays – there are some out there of suspect quality. But I know that all of ours – we don’t release something until we are proud of what we created. This also goes for people on the side of sales. We want them to be confident on the product that they are selling, but even if a game doesn’t sell, we want our developers to know that they put their heart and soul into something, and they did the best that they could.
RPG Site: That reminds me – Kondo-san, even before you became an employee at Falcom, and well before you became president of the company, you were just a fan of the company, right?
Toshihiro Kondo: That’s right.
RPG Site: Talking more specifically about the Trails series, something that has always stood out to me has been how the series has sort of focused more on introspective look at various regions in the series’ world, rather than the conflicts within them alone. Has that always been a series focus?
Toshihiro Kondo: First of all, your characterization is correct – that is something that we particularly focus on when developing the Trails games. To give you some of the background as to why we do that, um, as you know – before we started releasing what’s now known as the Trails series overall, it’s still part of a larger series known as the Legend of Heroes. The trilogy immediately proceeding the Trails in the Sky games, called the Gagharv Trilogy, each one of those games has its own world inside it, even though they’re related. So particularly even in the first two games – Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch and A Tear of Vermillion – there are complete worlds within each of those and tons of towns and characters that come within them.
Now, when we made the jump from 2D to 3D, we ran into pretty hard limitations about how much could actually be shown. Since we still wanted to portray the worlds in that matter, it just became a matter of course – since each game could only hold so much data, we had to – rather than showing everything at once like in the Gagharv Trilogy, we had to pare things down, and focus more on area at a time.
But, we didn’t take this as a negative – that we weren’t able to show off the whole world in one game – rather, we decided to take it as a positive. Just like Gagharv could show off a whole world, we decided to take the opportunity to show off each of these portions of the world in much greater depth.
...So, within the Gagharv Trilogy also, you have different countries within the world, but honestly speaking there’s no real reason to go back to any of the countries that you’ve been to before. Whereas within the Trails series, again, while the focus might be a little bit smaller, throughout the course of the games, you’ll be able to return to certain places that you’ve been before. We think this creates a sort of feeling of familiarity, where you’ll be able to see certain faces again, and it gives the feeling of the series and its world feeling more alive.
As far as I can tell, back in the day, it took people 2 years to create one world. Yet, here we are 15 years later still building upon on the same world.
RPG Site: One other thing that has stood out to me, and sort of building upon what you're talking about here, I love how each country and its inhabitants have their own way of living – I’ve noticed how each set of protagonists almost symbolize the core of each arc in the series. Is this a deliberate design choice? How is the feeling of each arc’s setting decided?
Toshihiro Kondo: This is a very deliberate design choice, yes. The way we go about doing it is – we have location settings and guides internally for each one of these places. For example – they’re not out here – but the Crossbell games, they have, Crossbell is a place that is having some economic issues, as well as issues in terms of governance and things like that. So, it stands to reason, that a place like that is having those sorts of issues, then the main character should be a police officer – hence, Lloyd is a police officer.
On the other hand, we’ve got Erebonia. Here, the society of Erebonia is interesting because it has a class system – you have the nobles, and you have the common people. So we thought that the characters that should appear in Thors Military Academy, would be people that are representative of all walks of life. So you have Rean, who comes from the lower nobility. Jusis, who comes from a larger family. Machias who’s a commoner. These characters are a sort of a microcosm of the world that they live in. When we reference the settings documents that we’ve made for each one of these lands, this allows us to create these characters that inhabit them, that are representative of these areas as a whole.
RPG Site: I’ve noticed that as the series has gone on – and I’m not sure if this has been a deliberate decision - in Trails in the Sky, the core of the main parties were duos. In First Chapter/Second Chapter it was Estelle and Joshua. In The 3rd it was Kevin and Ries. Zero and Ao, however, the main focus of each cast started growing. From the start, you had 4 members of the Special Support Section – Lloyd, Tio, Ellie, and Randy - up to 6 at the start of Ao. In Erebonia you have Class VII, with an absolutely enormous main cast. It feels like the scope and size of the “main cast” for each arc has just been growing as time has gone on. Has there been a specific reason for this?
Toshihiro Kondo: So, the short answer to your question is yes. This, again, all directly ties into detailed regional documents that we can refer to explain the setting for each one of them. But to go a little bit more in-depth regarding these arcs – so the thing about Trails in the Sky, we had originally intended for, as you mentioned, for there to be the two main characters – but all the characters that come out, for the most part, are supposed to compare and contrast to each other. Estelle with Joshua, Olivier with Scherazard – now, when it comes to Zin and Agate, I don’t QUITE know how they’d contrast with each other, but by and large, that’s what we going for. The truth of the matter is when it comes to that game, this was the first time our team had worked on an RPG, and so we were still trying to learn the ropes as it were.
Now, when we moved onto Crossbell – we had a police team, and we felt that having only two characters would feel a little lonely, and wouldn’t be sufficient for what we were trying to show, so we ended up with 4. When it comes to Cold Steel, the idea again is – Erebonia is a huge place, with so many types of people. So to portray all of this, from the different social classes to the different regions – we even have Gaius from a different country – it became necessary to have that larger party.
RPG Site: I guess the one last question I have about playable characters is – I loved Estelle’s story and her growth throughout Trails in the Sky. Is there any chance we might see a main female protagonist in the series again?
Toshihiro Kondo: It definitely depends on the regional settings. If we feel that a female main character best represents the place they inhabit, then we’d absolutely consider another female main character.
