While Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero isn’t due out for another couple of months, I caught up with Kento Jobana, the scenario writer for the game. In Part One of this two-part interview, we talk about writing the story for this sequel title, about his love for the mystery genre, and more!

You can check out Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero at the official website, on X, on Facebook and Instagram, on YouTube and Twitch, and on Discord.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is coming to PC (Steam) in Sprin 2025, and to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on January 30, 2025.

You can also pre-order the Collector’s Edition now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. here with Operation Rainfall, and could you please introduce yourself?

Kento Jobana: My name is Kento Jobana, and I work at Nippon Ichi Software primarily as a scenario writer. And in terms of being involved with the actual planning of the game from the earliest stages, I made a game about a young man [in] Bokuhime PROJECT as well as I worked on the planning for a game called, in English, Process of Elimination. It’s kind of a mystery adventure.

And in terms of scenario writing, in 2023, I worked on Disgaea 7 [: Vows of the Virtueless] and now, of course, I worked on Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, which will be coming out next year.

Marone (above) and Ash (below) were the protagonists of Phantom Brave, and both return for Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero. (Images courtesy of NIS America, Inc.)

OR: Real briefly, what is Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero about? Can you just give us a brief synopsis of the story?

KJ: So, the game starts about six months after the first game. Marona and her companion Ash had gone on this adventure and defeated the God of Destruction, Sulfur. The game starts right there – it starts with Marona and Ash living happily together, enjoying their lives and their work. One day, they go out on a mission far away from where they normally live. And on the way back from this mission, they encounter a fleet of ghost ships. Ash, in order to protect Marona, throws himself out there, which causes the two of them to become separated. Marona then has to journey to retrieve him.

After Marona falls off the ship – Ash throws her off, as it were – she is drifted along by the currents of the ocean [and] she winds up on a deserted island and meets this young Phantom called Apricot. So, Marona and Apricot hit it off really quickly in the beginning. It turns out that Apricot is also searching for a special someone, in this case, her father who ran this legendary pirate fleet. And so, the two of them, together, decide to reform this legendary pirate fleet under them and go searching for these two people who are very dear to them. One of the main things they do as they search for these two people and specifically as they search for Ash – they try to figure out just what is going on with this ghost pirate ship that they’ve seen before. So, part of that is solving that mystery to meet those two people that they care about.

OR: Why did you choose to set Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero six months after the first game instead of, say, years down the road when Marona and Ash are presumably more established in their Chroma skills and in their place in the world?

KJ: There are two reasons for that. The first reason is that Ash and Marona are very popular characters. And if [we] were to set the time too far later, it would change their appearance too much and fans wouldn’t appreciate that. So that’s one reason [we] reduced it to six months. And the second reason is that Phantom Brave ends very cleanly and very nicely. And so, setting a game so far out – it would be difficult to keep that flow going from the first game. So, what [we] landed upon was being able to show the world as it changed after the first game ended would be a much easier way to tell a story, and so that’s another reason [we] decided to have it set six months after instead of so many years after.

OR: Marona goes through the classical ‘Hero’s Journey’ [in Phantom Brave], and eventually her story is finished [in the first game]. How do you take characters whose story is finished and continue their growth?

KJ: That’s a great question – that’s something I struggled with myself. The first thing I actually thought was: ‘Why don’t I make a new main character?’, but because the fan attachment is so strong to Marona and Ash’s characters, [I] knew that there really wasn’t any other option than to use these two characters for the game.

One thing that I realized was that I could create another character that would be in a similar situation that Marona was in the first game – in other words, a young girl placed in very difficult circumstances and who had a lot going against her. Because we had Marona, who as a character experienced so much growth in the first game, she was able to understand where this young girl is coming from to look after her and kind of pull her along on this adventure. [I] went: ‘Ah! This is a way I can show this character’s growth.’

The second side is Marona, herself. As [I] mentioned, in the first game, she grows through her adventure, and she experiences tremendous character growth. However, when I was looking at the ending of the game and figuring out what areas I could portray further with these characters, I realized that there’s a scene towards the end of the first game where Ash and Marona get separated, but it’s very brief. However, that scene was very impactful because it made me think ‘[w]ell, how would Marona actually act if she was separated from this person who’d she’d known essentially her whole life?’

And so, I realized there’s a lot of aspects between these two characters – Marona and Ash – their relationship, that hadn’t been portrayed before. Particularly, in regard to how they would act if they were separated from one another. And so, I realized that there was a story to be told here and that’s why, in the story of Phanom Brave: The Lost Hero, very early on, we have Marona and Ash separated so we can see their character growth apart from one another. And it is also better to depict their relationship and how their relationship grows and changes.

“Honestly speaking, the scenario always comes first. In terms of game development, if you don’t have the story, the narrative thread, then you don’t really have a game.”

OR: One of the narrative traps that writers fall into is ‘flanderization’ – in other words, taking a single aspect of a character’s trait and making it their defining characterization to the exclusion of everything else. How do you address that to prevent that from happening in your sequel title?

KJ: I totally understand what you’re asking. What I did is obviously, aside from replaying the first game in its entirety, is that I went back and read the novelizations that were only in Japanese and some later stories that didn’t come out in English. [I] also went back to the original documents to read [them], and within [my] mind I created a high-resolution image of Marona. [I] went in very deeply about what made her a character, so that before [we] began working on the game, we were able to understand what made Marona, Marona.

And then in terms of how that affects not only the story and the narrative, but the gameplay – there were situations where I felt that, as a matter of course, this being a strategy RPG, there needs to be battles. There felt several times where Marona, as a character, wouldn’t necessarily want to participate in this battle or try to find a way around this battle.

So, what we did as an entire development team was sit down together, and again – reflected on what was said in the first game, and thought about the situations that Marona and Ash found themselves in, and thought ‘[w]hat would be the most naturalistic way that made sense for these characters to participate in these battles?’ Just to make sure how these characters were portrayed in the original wasn’t lost in the sequel, and they still acted like the characters that they were originally made to be in the original.

OR: How canon is Another Marona? How much did that side story content influence how you developed the storyline for Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero?

KJ: Well, for this in particular, that’s actually kind of a ‘what if’ story. Although the events are canonically happening, it’s very much a ‘what if’ and the truth is that there might be some players who are either unfamiliar with that from the first game, hadn’t played it, or didn’t know about it. So, to incorporate the events from that into this new [game] would just cause confusion for most players and they would go ‘[w]hat is this?’. And so, we decided to not focus on that or include any references to that within Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero.

That said, this is kind of maybe a hint for something – this is the first I’ve heard myself, but it turns out a lot of players did like Another Marona, as it were, and it seems to be a fan desire to see [Carona] again. Right now, the team is thinking about how they can potentially use that character again, use those events again, in the future. But nothing is set in stone.

OR: In addition to writing Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero‘s scenario, you also managed all the animations during story sequences, skill animations, and you also worked on the sound design and voice direction. How do you decide what of your storytelling and scenario writing is to be told through gameplay mechanics and visual design – such as the animations during story sequences- versus the explicit plot writing itself?

KJ: Honestly speaking, the scenario always comes first. In terms of game development, if you don’t have the story, the narrative thread, then you don’t really have a game. That becomes the baseline. However, from there, they ‘add meat to the bones’. And [by] ‘adding meat to the bones’ – in terms of enhancing the narrative – is by asking what music can be used in this scene here that can better express what we’re trying to do? What animations can we use in this scene in particular in order to better get across what we’re trying to portray in the story? However, without having a story, you can’t have those secondary things. So, the story comes first, however, there are times when they’re working on like, for example, music or sound design or animation design, that [we] realize ‘[o]h, this might necessarily affect a change in the story itself.’ That’s how the process goes, and that’s how [we] determine the importance of those different things. For [me] specifically, the story comes first, and it informs the rest of the development.

“What I love about mysteries is that they are essentially throwing the gauntlet and giving a challenge to the reader, or the person interacting with them.”

OR: In your NIS America interview from October 2024, you said about Process of Elimination that you were “able to work in many mystery novel elements, a personal love of mine.” Are there any particular mystery-genre books, games, movies, TV shows that you particularly love?

KJ: The first one is a famous manga series called The Kindaiichi Case Files [OR Note: 金田一少年の事件簿  by Seimaru Amagi, who goes by the pen name of Shin Kibayashi] about a young man who is a detective. First of all, [I] really love that one. The author, after creating that, there’s a sequel which depicts a school, a very typical Japanese school setting environment. [OR Note: 探偵学園Q, known in English as Detective School Q.] But it’s a school for detectives. These detectives learn within this school, and then they solve cases. [I] really, really love both of those manga.

There’s another one – Ryūsui Seiryōin created a [series] called Cosmic. [I] love this one too. This person was influenced by Nisio Isin, who created the Monogatari [OR Note: 物語] series and everything that falls within that is part of the mystery tradition, as well. [I] love that as well. But in particular, [Seiryōin] is influenced by the Monogatari [series] in his series Cosmic. [I’m] not sure if they’re translated into English or are well-known in English, but at least for him, they are very influential.

OR: What is it about this genre that appeals to you so much?

KJ: What I love about mysteries is that they are essentially throwing the gauntlet and giving a challenge to the reader, or the person interacting with them. Depending on the medium of the mystery, it completely changes how that challenge letter is sent to the readers. For example, within the written word, you’ve got various tricks you can use in how you write your sentences that offer hints to careful readers that can help readers figure out the mysteries. Within the medium of manga, you’ve got pictures. And so, the author would leave little hints within the pictures that the character would look at and be able to deduce what is happening. Finally, in my own game [I] made, Process of Elimination, [we] use sound design and [we] used the acting to give hints.

The fact that you’re able to interact with the reader in this way, to challenge the reader to figure out the mysteries and the answer – depending on the medium that you’re actually using to show the mystery, it can completely change how you write and how you give your answers. It’s what [I] find very appealing about the genre.

And that concludes Part I of our two-part interview with Kento Jobana!

Please return on Monday for Part Two, where we will talk more about writing Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero’s scenario, DLC plans, and what Jobana-san sees of himself in this game!

Thank you very much to NIS America, Inc., for helping to arrange this interview.

You can wishlist Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero on Steam now.

You can also pre-order the Collector’s Edition now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.

The post INTERVIEW- Kento Jobana On Writing Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, His Love for the Mystery Genre, and More (Part One) appeared first on oprainfall.

After attending the debut performance for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour in Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to sit down for an interview with one of the two conductors for the tour, Arnie Roth. In Part Two of this two-part interview, we talk about how setlists are determined for Distant Worlds and FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, what he is currently listening to, about FINAL FANTASY VII- A Symphonic Reunion, and more.

If you missed Part One, you can read it here.

You can check out my review of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour here.

You can also purchase tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour now.

Finally, you can find out more about AWR Music at their official website, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and on X.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

OR: Did you pick and choose what music pieces to include in the setlist for the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour?

AR: No, that was actually picked by the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth team. [Tetsuya] Nomura was a big part of that, and the entire team. They gave me the line up – the one thing I am doing is shifting some of the score order. Which performance did you hear, the LA?

OR: The debut in LA.