The interesting thing about Trails in the Sky is that originally – the roles were reversed. Joshua was supposed to the main, and Estelle would be from more of a personality perspective, Joshua’s foil. But we realized that A. There weren’t really many games that showed off a woman’s growth, and a woman’s progression and B. Nor were there any RPGs, jRPGs especially, that did that well either. That was something that we wanted to challenge ourselves with – which is why she eventually ended up becoming the main character.
RPG Site: How difficult has it been, as a small company, to continue building upon a singular story with the Trails series. There’s really no other series like it in the industry as a whole. Sure, you’ll have a few Final Fantasy’s that have had direct sequels – but for the most part, they’ve been entirely separate worlds. They’re easier to market and easier to bring new people in. How has Falcom been dealing with that inherent challenge – that barrier to entry?
Toshihiro Kondo: For us, I guess to start, actually the average age of Trails of Cold Steel 3’s fans are in their early to mid-20s. Now, as for what we’ve done to essentially combat what you’ve said – we’ve realized that if we were to keep the same characters for the entire series, you’re right, what you’d expect to happen would happen – they’d say “I can’t just jump into the series now, that’d be too difficult”, on the other hand, what we came up with, is right after finishing up on Trails in the Sky – the 3rd and starting with the Crossbell arc, we saw it as a good chance to – as we’re moving into a new location, then we thought maybe we can change the playable characters too. Which is why we had someone like Lloyd. And so, because that had become new, it gave people a fresh start – and a place for them to jump in.
Now, because this is a shared world, you do have a character like Estelle come around and people thinking “Now who’s this girl? She’s really funny!” So, obviously, if you like something you do some research about it. So if you do that research you’ll find out that there are more games in the series. It was very common to hear people say “Actually I started with Zero, but I ended up going back and playing Trails in the Sky”. In the exact same way, when you move on to Cold Steel – again, we arranged the world as something popular, or really acceptable at the time. In which case this was shown as a school setting. If anything you could say that this school setting is just a front for what’s really going on, but when Cold Steel was first being developed – that school setting was a very popular thing for people, and again, that kind of shows because all of the people that showed up to play it were younger. Just in the same way that we saw with the Crossbell series, is that those characters that either came out in past games, or just the fact that it became evident throughout the course of playing the game that there was a lot more to this world and things – they’d go back and play Crossbell, or Sky, and they’d keep playing the series. We’ve seen this time and time again, that even if players don’t start the series at the beginning, they can hop in and still feel ok, and maybe end up going back to play the previous ones.
The staff and I, we’ve all talked about this but, now that it’s a series with such a long history – it’s gotten to the point that the series is pretty well known, people have heard of it. So they become interested in it. We know that it’s very important to give them a foothold, or a place to jump in, so that’s why when we change locations, that’s what allows people to get that foothold in this world, and start with it.
RPG Site: That reminds me, and avoiding spoilers since this game hasn’t come out in English – is the inclusion of a certain little purple-haired girl in Zero no Kiseki, and her story, almost like a hook to get players interested in the Trails in the Sky trilogy?
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes, absolutely. That was one of the hooks that we use – in the same way, when you’re playing Crossbell, there would be references to events that happened in Sky, and although missing it wouldn’t be detrimental to your understanding of what’s happening currently, it does pique your interest with “hey, something happened before this, I’m really interested in finding out more” and so we absolutely put things in the games that we hope people get interested in the older titles and go back to experience them.
RPG Site: Adding upon that – it’s all well and good that the series has those callbacks to get players interested in the previous entries, but that’s a bit of a problem in the west - we can’t play Crossbell, and we won’t be able to play Cold Steel III on PC, with every other release in the west available on PC. Is that something that’s been considered as a problem moving forward?
Toshihiro Kondo: I absolutely hear you. We would all at Falcom would love for people to play these games, and the door is always open for publishers to come and talk with us, but that said - the reality is that the games came out for handheld consoles, and they’re no longer viable. We’ve also come to this problem in Japan, too, where people who want to play these games either don’t have a PSP, or aren’t about to go out and buy one in order to play them. So, we’re kind of facing the same problem in both regions – where people that want to play the games, but can’t. The handheld market is in an unfortunate decline in Japan. Switch is doing fairly well, but, obviously in terms of PlayStation that market no longer really exists. So what we want to do – is we want to get these games, that originally only released on a handheld, to come out for console as well.
Although there’s nothing that I can talk about too concretely here, we’ve already started some things to be able to bring these games – and not only games in the Trails series, but other games that are past Falcom titles as well – to bring them up to modern consoles, and to get them ready. Once that’s happened, we absolutely invite people to come talk to us so that we can get them out to people.
RPG Site: During an interview in 2017, you mentioned that Falcom as a company would like all of your titles to release on Steam. Is that still a goal for the company, with titles like Cold Steel III – and maybe others as well?
Toshihiro Kondo: Our stance has not changed – we’d still love for people to be able to play these games on PC, but the truth of the matter is that we are a small company, and we can only develop for one main platform at a time, and we cannot divert our resources for ports and things like that would get in the way of our work developing new games. That’s why we have partnerships with companies like NIS America in order to help us do those things – and that’s the situation we’re in right now, relying on other companies to do those things. I am sorry that we aren’t able to get these games out for everyone at the same time, but that’s just the situation we’re in.
RPG Site: You mentioned that Falcom wants to bring titles from their back catalog further – is that just limited to the Trails and Ys series, or does that include other series like Xanadu, Zwei, and so on?
Toshihiro Kondo: The older they get, the harder that gets, but those titles that seem promising in today’s market we definitely want to consider. Unfortunately, I can’t say more than that, but we are paying attention to these things.
RPG Site: So, Falcom’s a small company – you’ve said so, and it’s pretty self-evident – but one thing I’ve been curious about, particularly recently, is that the company has started to use more and more outsourcing recently. Can you go into how that started, and what the reason for that might be?
Toshihiro Kondo: So, upon until very recently, we used to do pretty much everything completely in-house. From the scenario to the music, to the graphics, to the package design, and everything else. We reached a point where the limit of what a company with 50 or so people, give or take, was kind of at its max. So what we’ve begun to do recently is, certain elements of graphics, we have begun outsourcing. Now, these are areas that we believe are things that don’t absolutely have to be done by Falcom to be done well, and still meet our quality standards. What this has allowed us to do is to free up our hands in order to work on other projects, and other things. So far, it's been good – in the sense that it gives us more freedom to do what we want to do. So, in the future, this is something we’ll continue to carefully look into.
RPG Site: As the series moves forward, is there anything else specifically that you want to explore within Zemuria – that maybe isn’t quite obvious. We know we’re going to Calvard, for example. Is there anything else – anywhere else – that you want to explore moving forward before it’s done?
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes, there are other places that we’d like to explore, that have already been mentioned before in the games. To say any more would be spoilers – but yes, we will be exploring more places.
RPG Site: I guess the best place to start would be – how would you describe Falcom’s philosophy as a game company?
Toshihiro Kondo: While this hasn’t necessarily been written anywhere, or enshrined anywhere within the company, I believe that we all – first of all, we’re fans of all that we produce, and we join the company because we are fans, but we want to make things that we are proud of. Things that we believe in. I honestly believe that a lot of games that are created nowadays – there are some out there of suspect quality. But I know that all of ours – we don’t release something until we are proud of what we created. This also goes for people on the side of sales. We want them to be confident on the product that they are selling, but even if a game doesn’t sell, we want our developers to know that they put their heart and soul into something, and they did the best that they could.
RPG Site: That reminds me – Kondo-san, even before you became an employee at Falcom, and well before you became president of the company, you were just a fan of the company, right?
Toshihiro Kondo: That’s right.
RPG Site: Talking more specifically about the Trails series, something that has always stood out to me has been how the series has sort of focused more on introspective look at various regions in the series’ world, rather than the conflicts within them alone. Has that always been a series focus?
Toshihiro Kondo: First of all, your characterization is correct – that is something that we particularly focus on when developing the Trails games. To give you some of the background as to why we do that, um, as you know – before we started releasing what’s now known as the Trails series overall, it’s still part of a larger series known as the Legend of Heroes. The trilogy immediately proceeding the Trails in the Sky games, called the Gagharv Trilogy, each one of those games has its own world inside it, even though they’re related. So particularly even in the first two games – Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch and A Tear of Vermillion – there are complete worlds within each of those and tons of towns and characters that come within them.
Now, when we made the jump from 2D to 3D, we ran into pretty hard limitations about how much could actually be shown. Since we still wanted to portray the worlds in that matter, it just became a matter of course – since each game could only hold so much data, we had to – rather than showing everything at once like in the Gagharv Trilogy, we had to pare things down, and focus more on area at a time.
But, we didn’t take this as a negative – that we weren’t able to show off the whole world in one game – rather, we decided to take it as a positive. Just like Gagharv could show off a whole world, we decided to take the opportunity to show off each of these portions of the world in much greater depth.
...So, within the Gagharv Trilogy also, you have different countries within the world, but honestly speaking there’s no real reason to go back to any of the countries that you’ve been to before. Whereas within the Trails series, again, while the focus might be a little bit smaller, throughout the course of the games, you’ll be able to return to certain places that you’ve been before. We think this creates a sort of feeling of familiarity, where you’ll be able to see certain faces again, and it gives the feeling of the series and its world feeling more alive.
As far as I can tell, back in the day, it took people 2 years to create one world. Yet, here we are 15 years later still building upon on the same world.
RPG Site: One other thing that has stood out to me, and sort of building upon what you're talking about here, I love how each country and its inhabitants have their own way of living – I’ve noticed how each set of protagonists almost symbolize the core of each arc in the series. Is this a deliberate design choice? How is the feeling of each arc’s setting decided?
Toshihiro Kondo: This is a very deliberate design choice, yes. The way we go about doing it is – we have location settings and guides internally for each one of these places. For example – they’re not out here – but the Crossbell games, they have, Crossbell is a place that is having some economic issues, as well as issues in terms of governance and things like that. So, it stands to reason, that a place like that is having those sorts of issues, then the main character should be a police officer – hence, Lloyd is a police officer.
On the other hand, we’ve got Erebonia. Here, the society of Erebonia is interesting because it has a class system – you have the nobles, and you have the common people. So we thought that the characters that should appear in Thors Military Academy, would be people that are representative of all walks of life. So you have Rean, who comes from the lower nobility. Jusis, who comes from a larger family. Machias who’s a commoner. These characters are a sort of a microcosm of the world that they live in. When we reference the settings documents that we’ve made for each one of these lands, this allows us to create these characters that inhabit them, that are representative of these areas as a whole.
RPG Site: I’ve noticed that as the series has gone on – and I’m not sure if this has been a deliberate decision - in Trails in the Sky, the core of the main parties were duos. In First Chapter/Second Chapter it was Estelle and Joshua. In The 3rd it was Kevin and Ries. Zero and Ao, however, the main focus of each cast started growing. From the start, you had 4 members of the Special Support Section – Lloyd, Tio, Ellie, and Randy - up to 6 at the start of Ao. In Erebonia you have Class VII, with an absolutely enormous main cast. It feels like the scope and size of the “main cast” for each arc has just been growing as time has gone on. Has there been a specific reason for this?