AR: So, that was the first performance. And one thing that I had pointed out to them, even before we started the tour, was ‘wow, we have a very long first half in terms of the balance.’ It’s almost 60 minutes of music in the first half [and] the second half goes much more quickly. And there’s also another dichotomy in that we really had the end of the first half going into Golden Saucer.

We tried in Chicago, just this last Saturday night – we did two concerts. In the second concert, we shifted Bare Your Soul and Welcome to Golden Saucer to open the second half, and then Loveless, just to help with the minutes of music and also, programmatically, it makes sense. And I think we’re probably going to stick with that order. I have some influence in terms of helping with the order decisions, and that kind of thing.

In Distant Worlds, I have a lot more programming autonomy. I have a couple of framework and concepts that we try to stay with in programming, but they allow me to shift all the music scores. I mean, Distant Worlds, we have 160-170 scores right now. And so, you never really have to repeat everything, although there are a couple of classics that we like to show. But with Remake or Rebirth and Chapter Three, when it comes down the road, I think it’ll be very well picked and sculpted by the team.

OR: I was there on a very snowy night in March 2008 for the North American debut of Distant Worlds at the Rosemont Theatre in Chicago. Now for me, it was amazing and unforgettable hearing Distant Worlds from FINAL FANTASY XI Online expansion Chains of Promathia being performed life. What was that night like for you? What were your thoughts after that night was over?

AR: I do remember that fantastic opening night here. But it wasn’t the very first performance of Distant Worlds – the first on was in December 2007 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in Stockholm. And I remember that being, again, because it was the first one, an unbelievable experience. One of the reasons it happened that way was because we had recorded our Distant Worlds I album with that orchestra and we happened to premiere there. Nobuo was there for that one, as well.

I also remember, probably the biggest shocking experience for me, was the very first Dear Friends in 2005 that I did. That was also in Chicago, in February at the Rosemont Theatre – you know, 4,000 people that sold out. And at the time, many fans weren’t sure if there were going to be more – Distant Worlds wasn’t created yet – but if there were going to be more concerts of this. So, there was a worry about that with a lot of fans. It was an absolutely electric moment, and so was the beginning of Distant Worlds.

But they’ve continued to be electric – especially when we play cities that we haven’t in before or that were rarely [visited]. Royal Albert Hall in London is fantastic, Carnegie Hall in New York [City], all the LA concerts are fantastic. But so is Seattle and San Francisco, and so is Berlin. [In] Paris – the French crowd is fantastic. The Italian crowd in Milan and Rome [are] fantastic. And southeast Asia is fantastic too, we want to get back to Australia again. We haven’t been there since 2018 or 2019? We’d like to get back there. We’re working on that for next year.

That was an electric moment, that first Distant Worlds – which other concerts have you seen?

“But thankfully, the series keeps going, right? So, there are new games, and there are some fantastic stuff in XVI that we are finally just now playing and that’s been a lot of fun to do. Everything keeps developing.”

OR: I’ve seen pretty much everything – and I [want] to ask you about FINAL FANTASY VII Symphonic Reunion which happened in June 2019.

AR: That was an unusual one, right?

OR: It was! While it showed the playthough of the entire FINAL FANTASY VII game on PlayStation One, what threw me about it – and I wrote about this – there were 14 live performances, three piano solos, and a lot of pre-recorded music playing. It’s the first and only time I’ve been to a FINAL FANTASY concert that didn’t have a fully live score. Can you talk a bit about that?

AR: Just to point it out – that was a one-time performance. It was conceived of by SQUARE ENIX. They brought me in as conductor. I didn’t produce that, and I didn’t pick the pianist or any of this. They wanted me to conduct those scores. I think they, honestly, know that there needed to be improvements on all of that.

The point of doing that concert was not clear to a lot of the fans, and to call it a concert, as a matter of fact – as a lot of fans pointed out – there was a lot of pre-recorded video on that too. So, it was a little confusing to fans because it was billed as a concert. SQUARE ENIX understands, they read all the feedback and they understand that. I really don’t have any more comments about it, other than it was an assignment that they asked me to conduct. We did that.

I think they were, maybe, trying to introduce – remember, a lot of things for many years were programmed around E3 in LA. I think that was one factor about this as well. ‘What are we going to do for E3 this year?’ or something like that. If I recall, it was alongside E3 or around that time, I could be wrong. I don’t think they’ll do that again.

OR: They did another concert, KINGDOM HEARTS Orchestra -World of Tres- the night before. I reviewed that one as well. It was an interesting event.

AR: That may be more convention-style than concert-style. They were heading that direction for those like-presentations. So, we’ll be working on a lot more projects as well with them going forward.

OR: When we briefly met at FINAL FANTASY VII Orchestra World Tour in Los Angeles, I asked you this – but I want to ask you here again. With Distant Worlds and A New World: Music from FINAL FANTASY– which your son, Eric Roth, conducts – and other various concert series, all of that music is drawn from the mainline numbered FINAL FANTASY entries. There are amazing tracks from sequels, such as Lightning’s Theme – A Distant Glimmer from Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII, that would be amazing for an orchestra to perform. Is it a conscious decision to limit the music to only [the] mainline numbers? If so, why?

AR: The answer is very easy. Yes, it is a conscious decision. Yes, I agree with you that there’s lots of other music on the offshoot games. So many of them, way more than the main roman numerals, right? It was a conscious decision simply because every single concert has a limited amount of minutes. If your goal is to represent FINAL FANTASY I through XVI, you’ll already, even if you just did one score from each of those – you’re already at two hours of music.

If you also have a couple of classics that have to be in there: two from FINAL FANTASY VII, two from VIII, two from XIV, or whatever – you have really eaten up your concert right away. It’s really a function of time, not anything else.

We have talked at times about doing some kind of a gala where we could present other things over several days. Maybe at some point in the future, we’re able to do that. But thankfully, the series keeps going, right? So, there are new games, and there are some fantastic stuff in XVI that we are finally just now playing and that’s been a lot of fun to do. Everything keeps developing.

And the other thing is that SQUARE ENIX is allowing me to do more themed Distant Worlds concerts. So, instead of this kind of broad-representing everything in every Distant Worlds concerts, I am able to do a thrust of XIV or XVI or maybe VII-IX-X, or whatever it may be. So, we’re experimenting around with being able to do that kind of thing. It doesn’t mean we’re not performing things from the other games, it just means that there may be a little more concentration.

Now, that worked very well when we had our concert in Carnegie Hall and Seattle with Soken, and we’ll be having more of those concerts. But we’re encouraged by that kind of programming, that that might be another way forward.

OR: Is there any particular piece that you would love to conduct from FINAL FANTASY that you haven’t done so yet? Anything from a spinoff?

AR: You know, that’s a tough question. I don’t think I can give you a specific piece. There are some specific pieces that we haven’t been able to perform very much. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve brought back Dancing Mad – people ask for that all the time. It was programmatically perfect for bringing back at the 20th anniversary of FINAL FANTASY VI, and also, it’s referenced in XIV. So it fit very well in that program, and we’re going to try to do some things like that going forward.

But trying to give you a specific piece that we haven’t done? I don’t have that for you right now. We get suggestions all the time, by the way.

“So, I will never take it for granted that we’re just going to keep going forever and be able to do these [performances] because there can be COVID or any number of things that will stop us in our tracks.”

OR: Your son, Eric Roth, is a conductor in his own right, and he is also conducting multiple stops on the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour too.

What is it like for you to have him both follow in your footsteps and yet standout beyond them as an accomplished conductor in his own right – including on the A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY series? I did attend [it] in Berkeley, California back in April 2022.

AR: I mean, it’s fantastic. Eric has a bachelor, masters, and PhD in music, music composition, and scoring. He has a wonderful analytical mind for these things. I think early on, it wasn’t necessarily decided that he was going to go into our commercial trust that we’re in.

But, I think once he started doing some of these concerts, he’s absolutely fallen in love with it and he’s embraced bringing in a lot of new scores, which has been really a lot of fun. We get a lot of latitude from what we can do with A New World, and we’re able to bring in a lot more new scores there. With Distant Worlds, we have to go through a larger approval process and there are many teams that we go through with SQUARE ENIX. With A New World, we do have approvals, but we can suggest a lot more and they are allowing us to do a lot more. Eric has had a great time doing that. Yeah, it’s fantastic – it’s really great – that he’s able to do that.

But I’ll tell you: We’re building up so many productions these days, and there are more to come here in the next few years. We probably will be looking at adding another conductor because [of] the amount of stuff going on concurrently – this is the first time, historically, that SQUARE ENIX has allowed us to do [this]. I’m in Japan doing [FINAL FANTASY] VII Rebirth, Eric is doing Rotterdam and Munich and Rome, right?

This is the first time that they’ve allowed the same production to be in two different continents at the same time. Previously, they didn’t allow that. They’re expanding with all that stuff. Now that they’re allowing us to do that, it allows us to plan other types of events like that. So very interesting, moving forward. It’s opening the door to a lot of interesting scheduling and programming.

OR: Who are you currently listening to?

AR: I’m listening to – well, let me preface before I get into that. I’m constantly listening to all the music that I have to deal with in our concerts. Especially go into VII Rebirth – tremendous amount of listening to the mini demo scores and all that we’re sent, along with sending the scores. That takes up a lot of my time.

In terms of casually listening? There’s some great new jazz artists that’ve come out. You know, there’s some wonderful contemporary classical music that I’m listening to. But I will tell you that a famous Chicago symphony musician once said to me: ‘Music is my life, all day long and all night. Every week when I go home, I like some silence.’ *laughs* And the reality is: refreshing one’s ears is a real factor. Listening to other things, other genres, and not the repertoire that we’re working on all the time. But I have to tell you that the ear and the brain are a muscle that has to be exercised as well.

The more that I can get the scores into my head – and I will say also that in VII Rebirth, we have many more medleys that we’ve had in previous productions. And with that is a lot more demanding tempo transitions, sections, and things like that we have to move 100 musicians on the stage into that. And some of these are what we call in the industry ‘scissor cuts’. There is no setup to it, you just go right into the next tempo. So, teaching that, and showing that – again, with the hands – is a big mental exercise and something I work on so that in my limited rehearsal time with them, I can pull them through on all this. It is very important quality – I am spending a lot of time working on these things.

Samara Joy: a beautiful jazz singer – I’ve really enjoyed her work. There’s a whole bunch of singers that I’m enjoying working with. I’ve also enjoyed working with Amanda Achen recently, she is doing a great job. And we’ll do more [with her].

OR: Last question: To those people out there who are thinking about attending DISTANT WORLDS or FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, or another production put on by AWR Productions but haven’t attended one before, do you have anything that you want to say to them?

AR: Well, there’s a couple of things. One is that we were shocked, when we did the recent FINAL FANTASY XIV/XVI Distant Worlds programs, we had a tremendous amount of people attending who had only gone to XIV Fanfest or that kind of thing and were attending a Distant Worlds concert for the first time. That is very interesting and gratifying to us. That means that we’re bringing in yet more fans, because we have tremendous very loyal Distant Worlds fans who come back for many concerts. That’s one thing.