Toshihiro Kondo: So, the short answer to your question is yes. This, again, all directly ties into detailed regional documents that we can refer to explain the setting for each one of them. But to go a little bit more in-depth regarding these arcs – so the thing about Trails in the Sky, we had originally intended for, as you mentioned, for there to be the two main characters – but all the characters that come out, for the most part, are supposed to compare and contrast to each other. Estelle with Joshua, Olivier with Scherazard – now, when it comes to Zin and Agate, I don’t QUITE know how they’d contrast with each other, but by and large, that’s what we going for. The truth of the matter is when it comes to that game, this was the first time our team had worked on an RPG, and so we were still trying to learn the ropes as it were.
Now, when we moved onto Crossbell – we had a police team, and we felt that having only two characters would feel a little lonely, and wouldn’t be sufficient for what we were trying to show, so we ended up with 4. When it comes to Cold Steel, the idea again is – Erebonia is a huge place, with so many types of people. So to portray all of this, from the different social classes to the different regions – we even have Gaius from a different country – it became necessary to have that larger party.
RPG Site: I guess the one last question I have about playable characters is – I loved Estelle’s story and her growth throughout Trails in the Sky. Is there any chance we might see a main female protagonist in the series again?
Toshihiro Kondo: It definitely depends on the regional settings. If we feel that a female main character best represents the place they inhabit, then we’d absolutely consider another female main character.
The interesting thing about Trails in the Sky is that originally – the roles were reversed. Joshua was supposed to the main, and Estelle would be from more of a personality perspective, Joshua’s foil. But we realized that A. There weren’t really many games that showed off a woman’s growth, and a woman’s progression and B. Nor were there any RPGs, jRPGs especially, that did that well either. That was something that we wanted to challenge ourselves with – which is why she eventually ended up becoming the main character.
RPG Site: How difficult has it been, as a small company, to continue building upon a singular story with the Trails series. There’s really no other series like it in the industry as a whole. Sure, you’ll have a few Final Fantasy’s that have had direct sequels – but for the most part, they’ve been entirely separate worlds. They’re easier to market and easier to bring new people in. How has Falcom been dealing with that inherent challenge – that barrier to entry?
Toshihiro Kondo: For us, I guess to start, actually the average age of Trails of Cold Steel 3’s fans are in their early to mid-20s. Now, as for what we’ve done to essentially combat what you’ve said – we’ve realized that if we were to keep the same characters for the entire series, you’re right, what you’d expect to happen would happen – they’d say “I can’t just jump into the series now, that’d be too difficult”, on the other hand, what we came up with, is right after finishing up on Trails in the Sky – the 3rd and starting with the Crossbell arc, we saw it as a good chance to – as we’re moving into a new location, then we thought maybe we can change the playable characters too. Which is why we had someone like Lloyd. And so, because that had become new, it gave people a fresh start – and a place for them to jump in.
Now, because this is a shared world, you do have a character like Estelle come around and people thinking “Now who’s this girl? She’s really funny!” So, obviously, if you like something you do some research about it. So if you do that research you’ll find out that there are more games in the series. It was very common to hear people say “Actually I started with Zero, but I ended up going back and playing Trails in the Sky”. In the exact same way, when you move on to Cold Steel – again, we arranged the world as something popular, or really acceptable at the time. In which case this was shown as a school setting. If anything you could say that this school setting is just a front for what’s really going on, but when Cold Steel was first being developed – that school setting was a very popular thing for people, and again, that kind of shows because all of the people that showed up to play it were younger. Just in the same way that we saw with the Crossbell series, is that those characters that either came out in past games, or just the fact that it became evident throughout the course of playing the game that there was a lot more to this world and things – they’d go back and play Crossbell, or Sky, and they’d keep playing the series. We’ve seen this time and time again, that even if players don’t start the series at the beginning, they can hop in and still feel ok, and maybe end up going back to play the previous ones.
The staff and I, we’ve all talked about this but, now that it’s a series with such a long history – it’s gotten to the point that the series is pretty well known, people have heard of it. So they become interested in it. We know that it’s very important to give them a foothold, or a place to jump in, so that’s why when we change locations, that’s what allows people to get that foothold in this world, and start with it.
RPG Site: That reminds me, and avoiding spoilers since this game hasn’t come out in English – is the inclusion of a certain little purple-haired girl in Zero no Kiseki, and her story, almost like a hook to get players interested in the Trails in the Sky trilogy?
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes, absolutely. That was one of the hooks that we use – in the same way, when you’re playing Crossbell, there would be references to events that happened in Sky, and although missing it wouldn’t be detrimental to your understanding of what’s happening currently, it does pique your interest with “hey, something happened before this, I’m really interested in finding out more” and so we absolutely put things in the games that we hope people get interested in the older titles and go back to experience them.
RPG Site: Adding upon that – it’s all well and good that the series has those callbacks to get players interested in the previous entries, but that’s a bit of a problem in the west - we can’t play Crossbell, and we won’t be able to play Cold Steel III on PC, with every other release in the west available on PC. Is that something that’s been considered as a problem moving forward?
Toshihiro Kondo: I absolutely hear you. We would all at Falcom would love for people to play these games, and the door is always open for publishers to come and talk with us, but that said - the reality is that the games came out for handheld consoles, and they’re no longer viable. We’ve also come to this problem in Japan, too, where people who want to play these games either don’t have a PSP, or aren’t about to go out and buy one in order to play them. So, we’re kind of facing the same problem in both regions – where people that want to play the games, but can’t. The handheld market is in an unfortunate decline in Japan. Switch is doing fairly well, but, obviously in terms of PlayStation that market no longer really exists. So what we want to do – is we want to get these games, that originally only released on a handheld, to come out for console as well.