The other thing is that we tried to keep these concerts extremely fresh – and by that, I mean there are new scores coming all the time. Not only new but bringing back some scores that haven’t been performed in maybe 10 years. Recently, we brought back things like Vamo’alla Flamenco from IX, or as I mentioned – Dancing Mad. And the [Maria and Draco] opera we did in San Francisco, recently. We love bringing these things back. We love doing that. For fans that have not gone to Distant Worlds, I think that they know the community already, they don’t need me to say ‘Talk to the fans who’ve been to Distant Worlds, don’t listen to me trying to explain why you should come.’ I will just say that most people who’ve attended have said that it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the real diehard, the real core, FINAL FANTASY fans to hear these things live with 100 musicians on stage.

And I don’t take this for granted. I mean, putting these productions together is a very big piece of work each time. A hundred of the top musicians in the world in each city, you really have to kind of work at all the logistics involved. Availability, venue, sound – all of these things are part of it, and the rehearsal schedule. So, I will never take it for granted that we’re just going to keep going forever and be able to do these things because there can be COVID or any number of things that will stop us in our tracks.

I would encourage people: take advantage of it, we’re trying to present these concerts in as many cities as we can that can support it. It’s just not possible to bring it to some of the very small, smaller, population bases – even though we have. We’ll go to Omaha, and we’ll go to some of the smaller cities, but we can’t do it very often with that kind of expense and personnel. But we really try to bring it all over the map in North America and [to] many cities in Europe as well. We’re expanding in southeast Asia; we’ll do more concerts there. And we want to get into Australia and some of the other territories as well.

OR: Thank you!

I want to thank Arnie Roth and AWR Music for taking the time to set up and participate in this interview!

You can (and should!) purchase tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour now.

What music pieces would you like to see in a future Distant Worlds performance?

Are you planning on attending FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW (Part Two): Conductor Arnie Roth talks FINAL FANTASY Orchestra Setlists, What He’s Currently Listening To, and More appeared first on oprainfall.

After attending the debut performance for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour in Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to sit down for an interview with one of the two conductors for the tour, Arnie Roth. In Part One of this two-part interview, we talk about his background, the role a conductor has in an orchestra and with a video game concert series, and more.

You can check out my review of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour here.

You can also purchase tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour now.

Finally, you can find out more about AWR Music at their official website, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and on X.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with Operation Rainfall, and you are?

Arnie Roth: Arnie Roth – I am the producer, conductor, and music director of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour. I also did [FINAL FANTASY VII] Remake [Orchestra World Tour], producer and conductor of Distant Worlds for many, many years, NieR – another video game series – and several others. But that’s me!

OR: You said in an interview with GameCloud back in January 2016 that you studied the violin when you were eight, and that became your focus when you received your Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at Northwestern University before you gradually shifted into a role of producer, conductor, and composer/arranger. And I think this started with the video game Halo where you were a musical arranger alongside actually performing the violin on the score in 2001, and as a composer/conductor on the movie Barbie as Rapunzel in 2002.

What made you want to go from only playing music on the violin to being more involved with the whole creative process? It is a pretty big step, after all.

AR: You have to actually go back and look – I commend you on the history. But you have to go back and look at more, because that will inform the decision a little bit. Yes, I was a violinist for…I don’t know how many years…Fifty years? Or more? But the point is that as I was doing more and more national television and radio recording work, album recording, and things like that – I was doing a big volume of writing arrangements for the various artists and products as well.

As I would do more writing, I would be asked by the actual artists themselves to come out to do the concerts live when they performed these new arrangements. So, I was doing more and more conducting and writing and arranging. Eventually, some artists started asking me to produce entire concerts and shows for them. Diana Ross, Peter Cetera, Jewel, Charlotte Church, a whole bunch of artists over the years.

And that led to my being appointed the music director and conductor of Chicagoland Pops Orchestra here in Chicago. That orchestra was in existence for a good number of years. While it was in existence, we were doing research about new products and new entertainment options because I would be creating the subscription series every year – three or four artists, that kind of thing, with the orchestra.

I decided after researching about what Japan was doing with video game concerts in the late 1990s and early 2000s to offer to do Dear Friends: Music from FINAL FANTASY. And that was actually the start of all the video game production in terms of AWR producing concerts.

Yes, you’re correct: I did, as a violinist and an arranger, work on Halo. Because it happened that the two composers, Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, very close friends of mine – they were working here in Chicago, and we were working on many other projects. It just happened that they were working on Halo, and I helped them with some orchestra arrangements on that.

“And I can stretch these things with particular poignant moments with Aerith or an exciting moment with a battle medley. We can go further with that live in the concert. We can do bigger hits on some of the same points, different than what they saw in the game – yet preserving the performance as very much the same as they are dealing with in the game.

So yes, we’re trying to stay as close to the performance template as they heard in the game, but we make the music breathe alive.”

OR: Did you have a background in playing video games before this?

AR: Not really before that, only just casually. Not with the intent of it ever becoming a concert situation. Which is interesting in and of itself – I mean, [that] my life went that direction. I think you need to look again at a wider net, if you look at what orchestras are doing these days. There’s an awful lot of movies with live orchestras happening. This never happened 15, 20 years ago. That started happening almost concurrently when we were starting to introduce video game concerts. I think there is kind of a broadening of all these things. At the very beginning, it was something like ‘is that really going to be a ticket-selling entertainment item?’ Many orchestras and presenters didn’t believe that [it would be] at the beginning. So, it’s taken a good number of years – now it’s quite in-demand – and we’re going all over the place, all over the world, with these things. But it’s been an interesting road.

OR: Did you see the movie Tár?

AR: I did.

OR: During the [movie’s] opening, Lydia Tár talks in an interview about how time is the essential piece of interpretation, and how her left hand shapes the music while her right hand marks time and moves it forward and stops it as she wishes.

In the lead up to the ending where she is conducting a Monster Hunter: World orchestra performance, the film takes pains to make it look like she has no ability to interpret that game’s score beyond what is on the paper and what the composer thinks about it.

How true is this? Are you merely a human metronome through and through at a video game concert? Or do you have the space to interpret the music score of composers like Nobuo Uematsu, Masayoshi Soken, Yoko Shimomura, and Masashi Hamauzu for yourself to an orchestra and for the public?

AR: There’s several parts to that question.

From the movie Tár, and I only saw it once – but at the end of it, where she was sayin the basic concept that you’ve giving the orchestra the basic timeframe work with your right hand, mostly – those that are right-handed – and with your left, you’re doing some separate cuing and shaping. You’re doing that with your right hand as well. There is a lot that can be done with the two hands. There’s a lot you can do with the two hands with shaping music.

Now, you have to look at what we do in the various productions. There are productions where we need to stay very faithfully with the pre-lay and the tempo met[ronome]. Sometimes that’s met with a click track that’s fed to some of the musicians in the orchestra and the conductor. Sometimes the entire orchestra – I can give you examples of that kind of thing.

I am very fortunate that for Distant Worlds, they are allowing me – and this is very much because of the way we started this with Nobuo Uematsu – but they [SQUARE ENIX] are allowing me and AWR to be more free to conduct this music without a click track. It’s my duty to get close to the way that all the fans have heard it in the game, of course, and Distant Worlds was kind of a unique situation. In Distant Worlds, we have each one of the scores represent one song or one sequence from a specific game. And obviously, in Distant Worlds, we’re trying to represent the entire FINAL FANTASY series as much as we can.

So, that’s challenging in and of itself. But the idea of having freedom to be able to stretch a cadence a little longer, to be able to push a tempo a little faster – we use synchronizing techniques. Obviously, it’s not using a click track with Distant Worlds, for the most part. But there are visuals, there are various things that I can watch on the conductor video [so] that I know the arrival point is happening [for it]. And knowing the music really well, I am able to accelerate to get to that arrival point – or if we’re ahead, I’m able to pull it back a little bit.

The good news is that all of these things are not designed by SQUARE ENIX to be what we call ‘hard sync.’ To give you an example of ‘hard synchronization:’ if the rabbit hits the wall, and the cymbal crashes five seconds later, even a five-year old knows that there is a problem, that the sync isn’t working. So, we never have that kind of thing like a cartoon – slam into a wall, everything has to stop or crash, right? We have battle scenes, of course. It’s mostly gameplay cuts and things like that. So, that gives us more flexibility in terms of our sync and how tightly we have to be in sync with that.

Now FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth – we are staying very tightly in sync with the video as much as possible. But still, we’re staying in the same template of not using a click track for the entire orchestra. As soon as you do that, if you put all the musicians on stage with a click track, they start tuning out some of their own performance. They’re focused in on the metronome that’s going on in their ear, basically. And we really prefer for the orchestra to work with me, musically, if the music can breathe.

You also have to look at this from a video game standpoint. These players, of listening to the same recording of the same music with the same dynamic progression and the same tempo every time they play the game. For the first time they come to the concert, and all the sudden they can see the full dynamic range, really, pianissimo and fortissimo off the top – because in the game, they don’t want the players to have to reach for the volume, obviously, reaching to move it up and down all the time. So, it’s very compressed, right? Everything kind of meets in the middle. So, we can do that. That’s another function of what the live concert can do.

And I can stretch these things with particular poignant moments with Aerith or an exciting moment with a battle medley. We can go further with that live in the concert. We can do bigger hits on some of the same points, different than what they saw in the game – yet preserving the performance as very much the same as they are dealing with in the game.

So yes, we’re trying to stay as close to the performance template as they heard in the game, but we make the music breathe alive.

“You’re pointing out…some of the reasons and directions that a conductor can have on the performance and the very reason that we’re not using a metronome or a click track.

It’s for that reason I can shape that Aerith’s Theme melody with the pianist. I can ask where they might put the emphasis on which note to make it a little more poignant or make a little more finality to the cadence of that melody. There are all these little things that I can do with rehearsal.”

OR: I want to follow up on that. How do you see your relationship with the orchestra? I know that Andris Nelsons, who is the music director at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, believes that the composer is the driving force, the conductor encourages and leads the performers, and there is a hierarchy there. How do you see your role with them?

AR: The conductor is the leader. The orchestra doesn’t start, doesn’t pause, doesn’t take a tempo for any of this without the conductor showing them. And he or she is also the leader in terms of making the musical interpretation and statement. You can set up a click track and a metronome, and just have them play the notes. And certainly, all the greatest orchestras have played many of these pieces, classic scores – you know: Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Ravel – they can play this, that isn’t the issue. The notes are there. The issue is trying to make a musical statement, and pulling it back, arriving at a certain point, maybe you want to accent something new in the rhythm to push a particular structural point you’re trying to show people.

All of these things have to be thought about by the conductor in advance of any rehearsing. And I’ll say another thing: musicians are very particular about rehearsal technique. It’s critically important that you not waste their time or any rehearsal time. That you really have a plan mapped out, that you make very good use of all the precious seconds and minutes you have. For many of these things – because we don’t have that many rehearsals – they may be fabulous musicians, but you really have to have a plan heading into this of how much time can I spend on this score, how much can I move forward. How much I’m able to show them in the concert – and I don’t have to go over this again in the rehearsal. I can save some of the gestures for later.