Although there’s nothing that I can talk about too concretely here, we’ve already started some things to be able to bring these games – and not only games in the Trails series, but other games that are past Falcom titles as well – to bring them up to modern consoles, and to get them ready. Once that’s happened, we absolutely invite people to come talk to us so that we can get them out to people.
RPG Site: During an interview in 2017, you mentioned that Falcom as a company would like all of your titles to release on Steam. Is that still a goal for the company, with titles like Cold Steel III – and maybe others as well?
Toshihiro Kondo: Our stance has not changed – we’d still love for people to be able to play these games on PC, but the truth of the matter is that we are a small company, and we can only develop for one main platform at a time, and we cannot divert our resources for ports and things like that would get in the way of our work developing new games. That’s why we have partnerships with companies like NIS America in order to help us do those things – and that’s the situation we’re in right now, relying on other companies to do those things. I am sorry that we aren’t able to get these games out for everyone at the same time, but that’s just the situation we’re in.
RPG Site: You mentioned that Falcom wants to bring titles from their back catalog further – is that just limited to the Trails and Ys series, or does that include other series like Xanadu, Zwei, and so on?
Toshihiro Kondo: The older they get, the harder that gets, but those titles that seem promising in today’s market we definitely want to consider. Unfortunately, I can’t say more than that, but we are paying attention to these things.
RPG Site: So, Falcom’s a small company – you’ve said so, and it’s pretty self-evident – but one thing I’ve been curious about, particularly recently, is that the company has started to use more and more outsourcing recently. Can you go into how that started, and what the reason for that might be?
Toshihiro Kondo: So, upon until very recently, we used to do pretty much everything completely in-house. From the scenario to the music, to the graphics, to the package design, and everything else. We reached a point where the limit of what a company with 50 or so people, give or take, was kind of at its max. So what we’ve begun to do recently is, certain elements of graphics, we have begun outsourcing. Now, these are areas that we believe are things that don’t absolutely have to be done by Falcom to be done well, and still meet our quality standards. What this has allowed us to do is to free up our hands in order to work on other projects, and other things. So far, it's been good – in the sense that it gives us more freedom to do what we want to do. So, in the future, this is something we’ll continue to carefully look into.
RPG Site: As the series moves forward, is there anything else specifically that you want to explore within Zemuria – that maybe isn’t quite obvious. We know we’re going to Calvard, for example. Is there anything else – anywhere else – that you want to explore moving forward before it’s done?
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes, there are other places that we’d like to explore, that have already been mentioned before in the games. To say any more would be spoilers – but yes, we will be exploring more places.
The game has sadly been delayed till October 22nd 2019.
Yes I read that. dang it.
I wanted to change the thread's title with the new release date but I am afraid it would worsen my current -24000 credits status lol
Demon_Skeith I need a recuria wind art spell to cure my current ailment.
Yes I read that. dang it.
I wanted to change the thread's title with the new release date but I am afraid it would worsen my current -24000 credits status lol
don't worry, all fixed now.
Read another very long Kondo interview by Dualshockers:
IA: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III has the protagonist Rean Schwarzer becoming a military instructor. Was this one of the story developments you planned from the start?
TK: Yes. The outline of Trails of Cold Steel‘s story was already being written when we were developing Trails in the Sky, and that was among the things we decided back then.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III is the first game Falcom developed exclusively for PS4. How did the development go with that switch?
TK: Trails of Cold Steel I and II were developed with the PlayStation Vita in mind, as they initially released on both PS Vita and PlayStation 3. A lot changed when we moved to PlayStation 4 starting Trails of Cold Steel III, we could do a lot more with the series.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III also features a new GUI for its turn-based battle system, with each button corresponding to one action. How did you get the idea for this system?
TK: Since when the Trails series started, a lot of players often told us how they wished the battles’ tempo was faster, how they wanted a faster and more intuitive response. We’re always taking feedback into consideration. When we were developing Trails of Cold Steel III, a lot of games released then also prioritized the users’ experience and having UIs that are fun in themselves. This is why we changed the battle GUI.
As for the one-button corresponds to one action idea, we actually wanted to do that since the first Trails of Cold Steel game. But that series was released on both PS3 and Vita, and there weren’t enough buttons to do it on the Vita. We started doing it when the series moved to PS4 with Trails of Cold Steel III.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III includes Japanese and English voiceovers, but is also the first game in the series whose text is not only translated in English but also in French. Why did you decide on French over other European languages?
TK: NIS America took this decision. They explained to us how there are a lot of otaku in France who love Japanese games, and how including a French translation will definitely make the game much more popular.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III also includes many mecha battles. Why did you decide to add a mecha battle system in the Trails of Cold Steel games?
TK: The reason is simple. A lot of developers at Falcom are fans of mecha anime. They said that if we’re making a game with mecha, we should definitely be able to control them or it would be unacceptable.
IA: Besides Rean’s Valimar, there are also different kinds of mecha like the Panzer Soldats. Do you know if Trails Of Cold Steel‘s mecha designers were inspired by specific mecha games or anime?
TK: I haven’t spoken this much in detail about the designs with them so I can’t answer you.
IA: When creating new characters appearing in the Trails series do you decide from the start who will voice them?