I will tell you that when I first started doing these, you filled up the experience of how to do this over many years. This isn’t something you learn immediately. And that’s one of the issues for conductors: There’s not as much opportunity for new conductors and young conductors to get out there and practice rehearsal technique. That’s really critically important.

OR: To add on to that: Looking at the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour schedule: on August 31st and September 1st, you conduct the Osaka Symphony Orchestra, on September 7th and 8th, you conduct the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in Kanagawa, and then on September 13th, you conduct the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra and Singapore Choir in Singapore. You’re working with all of these orchestras in a very compressed time [window] as a guest conductor because you’re not their full-time conductor.

AR: Correct.

OR: Taking Aerith’s Theme in the performance’s second half as an example: you can easily explain the technical language of the score. For example, asking your pianist to play a D Major triad in inversion followed by a first inversion A minor triad, all of these broken chords in common time – it is the famous six-note non-functional harmony everyone recognizes.

But how do you get across the emotional and associative language of that music’s heart with the game, its story, and its characters in that narrow of a time window with these different orchestras you’re popping in with? After all, technicality alone doesn’t show the soul of a musical piece.

AR: You’re pointing out by that question some of the reasons and directions that a conductor can have on the performance and the very reason that we’re not using a metronome or a click track. It’s for that reason I can shape that Aerith’s Theme melody with the pianist. I can ask where they might put the emphasis on which note to make it a little more poignant or make a little more finality to the cadence of that melody. There are all these little things that I can do with rehearsal. Every one of these three that you just mentioned – Osaka, Tokyo Philharmonic, Metropolitan Festival – and by the way, this next weekend, I’m going to Forth Worth for the Fort Worth Symphony – I’ve worked with every single one of those orchestras before in the past. So, although I am a featured guest conductor, these are all familiar orchestra who’ve worked with me. I’ve worked with them many times, and I have no problems with them.

So, I’ve worked with all of them before, so it won’t be a big surprise to them or to me to work together. Not only that, but when you mention something like Aerith’s Theme, this is something we would have played in Distant Worlds concerts as well. So, they have some experience with that. We’ve actually gotten to an age with video game music – particularly classic ones like Aerith’s Theme, One-Winged Angel, To Zanarkand – for many of these orchestras have played these things with me before. So, there is some knowledge of what I’m going to do with them.

With FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth – there’s a lot of big surprises in there for them. Even though a lot of it is based on things, you have this huge battle theme from FINAL FANTASY VII, you have this really difficult J-E-N-O-V-A battle epic – lots of very difficult things. You also have the very fun Suzuki scores that we are doing: Bare Your Soul and Queen’s Blood, the card game, is fantastic. And by the way: [Queen’s Blood is] very difficult for the orchestra as well. It’s a very fast tempo thing. And in this concert, the orchestra’s being asked to do many different styles.

We have a big band in Queens Blood, you have a grand parade in Rufus’ Welcome Ceremony, you have all this battle music, and then of course, you have this classic, poignant music like Aerith’s Theme. I would say more than Remake, we have many more styles in this one that an orchestra has to be able to handle well.

OR: One of the biggest surprises for me at the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour was that No Promises to Keep was presented as an instrumental, and that in the game itself, it is a vocal song.

Why go that route in presenting that score instead of having a guest vocalist, assuming Loren Allred wasn’t available, [to] perform it at different stops? To add onto that – how did you go about adapting a vocal piece to become an instrumental?

AR: You actually heard the adaptation of the vocal piece as an instrumental. It’s really not my decision whether to use a vocalist or not. [SQUARE ENIX] made a decision that if we were going to present this as a vocal, we had to have Loren Allred. She wasn’t available for the entire tour, which is no surprise. We were very fortunate to get her to be available for the New York performance, and that’s the only one she’s doing. But the reality is that SQUARE ENIX made the decision that we would do it as an instrumental.

I understand the frustration with that, and we could have hired another vocalist to do it. They didn’t want to substitute with somebody who wasn’t in the game. I will tell you that it’s a challenge for me, in that one of the ways that you can do that is give the first violins the basic vocal melody for most of it and then it goes to some other instruments throughout the arrangement. That’s the easy way to replace the vocal. What’s difficult for me, speaking of timing here, is trying to match the tempo exactly with Aerith on screen singing this thing and her lips literally on the same rhythm as we’re doing. That one is kind of tough to do with the orchestra. You can be a fraction of a second off, but I think everyone understands that it is an instrumental, it’s not a vocal singing that, so. But other than that, I think it works, but clearly everyone loves that song, which is interesting to me.

You know Nobuo is famous for that kind of song – it’s his classic M.O. He’s done a lot of those pop classic-kind of songs. You think of Kiss Me Goodbye, you think of Eyes On Me – they are all in that ‘mold’ of Western-classic song-style. A different one is like Suteki De Ne, from [FINAL FANTASY] X, which is quite different. We love that. Or the anthem from FINAL FANTASY XIV, Answers, very different, a beautiful piece. We love all the different songs that are involved. We just actually worked with Amanda Achen doing a lot of the XIV songs that Soken has written, and she’ll be doing more work with us as well.

And that wraps up Part One of our interview!

Please return on Friday for Part Two where we talk a bit more about the setlists for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour and Distant Worlds, about the one-off FINAL FANTASY VII Symphonic Reunion concert in 2019, and more!

Tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour are on sale now.

Have you attended FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour? 

If so, what do you think of it?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW (Part One): Conductor Arnie Roth discusses FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, Conducting, and More appeared first on oprainfall.

At the conclusion of Day 1 of the Dawntrail Media Tour, members of the media were permitted to submit questions for Naoki Yoshida, the producer and director of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, to answer over an hour block of time. The gamut of questions ranged from suggestions for gameplay about Materia to whether or not Dawntrail is the start of a new saga for FINAL FANTASY XIV Online.

Below is a summary of that Q&A for all of the questions asked.

This Q&A has been edited for content and clarity.

Are there any examples of “improved reward” as shown in previous PLL [OR Note: Producer Letter Live] and also today’s presentation? Is it more tomestones cap over 7.x patches? Is it more gear drops from 8man/24man raids or existing contents? Or simply just more rewards like cosmetic purposes (minions/mounts)

Yoshida-san made it clear the tomestones cap will not be increasing. [OR Note: It was announced earlier this week that new tomestones will be released and others will be discontinued, however.] Some of the feedback they’ve received is that the rewards are lacking (including in amount) for a lot of the dungeon content, especially for the variant dungeons. They did not have the resources to allocate towards having player-fulfilling rewards for offered content, and so they want to improve upon the rewards given and to increase the reward amounts for dungeons. This does not mean just for minions and mounts, but gear and weapons.

Another factor is they want to bring in different content than what has been offered before, and those rewards will be to fill in gaps – the gear drops may not provide maximum iLvls, but they will still raise average iLvl to midlevels. Yoshida-san admitted it is hard to explain in words, but to look forward to Patch 7.1 for more information. He did reiterate they will increase the amount of gear given as a reward.

I would like to know if there are plans to create a central Party Finder since many raiders DC travel to Aether for NA if they want to find groups. We could even tie in the Oceanic region as well!! This leaves players without access to FC buffs, mail, retainers, etc while they are trying to fill groups. Also, since we are getting many graphical and system updates in Dawntrail, are there plans for a modernized friends list similar to Blizzard’s Battle.net or Steam friends?

Yoshida-san said they are aware players want this, but he said traveling between different physical data centers and having different party finders will need a separate system to manage. If they had this in place, it would solve a lot of problems, but it would be nice. It would take two to three years of work to make happen, and so they wonder if there is an alternative method that would work. They are currently focusing resources on 7.0 at the moment. Once that has settled down, they will talk more about this subject. Yoshida-san said that he does want to solve this, he isn’t giving up on it, but they have to talk about it more.

As for the friends list and improvements, there has also been a lot of feedback for it. But they are improving the blacklist first, and once that has settled down, they are looking at adjusting the friends list as well. Yoshida-san noted that Battle.net, etcetera, are things companies have put their full resources into. They will try to do their best.

In terms of new player experience, can we see more skills becoming available to players at low levels (as has been done in the past) to refresh that starting experience?

Yoshida-san said with the level cap growing to 100, the team had to review each job’s available actions and their level distribution. He said they tried to keep a good balance across the levels, but they aren’t completely sure about the lower levels, and they do welcome specific feedback on the forums.

It does raise a question about striking a good balance, because people expect they will get new actions when the level cap goes up. They can always increase the number of available actions, but there can be too many and it will be cumbersome. He pointed out that conversely, if you learn it all at lower levels, then what is the purpose of leveling at the higher levels? Furthermore, they don’t want to decrease back to, say, level 50. They said they do think about this, and they are trying to do their best too.

If you could recommend any quests (job, side content, etcetera) to complete before Dawntrail, which would you recommend for players really into FFXIV lore?

Yoshida-san pointed out that if people are really into lore, then they would have already done a lot of the side content. He said he doesn’t want to give away too much, but the most recent alliance raid, Myths of the Realm, would give background information. He also referenced the names of all 14 seats of the Convocation. He said that is a good place to start to get into FINAL FANTASY XIV Online lore.

What were some of the inspirations for Dawntrail?

Yoshida-san referenced what he said during the Fan Festivals, and that one of the inspirations was giving a summer vacation for players. He stated they previously went to the edge of existence in Endwalker and to the Thirteenth in more recent patches. He said what they were doing started to feel all narratively similar, and so they wanted to bring in a new perspective in the Source with a new adventure and new lands and diverse cultures and people with different values. The theme is more uplifting and with adventure – to bring that kind of vacation feel.

Yoshida-san drew a comparison to the real world and all the sad news about war and chaos taking place. He stated with FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, they want to focus on relationships between people for both in-game people and real-life players with different values. They are showing this through the history of Tural and the cultures they represent and how they interact. He hopes it brightens the real-life future as well. Additionally, Warriors of Light wouldn’t be excited with just relaxation, and so there are exciting battles and content ahead, and Yoshida-san encouraged people to play all the way through 7.0.

With the introduction of Viper, there are now six melee DPS. Within these six jobs there are: Striking, Scouting, and Maiming left-side gear as well as Slaying and Aiming right-side accessories. As you can imagine, these make managing gearsets and Materia melds (specifically for skill speed) very hectic. Are there any plans moving forward for either consolidation of melee gearsets and/or Materia loadouts?

My suggestion to fix this easily would be to have players meld material onto their job stones or a skill tree instead of directly onto gear which is being shared across multiple jobs.

Yoshida-san said he is always wondering what direction they want to take simplifying into and how much they should support that. He stated how they wanted to bring a more fulfilling gameplay experience from 7.0 into the 7.x patches, and they talk about how to make more robust content that will challenge players. They looked at more recent content, including battle content, and it started to feel more similar to each other. They have used unique mechanics in the past where parties had to get creative about it. Over the years though, the development team has gotten more conservative about those mechanics, and the player feedback has been harsh about it too. The development team therefore included less unique dungeon elements.

He said they want to address any ‘pain’ points for players – and he described the targeting circle sometimes being as big as the entire field as an example of that. They are trying to shift focus into more robust gameplay, such as the main tank and off tank having specific tasks to be doing or removing one of the DPS and having them fighting a different enemy. They want to introduce fresh mechanics into battle. They’ve also heard comments about how a lot of the content feels similar. He also pointed out that there is feedback from players about how one job has a particular action and yet another job does not. They are not saying that player feedback is bad, but they want to make sure that players are having fun with the game.

Yoshida-san feels, though, that they have gone a bit too far. They would love to go into the various jobs and make them all individual but won’t do it at the same time as they are adjusting gameplay content, because doing it all at once would be a problem. Their current goal is to work through 7.x series to improve on content and then bring a fresh a new perspective to players. Yoshida-san then said that it comes down to different jobs and how much do they accommodate that kind of support on the developer side. He explained that with the different jobs available, if they make it simpler to manage melded Materia for gear – like making it one-button clickable to replace the Materia – the question becomes if it will contribute to a fulfilling gameplay experience.

They are serious about the adjustments and the choices they make but the team does feel they have introduced too many types of Materia, and they should revise that system. Yoshida-san stated this was a good idea that was put forward in the question, and that he may talk with the team about among the other discussions.

How is Dawntrail shifting away from the single player orientation brought about during Shadowbringers to encourage collaborative play [among] the Warriors of Light?

Yoshida-san said that he, and other core team members, wanted to emphasize they are watching your streams and that they want feedback. He said it is not a shifting away, per se. The development team have a long-term goal to accomplish – and this is part of it. The biggest reason people hesitate to play an MMORPG is because people don’t want to play with other players. He wanted to change that hesitation, and he said that one advantage they have is that the story is so good. He wanted to pull people into FINAL FANTASY XIV Online without them having to deal with the pressure of working with others. If he got those people who hesitated to jump in, then that increases the number of players who are available to play together. They decided to make solo-focused gameplay because of it.

Yoshida-san further explained this solo-based content built a playerbase that allows them now, with Dawntrail, to go back to the MMORPG elements to play together in a new stage of the game. He said he is sure that people will find out that the FFXIV community is kind and helpful, and he said if a Sprout fails a mechanic, then they aren’t going to be yelled at or anything. He further explained the solo runs are used by some people as ‘practice runs’, so that when they are grouped with other people, they will have knowledge of the dungeon so it will go more smoothly.

In the future, are [there] plans to rehaul the iLvl sync system? Currently, the calculations are very convoluted and confusing for new players when syncing for various contents, including high level raids, where the higher iLevel gear may not actually be best in slot. For example, this is in part due to Materia stats not being included in syncing.

My suggestion would be to include Materia stats, in addition to the base stats, but also put a cap on them.

Yoshida-san said that calculations for iLvls are quite complex, and it does put a load on the servers. He said they are aware there is a misalignment with Materia. The iLvl system comes from FINAL FANTASY XI Online and the formula for it was developed solely by Mitsutoshi Gondai. [OR Note: iLvl was introduced in 2013’s Seekers of Adoulin expansion.] With the iLvl sync system in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, they got Gondai-san to program it in. He was also the first battle director for FFXIV. He is still involved with FFXIV, and he is a very dedicated team member.

Yoshida-san further explained that iLvl system in FFXIV was rather rushed, because they were trying to get the game ready for launch. He said it was a good idea and they will take it back and discuss it further while trying to also keep a lower load on the servers.

In Producer Live Letter 81, you stated that the discussions for the next expansion -8.0- had already started. Is Dawntrail the start of a new saga that will be continued into further expansions, or is it intended to be a standalone story?

Yoshida-san opened by saying that whether or not they want to make Dawntrail an ongoing saga or not has not been determined yet. He said that this is because when they released Heavensward, they did not know it was going to be one long saga. At the time, they were focused on rebuilding FINAL FANTASY XIV Online after the harsh 1.0 launch, that they wanted to just make sure to continue the game and that it would continue to exist. He said that at that time, it was just one step at a time, and they didn’t have a mind to go to SQUARE ENIX and tell them that it would be just one long saga because they would just call it crazy.

He said that around the time of Stormblood, they started to say it looks like it is just one continuous story for them to tell. He said that there was some foreshadowing in Heavensward and Stormblood in the hopes they would be able to depict a larger overarching story. In similar fashion, there will probably be some foreshadowing that might lead to something throughout Dawntrail’s story.

Yoshida-san said he has to wait to see how players react to Dawntrail’s story and the finale of the expansion. But they do have several ideas in their pocket about where to go to. They have something incorporated into 7.0 that is exciting that they can’t say quite yet. Yoshida-san said that they will wait and see what the future holds. He said in his mind, there are storylines for the next two expansions, and so he hopes that players will continue to be excited over FINAL FANTASY XIV Online and he will see the players reactions to Dawntrail. He said Dawntrail is all about a summer vacation, so next time may be all ice and frozen. He concluded that rather than worrying about it all being one long saga or not, he wants to bring excitement, new exploration, and new elements to players for them to enjoy in Dawntrail.

Please check out my thoughts on the new Viper job, on the new Pictomancer job, and what my overall thoughts are for the Dawntrail demo.

If you want more FINAL FANTASY XIV Online-themed content, then be sure to check out my ongoing cooking series, Cooking Eorzea!

Also, check out what eleven FINAL FANTASY XI Online enemies that I think need to be part of the upcoming Echoes of Vana’diel raid series in Dawntrail.

What new features would you like to see in Dawntrail and in future expansions?

Are you ready for a summer vacation in Tural?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Dawntrail Media Tour: Media Day 1 Q&A with Naoki Yoshida appeared first on oprainfall.

This interview about Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution was originally supposed to go live during the time window while you could still pre-order a physical Game Boy Advance copy of the game from Limited Run Games. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, this interview ended up being delayed into May for publication. However, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution will be coming to home consoles, and so you can still definitely pick up a copy of the game then.

You can find out more about WayForward and Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution on the official website, on Discord, on Facebook and Instagram, on X, on TikTok, on YouTube, and on Twitch. 

You can also check out my impressions of a hands-on demo of Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution here.

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution is set to release in 2024 on Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and could you two introduce yourselves?

Matt Bozon: I’m Matt Bozon, I’m the director of the Shantae series — but specifically here, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution.

Erin Bozon: And I am Erin Bozon, the creator of Shantae.

OR: Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution started at a Game Boy Advance title in 2002. What can you tell us about this title, and why was it never released?

MB: Well, it is a sequel to the original Shantae game — early, early ideas for this game started in November of 2000, which was when we got our dev kits. Shantae 1 was still in development, so we were starting to think about what a sequel might be. I actually started to have some of its early, early framework — or I guess design ideas, I should say — getting worked on even while the first game was not quite done.

You asked why it was not released. So, Game Boy Advance was very difficult at retail. It was very license driven, toy aisle, movie tie-ins, TV show tie-ins. It was very challenging. And prices of those cartridges were very expensive, so it was very hard to get publishers to want to take a gamble on an expensive cartridge for a completely unknown property. [And] the first game hadn’t even come out yet. And by the time it did come out, it had proven to not be a great seller. It was a fan favorite-

EB: -it only sold 10,000 copies.

MB: So yeah, it got cult [classic] status.

EB: It had a limited release.

MB: Yeah, it had a fan following, but not really a lot. Not enough to prove it would be successful as a Game Boy Advance game. Which, as I mentioned, was so much more expensive to manufacture and produce. Margins were very slim, and so, ultimately, there were a couple of places that looked at it and went ‘Maybe we could do something with this if you can get it on the cheapest cartridge and you can cut the content down.’ Really nice people who tried their best. But we’re like ‘We can’t even fit the demo on one of these tiny cartridges, much less the whole game — there’s just no way.’

EB: We [had] maxed out all the features, so to cut it down wouldn’t have worked.

MB: So, it just got put away and Shantae didn’t really come back again until digital distribution, which was like a rebirth — that was Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, which was a completely different game. This one just kind of went away and stayed away.

EB: And waited for more updated technology.

MB: For us, Risky’s Revenge was the third game we developed. But it’s the second game anyone ever saw.

“We’re always trying to do the next Shantae game, always. It’s always on the forefront.”

OR: How much progress was actually made in Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution before the project was shelved? How much of what WayForward did back in 2002 was actually still usable for this upcoming release?

EB: I think 50 percent?

MB: Fifty percent of the game’s systems, all of the player mobility, transformations, animations, big ideas that had already been built — engine, all that kind of stuff. What it didn’t have was the Golden Path adventure. You could only do 25 percent of it. So, if you’re speaking purely of game development, that is about halfway through the development process. Usually, the back half is a lot of ‘Now you’ve got to mass produce your content.’ We had done all the legwork, but we hadn’t done all the other stuff where you build out the full game experience.

This was really, really important at the beginning of the project: ‘Were we going to just resume work?’ And we ended up doing that. It’s just the same work, same code, same tools — tried to put our computers in the state they were in 20 years ago, back when resolutions of 1024 by 768 was as big as your computer monitor could possibly display. We had to go back in time and actually work in those constraints. Stuff and tools that were not even Windows-compatible yet, they were in DOS. Animations were made in DOS. A lot of this stuff — we’re working on stuff that is old, even back then. In the early ’90s, we were working on tools from the ’80s.

EB: Dpaint! [OR Note: Also known as Deluxe Paint.]

MB: Dpaint, yeah!

EB: DPaint was our go-to for the first game and the second one.

MB: All that stuff was still the same stuff. While we made improvements, we didn’t ditch the old things. We just continued. And that’s kind of like having one or two hands tied behind your back, honestly. So, you get none of the advantages of modern game development, other than being able to communicate with Teams and talking and chatting on a video call. But not the game.

EB: You were saying that there was no ‘undo’, right?

MB: There’s no undo! *laughs* We didn’t have that kind of technology yet! It’s Game Boy Advance, through and through. That’s what it is.

OR: Why look to the past to bring Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution back now instead of working on the next ‘big thing’ after Shantae: Seven Sirens and after the re-release of the first two Shantae games?

MB: That’s the best question ever.

EB: We’re always trying to do the next Shantae game, always. It’s always on the forefront. But you have to find someone to help fund it, you have to find the time and the staff and a slot — because a lot of times, you have to work on other titles in order to afford to do something that’s an indie game. So we came to a point where’s it’s like ‘Okay, we can afford to work on another Shantae game because he had just finished working on — I’m not sure we can say it-‘

MB: *laughs* I help out a lot at the studio! I was between projects I was helping out on.

EB: Yeah, we can’t say exactly what he was working on, but he had been on something for a year, and then he was going to have a time where he could actually work on maybe a Shantae game. So, we did talk about doing the next one in the series. But there was this one that had never been released, and it told us a little more of the story. It’s like — it’s there, and when can we release it? And retro stuff is really on the rise right now. So, it’s like ‘Yes, we could do a new one, but when are we ever going to go back to finish this one?’ And so, it just seemed like a good time.