TK: We do to a certain extent, but we don’t particularly fixate on a certain seiyuu either. Sometimes we think about it, sometimes we don’t. It varies from character to character. The only time we thought “this character must be voiced by this seiyuu no matter what”, was when writing Giliath Osborne. We wanted him to be voiced by Nakata Jouji no matter what. But besides that one time, it’s not something we usually do.
TK: The first time the name “Herschel” appeared was before we released Trails of Cold Steel, in the game Nayuta no Kiseki,with its protagonist Nayuta Herschel. After that, we decided to make a character with the same family name, Towa Herschel, and made her appear in Trails of Cold Steel. So in a sense, Towa is like private joke character among us, and we all really like her whether she’s popular or not. Later on, we decided to turn Towa into a Japanese girl and make her appear in Tokyo Xanadu too. It’s like how Osamu Tezuka reutilized the same characters from manga to manga.
We didn’t know if Towa and all her group of friends would be popular or not. Towa, Angelica, Crow, and George are all seniors to Rean and his classmates, and they’re all unique characters. Their friendship is very different than the friendship relationships between Rean and his classmates, and later on Rean and his students. So we were surprised at the fan popularity of the senior group in general.
IA: In Trails of Cold Steel III and IV, there’s a new party member called Ash. He’s one of Rean’s students and always causes trouble. And he’s blond. In Tokyo Xanadu, there’s Shio, a blondie and an ex-gang leader. And then in the upcoming Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, there’s Hawk, who’s blond, violent and a troublemaker. Do you guys at Falcom have a preference for these type of characters?
TK: Well at Falcom, we love having unexpected characters as allies and party members. We don’t like it when typically bad looking guys turn out to be villains. In the opposite, we tend to make typically nice characters and good-looking characters turn out to be villains. We do this because we like it and things are more interesting that way.
IA: Falcom is a pretty old company now, so it feels similar to how older manga often had delinquents and bad boys as protagonists.
KT: It’s something similar, yes.
IA: The Trails series’ stories always focus on the characters’ growth. Why do you always make these kinds of stories?
TK: The previous games in The Legend of Heroes series always had these themes, so we’re continuing the tradition. It was always about the protagonists’ growth and it will always be that way. It was especially true for The Legend of Heroes III: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch, and most of the developers at Falcom making the Trails series now are people who loved this game.
KT: Things are moving around, but I can’t tell you anything yet. For now, we’re focusing on properly releasing Trails of Cold Steel III in the west without problems.
IA: In September, Falcom will also release Ys IX: Monstrum Nox in Japan on PS4. Do you have plans to bring it to the west?
KT: For now, a western release for Ys IX isn’t planned, as we’re focusing on completing its development and releasing it in Japan.
IA: You previously revealed how Ys IX: Monstrum Nox uses motion capture to a certain extent. Will future Trails series games start using motion capture too?
KT: Using motion capture brings a lot of benefits but it doesn’t always fit. In the Trails series, the battle animations are very anime-like. Anime-like movements aren’t realistic, so using motion capture for them isn’t optimal. However, all the event scenes in the Trails series have the characters moving realistically, so motion capture would be great to use for these.
IA: On June 29, during the Trails Series 15th Anniversary Stream. you were asked if PS4 ports of the PS Vita Evolution versions of previous Trails games are in the works. If these really end up releasing in Japan, could we expect western releases for them too?
KT: I can’t tell you much yet, but at Falcom, we obviously want our games to be played by as many people as possible. So if these ports end up releasing in Japan, we’ll definitely find a way for people outside Japan to enjoy them too.
IA: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana released on Nintendo Switch. Is it possible we’ll see more Switch ports like previous games of the Trails series one day?
TK: We have talks in progress with multiple publishers regarding possible Switch games, but I can’t tell you anything precise yet or if it will happen or not.
IA: Falcom currently has two flagship series, the Trails series and the Ys series. The Trails series main focus is its deep characters and story, but it actually has really good gameplay too. Meanwhile, the Ys series’ main focus is its action-packed gameplay, but the story developed through the games is actually great as well. How do you manage to nail both sides like that?
TK: Well, when we develop games at Falcom, we have very important rules we stick to: Don’t compromise, don’t hold back, but don’t take too much time on a game. Our staff always does its best in the development timeframes we have to avoid delays, and we do everything we can to finish our games without regrets.
IA: Is it possible one day Falcom will release a Trails game but with Ys-like gameplay? What about a Ysgame but with Trails-like storytelling?
TK: We already did experiments like that, with Tokyo Xanadu most notably. Tokyo Xanadu is a game with a heavy story focus, similar to the Trails Series, but with Ys-like action RPG gameplay. And if we ever do a sequel to Tokyo Xanadu, we will improve this concept and perfect it.
IA: Tokyo Xanadu also featured a poster ad for a nonexistent “Ys VS. Sen no Kiseki II: Another Chronicle” game. Will we see a sequel to Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga one day?
TK: A lot of people at Falcom want to make another “Ys Vs Kiseki”, hence why this poster was included in Tokyo Xanadu. We often chat about it and about how a new “Ys Vs Kiseki” game, with multiplayer to have fun with everyone and everything, would be great.
IA: The first two Ys games got anime adaptations a long time ago. There was a Trails in the Skyanime too, and recently there was the Minna Atsumare! Falcom Gakuen comedy anime. Will new anime adaptations of Falcom games happen again?
TK: Our fans often say they’d like to see an anime of the Trails of Cold Steel games. Trails of Cold Steelmost notably recently ranked second place in a Japanese ranking asking what would you like to see an anime adaptation of. But Falcom is a game only company, so to make an anime adaptation we need to have many talks and negotiations with other companies. It’s not something that only depends on ourselves.