And we did ask different companies if they could help fund it, and we did show them different games. And they were like ‘Yes! Let’s do this!’ and we were so thankful that someone will help fund it so we can get another Shantae game out.

So things lined up — Michael Stragey was available, and he did the engine for the first game, and Matt was available, and we had a lot of the art already done. So instead of maybe taking a year or two to do the whole new game, this one could fit into a slot that was less than a year. So timewise too, for Shantae fans, you don’t want them to go too long before a new game comes out. So to know that it had already been since 2020 or 2019 since the last Shantae game came out, we were like ‘Ahhh, if we can just get another one to play while we work on the next one, that would be great!’

MB: Completely along with that — Limited Run Games had been doing more reproduction cartridges — like that great thing with Shantae on Game Boy Color. It was like everything aligned nicely.

EB: Josh [Fairhurst] is such a fan that he was all for it, and that they would come on board and help us make another game. We can’t do it ourselves.

MB: He totally believed in us and in the preservation mission that he has. ‘Yeah, we’re finding an old game — here is an old copy laying around on a hard drive, and it should have existed but it didn’t.’ And so, he gave it another shot.

And like you said — Mike Stragey — we weren’t working together anymore. He had gone on to do other things, and it had been 20 years. So, he was between projects, and the timing was right. He’s like ‘I could do it, is it real?’ and we were like ‘Maybe it’s real! I don’t know!’ And then all the pieces fell into place. Super cool, also kind of a now-or-never thing. I feel if this was five years later, I’m not sure it would have made any sense — I feel like it would have gone away again.

EB: Especially as we continue to make more and more advancements with the Shantae series, I feel like now is a good time because we’re still [re]-releasing some of the older ones.

MB: Definitely.

OR: You streamed Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution demo as part of the Kickstarter campaign for Shantae: Half-Genie Hero in 2013. During that demo, you mentioned “I’m playing this game with an analog stick — this game was not designed for an analog stick” — and obviously, platforming with a D-Pad is way different than platforming with a Switch [Joy-Con] or PS4/PS5 controller, and this game has been announced for modern consoles.

How difficult was it to adapt the game’s GBA controls to modern console controllers?

MB: So, I guess I’ll say that that is a work in progress. The closest thing to this game, and I know it’s very strange — once this game is done, it will be as though it was done 20 years ago. Pretend that it was remembered fondly by people who played it — even though they didn’t — and now pretend that it is now time for the port by Carbon Engine team to modern consoles. It will be very similar to how they did the port for Shantae Game Boy Color. And since we’re working on it together — WayForward and Limited Run — it’ll also be very similar to when we ported Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse from the Nintendo 3DS with that upscaler kind of look to it. Not upscaling the pixels, the pixels are clean — I don’t like blurry pixels, it’s a thing of mine I can’t stand that, I like clean pixels — but the illustrations.

Erin’s group has artists redrawing everything at 4k resolution, and it will be beautiful. Your Carbon Engine port will have your Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse­-like, if you’re playing that game on a modern console, similar. You have your pixel art in the middle, your beautiful portrait art on the edges, your illustrations. And if you want, you can still play the cartridge version on [modern consoles], too.

So, if you are like ‘I want the way it really looked without all the high-res art’ — same with the controls. Just like on Pirate’s Curse, you can use the control stick to move around. If that’s what is comfortable for you, you can do that. But for, I think a lot of players, they are going to reach down lower on the controller and get the control pad and use that for the more traditional controls. So you can use both.

For me? I actually tend to play it both ways. When I’m getting into the precision-type fighting moments, I go down on my control pad. When I’m starting to wonder about, I’m taking a little rest and using my analog stick for my thumb. So, you can do both. But traditionally though, people are gonna wanna use the control pad.

Or I’ll plug in my Super Nintendo controller — I use that all the time for Switch stuff. I love plugging that thing in — any device that will support my SNES controller. I love it.

OR: Something interesting for a Game Boy Advance game — you can’t really patch it after release. We saw that when Nintendo tried to Berry patch Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. How does it feel knowing that you have to get it right now?

MB: I’m nervously laughing. The reason I’m nervously laughing is — okay, Erin and I have done so many games. We have a Sabrina game that got 25 percent of the game deleted the day before the game shipped. Not the day before — at midnight, it was shipping in the morning to manufacturing. You really made 25 percent of the games, between midnight and 6 a.m.? Does that sound familiar?

EB: And I was pregnant — I was eight- or nine-months in.

MB: So, you’re making levels and people at the same time? *laughs* That’s crazy. It is a completely different mindset that I think is kind of gone from the world today. You have to live with everything that’s going out there. When it’s done, it’s not done. You have people who play it — as many people as can get hands on it.

EB: That’s why, after beta, we have a playtesting phase that goes for a month or something. You have as many people get their hands on it to try to find as many bugs. Our son was a play tester for years, and now he animated some of the Shantae characters. But he was a play tester since he was 15, until a couple of years ago.

MB: He’s good with the glitch theory-type stuff.

EB: He tries to break it.

MB: He’s like ‘If this is a game that is built on these types of things, then theoretically, they will probably do these things.’ And then he goes checks it.

EB: He’s a genius — he is like ‘I can break it, I know I can!’

MB: So there’s ‘Yeah, we’re gonna do the traditional Q&A looking for bugs’, and we’re also more like the quality — is it fun? And then there’s a whole other thing that Limited Run is going to do — and I had never heard of such a thing, and I thought it was actually crazy when I heard this. They have a fairly involved manufacturing process, because they are creating a specific chip set to make sure this thing runs just right on the card. And then they are going to individually test each individual cart by hand. I have never heard of such crazy stuff before.

EB: Just such quality assurance.

MB: I guess what that means is — and back in the day, old school development, you always shipped knowing there was a bug. Not one you knew of, but you knew. Once this thing expands out into the hands of [the public], something will be found. When it’s found, it will probably have to be like ‘Yeah, that’s part of the game’ and you hope it isn’t some egregious thing.

And yeah, you’re right, you cannot patch it. The only thing that can happen is you could — in this case, there is something a little slightly different because there is a Carbon Engine port coming [and] you could patch that original game. And then include it — that would be the fixed or patched version of the game. But even that is even a little bit unusual, because we’ve done re-releases of games in the past — like Shantae 1. Shantae 1 has some well-known bugs or weird exploits.

EB: We’ve seen people do run-throughs where they could skip stuff because they went through a wall. But it’s kind of fun to see people break the game.

MB: And if they like it, we want to leave it in. It’s only the things that would spoil the experience — we don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone. If there are some things that are kind of fun to break, then it probably is best that it be left in there. But you’re right, you can’t patch it, so you gotta check it and check it and check it again. But from the beginning of time, until only around not so long ago, you couldn’t patch anything anyway.

So, all we’re doing is going back to how you had to do things before, when you had to be absolutely sure before you hit that submit button — that you were absolutely done.

OR: Something else mentioned during the livestream was that [Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution] would be 20+ hours, which would make it the lengthiest Shantae game by far. Has that length been retained for this coming release?

MB: No, no. I think that would have been based on everything we had come up with to that point. Now that we’ve actually made the game, and it’s full quest line, I can say, I think with a fair amount of confidence, that that would have been a fairly drawn out 20 hours. This clocks in with much better pacing right around…I would say a little longer than, considerably longer than, Risky’s Revenge and a little shorter than Pirate’s Curse. Not as long as Half-Genie Hero with all of its DLC options. Right around in that sweet spot is where it lands. I think it’s going to be a satisfying length and move at a good pace for most of the people who are going to be into it.

EB: Not including the speedrunners.

MB: Yeah, without overstaying its welcome. Another way to put it is that every Shantae game has a ‘How fast can you beat it time?’ seems to be clocking in at about all of the other Shantae games. What you don’t want is a 20-hour game where it’s 10 hours of backtracking. A nice, clean, streamlined, respect-your-time game. As a result, shorter, but I think, more dense. Less watered-down flavor.

“And so, what happens, of course, with all of the Shantae games is when something finally doesn’t happen, all of those animations don’t get thrown away because I don’t like to waste anything.”

OR: Let’s talk about some other Shantae cancelled projects.

In an April 2021 interview with Nintendo World Report, you said that “CAPCOM did entrust us with a Dolphin development unit sometime around 2002 in hopes that we could come up with a Shantae GameCube sequel” and that “[w]e did some very early exploration into this idea, but ended up focusing on Shantae Advance instead ‘because that was where the work-for-hire jobs are and you have to keep the lights on’.”

Can you talk any about that early exploration with the GameCube? How far along did you get, and what was the concept behind the title? What was it like to essentially tell CAPCOM ‘thank you, but no’?

EB: GameCube is like my favorite console.

MB: This one is tricky. The reason it’s tricky is because I don’t know all of the facts. So, [CAPCOM was] very happy with Shantae Game Boy Color. That was excellent, they weren’t worried that it didn’t sell well. They were just happy with the quality — for them, it was very high. I was aware of a whole CAPCOM thing, they were trying to greenlight five CAPCOM games at the time. What was it? Viewtiful Joe, P.N.03, Resident Evil 4, and a mystery cancelled game. [OR Note: The cancelled title was ‘Dead Phoenix’, and the fifth unmentioned title was ‘Killer7’.]

So, we found out about that too. We didn’t know if we were one of those five, or not. I always wondered if we were supposed to be, but the timing was always the same — ‘oh, that’s why they gave us a kit.’ But we were new to 3D [and] we were trying to figure it out. And so we didn’t have a ton of confidence — there was a lot of R&D and experimentation phase during that time.

So, what ended up happening there was ‘Well, Shantae shouldn’t probably be the experiment — we should go straight into the thing that’s working that at the time was our core business.’ Which was the handheld team. So that’s why I went in that direction, and just let some of the — handheld was a small part of the studio at the time. About six out of the 20 or 30 people. So, I was like ‘Okay, we’re going to huddle up, focus on this, get really good at handheld’ — which is what evolved from Game Boy Advance into the DS.

Other parts of the company were going more 3D, PC — trying out various things on console, testing our reach as a studio. And those early, I guess, experiments, just kind of kept shifting from one thing into the next. So, while it was Shantae, I can tell you that the theme of the [GameCube] game was river rafting. The concept was revisited for Nintendo DS, which would have been Risky Waters.

There was concept art, there were some test videos made using really crude 3D. Not anything that was put through an actual art team — just ‘Hey, let’s make some basic geometric shapes and try moving a raft through it.’ And the concept of that was ‘What can the controller do, and what’s that like?’. And it’s like ‘oh, it’s fun to squeeze those analog triggers, it could feel like paddling through the water. Maybe this is what we do. Put all four characters on a raft, have four inputs, you’ll paddle paddle paddle, you’ll smack monsters, you’ll pull over off onto the shore, go into a dungeon, do traditional Shantae gameplay, pop out of the dungeon, get back onto the raft.’

That was the concept, and in that era, a lot of games were doing sort of strange and unusual things. It felt like experimentation was in the air, and it was a fun time.

OR:  You mentioned in a 2007 interview with MTV that you assembled a treatment for Shantae: Risky Waters on the DS after the console was announced, but you couldn’t find a publisher for it. Can you tell us more about that treatment? How close was it to the GameCube version?