IA: Each Falcom game also has really cool anime opening sequences.
TK: Yes. We don’t think having anime openings that follow an actual anime-like storyboard is mandatory. Just showing off the characters being cool is fine. The Trails series is full of strong characters and each one of them is very important, so we always try to show them off.
IA: Back at Tokyo Game Show 2018, you announced a collaboration between Falcom and Aquaplus. Things like a concert with OSTs of both companies’ games were teased too. Could you tell us more?
TK: We decided on this collaboration with Aquaplus as we realized our companies have a big common fanbase. Various talks about the collaboration are still underway, and we’ll tell you more when we can.
IA: Is it possible we’ll see the Falcom JDK Band doing a concert overseas one day?
TK: We actually already organized multiple concerts of the JDK Band overseas in Asia, in China and Taiwan. We’ve never done any in America and Europe and none are currently planned, but we’re looking into it so it might happen one day.
IA: What does Falcom think about Google Stadia? Is it possible we’ll see Falcom games on the platform?
TK: Stadia is quite interesting. Being able to enjoy a game with the same quality, whether on a smartphone, a TV or a tablet without the need of a console is a smart idea. I can’t tell you whether we’re actually planning something for Google Stadia or not, but you should know a lot of Japanese developers have their eyes glued on it. Everyone in Japan is focused on Stadia and observing how it will go. This is especially true as unlike in most of the world, Stadia won’t be launching in November 2019 in Japan.
IA: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III has the protagonist Rean Schwarzer becoming a military instructor. Was this one of the story developments you planned from the start?
TK: Yes. The outline of Trails of Cold Steel‘s story was already being written when we were developing Trails in the Sky, and that was among the things we decided back then.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III is the first game Falcom developed exclusively for PS4. How did the development go with that switch?
TK: Trails of Cold Steel I and II were developed with the PlayStation Vita in mind, as they initially released on both PS Vita and PlayStation 3. A lot changed when we moved to PlayStation 4 starting Trails of Cold Steel III, we could do a lot more with the series.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III also features a new GUI for its turn-based battle system, with each button corresponding to one action. How did you get the idea for this system?
TK: Since when the Trails series started, a lot of players often told us how they wished the battles’ tempo was faster, how they wanted a faster and more intuitive response. We’re always taking feedback into consideration. When we were developing Trails of Cold Steel III, a lot of games released then also prioritized the users’ experience and having UIs that are fun in themselves. This is why we changed the battle GUI.
As for the one-button corresponds to one action idea, we actually wanted to do that since the first Trails of Cold Steel game. But that series was released on both PS3 and Vita, and there weren’t enough buttons to do it on the Vita. We started doing it when the series moved to PS4 with Trails of Cold Steel III.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III includes Japanese and English voiceovers, but is also the first game in the series whose text is not only translated in English but also in French. Why did you decide on French over other European languages?
TK: NIS America took this decision. They explained to us how there are a lot of otaku in France who love Japanese games, and how including a French translation will definitely make the game much more popular.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III also includes many mecha battles. Why did you decide to add a mecha battle system in the Trails of Cold Steel games?
TK: The reason is simple. A lot of developers at Falcom are fans of mecha anime. They said that if we’re making a game with mecha, we should definitely be able to control them or it would be unacceptable.
IA: Besides Rean’s Valimar, there are also different kinds of mecha like the Panzer Soldats. Do you know if Trails Of Cold Steel‘s mecha designers were inspired by specific mecha games or anime?
TK: I haven’t spoken this much in detail about the designs with them so I can’t answer you.
IA: When creating new characters appearing in the Trails series do you decide from the start who will voice them?
TK: We do to a certain extent, but we don’t particularly fixate on a certain seiyuu either. Sometimes we think about it, sometimes we don’t. It varies from character to character. The only time we thought “this character must be voiced by this seiyuu no matter what”, was when writing Giliath Osborne. We wanted him to be voiced by Nakata Jouji no matter what. But besides that one time, it’s not something we usually do.
IA: It’s true Nakata-san really fits characters like Osborne. Trails of Cold Steel also has a character named Towa Herschel, and she’s extremely popular in the Japanese fanbase. Were you surprised by her popularity?
TK: The first time the name “Herschel” appeared was before we released Trails of Cold Steel, in the game Nayuta no Kiseki,with its protagonist Nayuta Herschel. After that, we decided to make a character with the same family name, Towa Herschel, and made her appear in Trails of Cold Steel. So in a sense, Towa is like private joke character among us, and we all really like her whether she’s popular or not. Later on, we decided to turn Towa into a Japanese girl and make her appear in Tokyo Xanadu too. It’s like how Osamu Tezuka reutilized the same characters from manga to manga.
We didn’t know if Towa and all her group of friends would be popular or not. Towa, Angelica, Crow, and George are all seniors to Rean and his classmates, and they’re all unique characters. Their friendship is very different than the friendship relationships between Rean and his classmates, and later on Rean and his students. So we were surprised at the fan popularity of the senior group in general.
IA: In Trails of Cold Steel III and IV, there’s a new party member called Ash. He’s one of Rean’s students and always causes trouble. And he’s blond. In Tokyo Xanadu, there’s Shio, a blondie and an ex-gang leader. And then in the upcoming Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, there’s Hawk, who’s blond, violent and a troublemaker. Do you guys at Falcom have a preference for these type of characters?
TK: Well at Falcom, we love having unexpected characters as allies and party members. We don’t like it when typically bad looking guys turn out to be villains. In the opposite, we tend to make typically nice characters and good-looking characters turn out to be villains. We do this because we like it and things are more interesting that way.
IA: Falcom is a pretty old company now, so it feels similar to how older manga often had delinquents and bad boys as protagonists.
KT: It’s something similar, yes.
IA: The Trails series’ stories always focus on the characters’ growth. Why do you always make these kinds of stories?
TK: The previous games in The Legend of Heroes series always had these themes, so we’re continuing the tradition. It was always about the protagonists’ growth and it will always be that way. It was especially true for The Legend of Heroes III: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch, and most of the developers at Falcom making the Trails series now are people who loved this game.
IA: Trails of Cold Steel III will finally release outside of Japan this year. Could you tell us more about its sequel Trails of Cold Steel IV and if it’ll get a western release too?
KT: Things are moving around, but I can’t tell you anything yet. For now, we’re focusing on properly releasing Trails of Cold Steel III in the west without problems.
IA: In September, Falcom will also release Ys IX: Monstrum Nox in Japan on PS4. Do you have plans to bring it to the west?
KT: For now, a western release for Ys IX isn’t planned, as we’re focusing on completing its development and releasing it in Japan.
IA: You previously revealed how Ys IX: Monstrum Nox uses motion capture to a certain extent. Will future Trails series games start using motion capture too?
KT: Using motion capture brings a lot of benefits but it doesn’t always fit. In the Trails series, the battle animations are very anime-like. Anime-like movements aren’t realistic, so using motion capture for them isn’t optimal. However, all the event scenes in the Trails series have the characters moving realistically, so motion capture would be great to use for these.
IA: On June 29, during the Trails Series 15th Anniversary Stream. you were asked if PS4 ports of the PS Vita Evolution versions of previous Trails games are in the works. If these really end up releasing in Japan, could we expect western releases for them too?
KT: I can’t tell you much yet, but at Falcom, we obviously want our games to be played by as many people as possible. So if these ports end up releasing in Japan, we’ll definitely find a way for people outside Japan to enjoy them too.
IA: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana released on Nintendo Switch. Is it possible we’ll see more Switch ports like previous games of the Trails series one day?
TK: We have talks in progress with multiple publishers regarding possible Switch games, but I can’t tell you anything precise yet or if it will happen or not.
IA: Falcom currently has two flagship series, the Trails series and the Ys series. The Trails series main focus is its deep characters and story, but it actually has really good gameplay too. Meanwhile, the Ys series’ main focus is its action-packed gameplay, but the story developed through the games is actually great as well. How do you manage to nail both sides like that?
TK: Well, when we develop games at Falcom, we have very important rules we stick to: Don’t compromise, don’t hold back, but don’t take too much time on a game. Our staff always does its best in the development timeframes we have to avoid delays, and we do everything we can to finish our games without regrets.
IA: Is it possible one day Falcom will release a Trails game but with Ys-like gameplay? What about a Ysgame but with Trails-like storytelling?
TK: We already did experiments like that, with Tokyo Xanadu most notably. Tokyo Xanadu is a game with a heavy story focus, similar to the Trails Series, but with Ys-like action RPG gameplay. And if we ever do a sequel to Tokyo Xanadu, we will improve this concept and perfect it.
IA: Tokyo Xanadu also featured a poster ad for a nonexistent “Ys VS. Sen no Kiseki II: Another Chronicle” game. Will we see a sequel to Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga one day?
TK: A lot of people at Falcom want to make another “Ys Vs Kiseki”, hence why this poster was included in Tokyo Xanadu. We often chat about it and about how a new “Ys Vs Kiseki” game, with multiplayer to have fun with everyone and everything, would be great.
IA: The first two Ys games got anime adaptations a long time ago. There was a Trails in the Skyanime too, and recently there was the Minna Atsumare! Falcom Gakuen comedy anime. Will new anime adaptations of Falcom games happen again?
TK: Our fans often say they’d like to see an anime of the Trails of Cold Steel games. Trails of Cold Steelmost notably recently ranked second place in a Japanese ranking asking what would you like to see an anime adaptation of. But Falcom is a game only company, so to make an anime adaptation we need to have many talks and negotiations with other companies. It’s not something that only depends on ourselves.
IA: Each Falcom game also has really cool anime opening sequences.
TK: Yes. We don’t think having anime openings that follow an actual anime-like storyboard is mandatory. Just showing off the characters being cool is fine. The Trails series is full of strong characters and each one of them is very important, so we always try to show them off.
IA: Back at Tokyo Game Show 2018, you announced a collaboration between Falcom and Aquaplus. Things like a concert with OSTs of both companies’ games were teased too. Could you tell us more?
TK: We decided on this collaboration with Aquaplus as we realized our companies have a big common fanbase. Various talks about the collaboration are still underway, and we’ll tell you more when we can.
IA: Is it possible we’ll see the Falcom JDK Band doing a concert overseas one day?
TK: We actually already organized multiple concerts of the JDK Band overseas in Asia, in China and Taiwan. We’ve never done any in America and Europe and none are currently planned, but we’re looking into it so it might happen one day.
IA: What does Falcom think about Google Stadia? Is it possible we’ll see Falcom games on the platform?
TK: Stadia is quite interesting. Being able to enjoy a game with the same quality, whether on a smartphone, a TV or a tablet without the need of a console is a smart idea. I can’t tell you whether we’re actually planning something for Google Stadia or not, but you should know a lot of Japanese developers have their eyes glued on it. Everyone in Japan is focused on Stadia and observing how it will go. This is especially true as unlike in most of the world, Stadia won’t be launching in November 2019 in Japan.
need less interviews and more gameplay 