MB: Okay, I can talk about that! No one’s ever asked about this as far as I know — this is a really funny one.

So, it was very similar. Our early test kits for Nintendo DS did show that you could do things that were very similar to GameCube. Like, ‘that’s very similar — let’s get this design out and bring it back in!’. So, what I had for that was — it was dual screen, which we didn’t end up doing until Contra 4 — I designed and directed Contra 4, so a lot of those same designs and ideas — I was like ‘I want to play with this and that for Shantae’ — did get experimented with. It was dual screen gameplay, so what you had gameplay on the top and bottom, and you had to manage both.

So, when you’re on the bottom, rafting in 3D, on the top, you had Sky on her bird. I don’t recall what the task was, but you were doing flyby things. You could target and drop powerups onto the crew below on the raft. When you pull over to a place to go into a battle area or a labyrinth or a dungeon, then you would have the action on the bottom. You’d be exploring, and your team members would be on the top. And you could manage them also just using L and R buttons. It’s like, ‘Can you play two games at once? Can you do platforming while managing some light gameplay on the top?’.

And the way that worked was that you had Uncle up top mixing potions and health items, and then he would throw them down into the dungeon for you. And each character had its own sort of thing. Rottytops would play almost like a tower defense thing where a bad guy would would come in, and she would be ripping off her leg and beating up the bad guys as they’re trying to get in — which would keep the number of bad guys down in the labyrinth in the bottom of the screen from getting overwhelming.

And so, what happens, of course, with all of the Shantae games is when something finally doesn’t happen, all of those animations don’t get thrown away because I don’t like to waste anything. Those animations got all put into Risky’s Revenge. So, the reason that you fight Uncle Mimic in that game is — you get to a point where you’re like ‘What’s the boss of this area going to be?’. Well, we had this full animation set of Uncle Mimic fighting and mixing potions, throwing bombs, all of this stuff. That was him as a helper character from what would have been the Shantae dual screen game. But instead, it’s like ‘Well, we’ll make up a new guy, he’s the Hypno Baron, he is making Shantae think she is fighting her uncle.’ There, I’ve got all the animations and I don’t have to throw them out and I can use them. And that’s what that was.

That’s about as much as I can get into without going back and re-reading that document.

OR: You were also the first e-Reader licensed in the United States.

MB: I think we were the only one, at least Nintendo told us at one point that we were the only person to ever ask for e-Reader.

OR: What was the process like to become a licensed e-Reader developer, and can you talk about that from the developer side? It’s a Nintendo product that really fell on the wayside.

MB: I love, I love the e-Reader, or Card e-Reader, or the e-Card Reader, depending on what region. We ran to the Celebi movie [OR Note: ‘Pokémon 4ever’] to get the cards to watch the little cartoon in the e-Reader. Totally loved that device. I was pushing really hard for a Shantae game on the cover of Nintendo Power — ‘I want to print the code, have people swipe their e-Reader cards through the Nintendo Power cover and get a little game.’

Because of that, I asked our CEO: ‘Can someone at Nintendo get us that dev kit?’. His response after awhile was ‘No one has ever asked for that dev kit, because who would want that?’ And I was like, ‘I want that!’. So, they sent us a dev kit, and I’m sure there is a lot of NDA stuff that is like ‘Don’t talk about what’s on the thing’, but it was a development kit with an e-Reader where you could look inside and see the guts of it, see what it was capable of doing.

We did some experiments. The experiments were Shantae battle cards, and you couldn’t physically do this, in theory what you would have done — is you’d swipe your move through. ‘I want fireball, I want hair whip, I want a high kick’, and you’d swipe them through. And there was just enough space to have really simple, tiny, tiny, I think the animations had to be down to 14k or something — like barely anything — but we did make a tiny animation set of Shantae. She looked just like the Game Boy Color Shantae for all practical purposes, but she could just do one of a few actions. And you’d just swipe in a bad guy card and swipe in up to, I think, three Shantae moves, and you’d be able to combat a thing and see if you would win or lose.

Not sure why it never went anywhere — I think it was because, honestly, that era ended so quickly. We had those Super Mario Bros. 3 cards come out, and then it very quickly became Pokémon Battle-e, and then they were kinda gone. So, it had its really cool moment, and there was just no catching up to it and getting into the card manufacturing. Man, if we could do that today? Because we do card manufacturing. I mean, actual trading cards- cards. We can do Shantae cards now. But no one had those anymore.

EB: We love all that old school stuff — Pogs, etc.

MB: The Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution game is only available until April 7th, but there is no preorder. In the future, you can’t get it anymore. So, when the preorder closes-

EB: -You can get it on other systems, but if you want a cartridge, it’s the only time you can get it. They aren’t going to reprint it. So, the collectors who really want to play it on the system, you really have to get the cartridge before April 7th when its gone.

MB: Yeah, after that, you’re just waiting on the Carbon Engine. Which I have a lot of confidence that will be a great port, but the port is not the same as the game. Even if the port has all these cool bells and whistles.

EB: I think a lot of Shantae fans are collectors, and sometimes they will get upset: ‘Oh, you need to re-release this thing!’, so if they can hop on when its actually pre-orderable, that’s the best.

OR: Lastly — there is a four-player mode announced for Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution. Can you tell us briefly about it?

MB: Yeah, the four-player battle mode is for two to four players. You only need one cartridge, so you don’t need to go buy four. You can plug in anywhere up to four Link Cables. Once you do that, it transmits the game to all the empty devices, and then you’ve got four people playing in a combat arena. It’s a constantly rotating play field, where if you don’t grab onto the fence, you will fall off and land on some spikes and die. It’s kind of last-man-standing, like Bomberman.

Everyone has a different animation, but you basically have a punch attack, a character-up-and-release attack that will clobber a guy and send him bouncing all around, and then you’ve got to watch out for when that arena is about to rotate. Then you grab a fence, or you’re going to fall and get knocked out. It’s just fun, light-hearted Link Cable stuff [that] the world hasn’t seen in a long time.

OR: Thank you very much.

Are you excited for Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution? What is your favorite Shantae title?

Did you ever play with the e-Reader?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post GDC 2024 INTERVIEW- WayForward Talks Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution, the Nintendo e-Reader, and Other Cancelled Shantae Games appeared first on oprainfall.

You can read about my thoughts on Pokemon GO Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles here.

You can also find out the latest happenings in Pokémon GO at the official website, on X, on Instagram and Facebook, and on YouTube. 

Finally, you can follow Niantic Inc. on their official website, on YouTube, on Facebook and Instagram, on X, and on TikTok.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and could you introduce yourself please?

Tiane Bella: My name is Tiane Bella, I am the Senior Marketing Manager for live events here at Niantic.

OR: We are here at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California. What about this location made it perfect for Pokémon GO Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles?

TB: We were so excited to be able to host an event in California for the first time. Pasadena is such a gorgeous city- it has been really great working with the Rose Bowl and the city of Pasadena, to build up this beautiful space with a bunch of exciting gameplay and photo ops. It’s just been wonderful.

OR: It’s a little surprising! After all, Niantic is based in San Francisco, I think.

TB: Yes, yes.

OR: It must be nice being in your own backyard, so to speak.

TB: It is so nice. I’ve loved not having jetlag for an event. *laughs*

OR: When did you start planning for this event, and what was the process like?

TB: As many people who have planned events or weddings or things in the past- it is a pretty long lead time. It takes over 12 months to plan our events. Honestly, 12 months is a little on the short side. So there’s a lot of teams at Niantic that are working very, very hard on this for over a year.

OR: There are two more tour events after this one- do you manage those as well? Or do you just focus primarily on this one in Los Angeles?

TB: My team is primarily focused on executing the wonderful physical event here at LA. And then, a related team is helming the Global event next week.

OR: We’ll talk about the Global Event in just a moment. The biggest surprise for me about Pokémon GO Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles is that it didn’t focus on Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and the Treasures of Area Zero DLC that just wrapped up. We’re looking at the Sinnoh region from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Pokémon Legends: Arceus in the Hitsui region. Why Sinnoh?

TB: Our GO Tour events, since launch, have been focused on picking a generation of the Pokémon games and finding a really fun way to bring it to life in the real world. I think throughout the years, the team has made some really, really cool visions to bring that gameplay to life for that specific generation. This year, we’re celebrating Sinnoh and it’s just been delightful to see all that come together.

OR: Let’s talk fish! Specifically: the White-Striped Basculin that first debuted in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Why did you feel like Pokémon GO Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles was the perfect spot to make this Pokémon’s debut?

TB: Live events are where the excitement of Pokémon GO comes to a peak. We always want to make those very, very special for those trainers who travel and come in to celebrate together. Exploring Los Angeles is a great piece of the event this year. And adding in some really exciting content for trainers who are taking Routes and discovering new areas throughout Los Angeles county- it felt like a really great way to make sure that trainers have a great time.

OR: Speaking about the Los Angeles section- Spiritomb makes a return from Special Research Events from 2018 and 2019 where you [obtain] it from PokéStops. What made you essentially spin 10 PokéStops to encounter him. What was that creation process like?

TB: Our teams want to make sure each Pokémon is special and cool, and we wanted to make sure that they are highlighted in interesting ways. The team leaned into the exploration-aspect. Trainers are able to encounter Spiritomb at PokéStops in this space, but there are also options throughout the city to continue their journey out there.

OR: There are two Legendary Pokémon whose Origin Forme forms -taken from Pokemon Legends: Arceus- that make their debut also at Pokémon Go Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles: Origin Forme Dialgia and Origin Forme Palkia. The reason I am bringing them up is to talk about Special Rend and Roar of Time, because those Charged Attacks affect the outside gameplay.

Can you talk a little about those, and how it was developing something that actually affects not just PVP or PVE, but other aspects of Pokémon GO itself?

TB: I think the product team would be better able to give you an in depth

“The key thing that delights me about this event is that trainers travel in from everywhere, and you just see so many communities connecting and so many families out playing together.”

OR: There are [several] different areas out there [at Pokémon Go Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles]. I pushed my way through all of them before this interview to ask about them. How did you choose what Pokémon to set and name them?

TB: Our game design team are all absolutely brilliant and wonderful people. They looked across the generation, across the Pokémon that we’re going to be bringing to life in the real world here and made decisions to sort them and figure out what habitat they would appear in if they were to appear in the real world.

OR: I’ve previously attended Pokémon GO Fest in Seattle and in New York City. Something that is fairly unique to Pokémon Go Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles is that at the half-hour mark, the Pokémon seem to ‘flip’ and change due to the [Space-Time Anomaly]. Can you talk a bit about that?

TB: As I mentioned a little bit before, this event focuses on Sinnoh. But we have that little bit of Hitsui flair as well. I’m very excited about how this team put together the gameplay to lean into that- Time/Space Distortion that manifests in the gameplay itself.

While trainers are adventuring around the park, time is distorting around them and they are going to Hitsui and back to Sinnoh, and they are encountering the Pokémon [from] both areas.

OR: This is a long event. I don’t mean timewise, I mean length-wise. It’s a very lengthy event. With that comes crowds, how did you lay out Routes for the event?

TB: We are actually not featuring Routes in the park area itself. Instead, we focused on building Routes throughout the city to help guide trainers are they spend the rest of their time in the Los Angeles area.

OR: There are different structures throughout the [event]- let me show you a picture of one.

TB: Oooh yes, Entangled Ruins!

OR: Can you talk a bit about that?

TB: For our habitat areas, we built photo ops for trainers to enjoy as they are catching Pokémon, to bring those habitats to life. For Entangled Ruins, we had this wonderful archway. It is split in half by this Space-Time Anomaly. So half of this archway is just normal, normal architecture- but half of it is ruins [from] back in time. So that build is meant to bring that habitat to life.

OR: Do you have a favorite Pokémon?

TB: I do! It is a very, very close tie. But Ditto is my number one. Snorlax is number two. Ditto is the best!

OR: I love Ditto too! I loved the miniature Special Research [April Fools’ 2-Oh?-22] from awhile ago.

TB: Yes! Any time Ditto can be involved, I am very excited.

OR: So what’s next Pokémon GO?

TB: Up next, we’re really excited to bring a full week of excitement together for trainers. Starting after this real world event in Los Angeles ends, the Road to Sinnoh begins. Trainers will start getting ready. Next weekend, Global Go Tour will be starting for trainers worldwide! The global event is for two days- Saturday and Sunday- and trainers, no matter where they are, can participate for free.

OR: Will they be able to get their own White-Striped Basculin?

TB: Yes!

OR: Is there anything else you can tell us about the event as we wrap up?

TB: The key thing that delights me about this event is that trainers travel in from everywhere, and you just see so many communities connecting and so many families out playing together. This is my favorite part of Pokémon GO, and it is just really great to see.

OR: Thank you!

I want to thank Niantic, Inc., for helping set up this interview!

Did you have fun at Pokemon GO Tour: Sinnoh – Los Angeles? Did you catch a White-Finned Basculin this past weekend?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW: Tiane Bella (Sr. Marketing Manager) Talks About Pokemon GO Tour Sinnoh- Los Angeles appeared first on oprainfall.

Two-and-a-half years is a very long time. Whether it be for a relationship, a job, or even live support for an MMORPG, it is a major milestone that should create feelings of real accomplishment in anyone who achieves it. This month, Phantasy Star Online 2 NEW GENESIS (PSO2 NGS) turns two-and-a-half, and the team behind the game is releasing some seriously new content that is designed to lure back old players and initiate new ones into Planet Halpha in PSO2 NGS.

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to conduct a SECOND (yes, SECOND!) email interview with Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis’ series producer, Yuya Kimura, where we talked about his career at SEGA, the upcoming Super Genesis Festival, and more.

You can check out the latest on Phantasy Star Online 2 at the official website, on Twitter, on Twitch, on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, and on Discord.

Operation Rainfall: Could you please introduce yourself?

Yuya Kimura: My name is Yuya Kimura, and I’m the series producer of Phantasy Star Online 2 NEW GENESIS (NGS) at SEGA.

OR: You’ve been at SEGA for 21 years, per our last interview in June 2023. Can you tell us one or two of your favorite personal memories worked at such a historic video game company?

YK: I’ve had a pretty unique career over my 21 years here, focused entirely on the development of the Phantasy Star series.

Although there are people who have worked for the same game company for more than 20 years, it is rare in the industry for a creator to work continuously on the same series of titles over all that time. Being involved with the series for so long has given me a lot of happy memories. For example, I’ve heard several stories of people who met and got married because of the series, and I sometimes meet parents with children who play the series as a family. There have also been cases where new SEGA employees played a title I was involved in when they were young—and it was that title that inspired them to become a game developer, and now they’ve actually joined SEGA and are involved in the same title. That’s really a priceless joy that I couldn’t have experienced without having worked for SEGA for so long.

OR: Phantasy Star Online 2 NEW GENESIS ver.2’s December 2023 update is focused on new and returning players for the game’s two-and-a-half year anniversary. Why did you decide to focus this major year-end update about making the storyline more accessible to those types of gamers?

YK: In June 2023, the game was upgraded to Phantasy Star Online 2 NEW GENESIS ver. 2 and new elements such as Creative Space and Portable Holograms were implemented that attracted new players and brought back returning players. However, the battle content for core users released from August onwards had a high barrier to play. In addition, many people who played the content felt that the rewards were not commensurate with the difficulty level or playtime. For those reasons, some people gave up playing midway through.

In response, we made adjustments in October and November, including easing the Join Conditions to make them easier to meet, rebalancing rewards, and implementing a boost campaign. As a result, we believe that the game is stabilizing, still slowly but at a better clip than before. In addition, in December, we will be making NGS easier to play than ever before by further easing requirements and revamping rewards. We hope this will bring back inactive players and entice new users to try NGS.

OR: What kind of changes does The 2½ Year Anniversary Campaign: Super Genesis Festival have to make it so players can experience the storyline more easily?

YK: First, I would like to say that NGS has become really easy to play as of Dec 6, 2023, on a permanent basis, unrelated to the ongoing Super Genesis Festival campaign. To make it easier to catch up with the top players, there’s a permanent +300% boost to EXP Earned in Combat Sectors up to a certain level. Also, just by leveling up, you’ll get pre-enhanced equipment appropriate for your level. Until you reach the highest level, you’ll have no real problems with your equipment. Plus, in NGS, you can set up a Sub-Class in addition to your Main Class. Previously only 50% of the EXP you earned with your Main Class was applied to your Sub-Class, but now that’s been bumped up to 90%.

The latest chapter of the story is Chapter 6. We’ve eased back on the overall difficulty of progressing through the story—as a reward for completing Chapter 5, for example, you get a huge amount of the in-game currency, N-Meseta, as well as tons of avatar items. This lets you quickly push ahead with your adventures while enjoying fashion and other aspects of the game.

Regarding fashion, the period during which you can edit your body shape and other elements of your character’s appearance at the Salon for free after creating a new character has been extended to 72 hours of log in time, a significant increase from the previous 5-hour total. We also have a convenient feature where 15 days of Material Storage is automatically granted after finishing the tutorial.

During the Super Genesis Festival campaign period, we’re running a Use the Salon to your heart’s content! Campaign, and distributing a free Color-Change Pass (x15), Material Storage Use (15 Days) (x1), and more, making it even easier to jump in and play. It’s really the perfect time for new players and ARKS who have been away to come and play NGS.

OR: Also, what new content can veteran players expect in The 2½ Year Anniversary Campaign: Super Genesis Festival?

YK: First of all, overall, there will be more opportunities to obtain the 10-star Flugelgard weapon series. These will be added to some quests that did not previously drop them and drop rates will increase in quests where they already drop.

In early December, the popular Standing Quest: Leciel Exploration will be expanded with new elements and upgraded rewards. Then in mid-December, Dark Falz Aegis, previously only available as an Urgent Quest or Trigger Quest, will make its debut as a Standing Quest in an enhanced, powered-up version.

All of these are challenging, but since a 10-star weapon is included in the drop rewards, we encourage you to give them a try.

“Being involved with the series for so long has given me a lot of happy memories.”

OR: During this timed event from December 6, 2023 through January 24, 2024, there are rewards players can earn. Can you tell us a bit more about what kind of rewards gamers can expect when they participate in it?

YK: In addition to what I just mentioned about the Super Genesis Festival Campaign, from Dec 6-19, 2023 we will be running a Super Treasure Scratch campaign, where twice the usual amount of Treasure Scratch tickets can be earned in Daily Tasks and Treasure Scratch tickets will be added as drops in all Urgent Quests. Plus, during this period, you’ll be able to complete Urgent Quests twice.

In addition, starting on Dec 20, 2023, a new feature called the Reward Box will be added where, by completing the target Daily Tasks, you’ll be able to earn lots of popular past Weapon Camo and avatar items. It works like a Scratch Ticket, but in box format—that means items are never duplicated after being obtained, and, if you take the time, you can be sure to get all of the items.

There will be more campaigns and other ways to get your hands on a variety of rewards from Dec 27, 2023. Details will be announced in the NGS Headline broadcast on Dec 26, 2023.

OR: One of the biggest surprises for me in this announcement is that there will be an increase in drops for the 10★ Flugelgard series that was released as part of the November 15, 2023, patch. What kind of increase are we talking about? Do you mean that it will be spread across more events, or are drop percentage rates increasing? If we are talking percentage drop rate, can you give us an idea of how significant of an increase it is?

YK: The upward revision of the drop rate is permanent from Dec 6, 2023 and is not limited to the event period.

Regarding the increase in the drop rate, we’ve made it even higher than the Drop Rate +100% boost campaign that we had in November for a variety of content.

OR: Along those lines: How do you determine what the drop-rate percentage for items should be when you’re releasing new content?

YK: The number of drops and number of equipment for the newest weapons are checked daily, and if the actual numbers of drops and equipment are lower than the number of drops and equipment that the development staff had expected before the release, the number is revised upward, as is happening in this case.

OR: At the start of November, a new anti-cheat tool by Wellbia was implemented into Phantasy Star Online 2 NEW GENESIS ver.2. Can you talk a bit about your efforts to combat cheating in Phantasy Star Online 2 NEW GENESIS ver.2, and how does SEGA and your team handles people who are caught cheating in the game?

YK: Since the game launched, we have always devoted a lot of time and money to anti-cheat measures. However, while I do apologize, I am unable to give you any specifics about our countermeasures, because that information may aid rogue users in creating new cheat methods. If you are found to be cheating or otherwise violating our Terms of Service, we will ban your account for either a certain amount of time or permanently, depending on the severity of the offense.

OR: When we last talked in June 2023, Creative Space was going to be released as part of Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis ver.2. What has player feedback been like since it was released, and do you have any plans to enhance it as part of the future roadmap?

YK: We have received a great deal of positive feedback since we first announced our plans to implement Creative Space, and we feel that we have exceeded our own expectations with the very positive response we have received. We’ve also had lots of requests for things to be added, and [we] are working to respond to these as soon as possible.

OR: As we wrap up this interview, do you have any last words for people looking forward to The 2½ Year Anniversary Campaign: Super Genesis Festival?

YK: I would like to thank all the ARKS out there for playing NGS.

To express our gratitude, for the first time ever for the PSO2 series, we are currently holding a half-anniversary celebration called the Super Genesis Festival. As I mentioned earlier as well, we are running extensive, fabulous campaigns over the year-end and New Year’s holidays. These campaigns will offer tons of advantages not only to current players, but also to new players and those returning after a break, so we hope everyone will take this opportunity to play NGS.

I want to thank Yuya Kimura for participating in a second interview with us here at oprainfall about PSO2 NGS!

Are you excited about the Super Genesis Festival? What kind of fashion do you hope to wear in the game?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW: Yuya Kimura Talks about PSO2 NGS’s Super Genesis Festival appeared first on oprainfall.

DragonCon is known for having pretty much every fandom under one room, and that includes having a wide range of voice actors and actresses from video games, anime, and other mediums appearing to host panels, sign autographs, and take pictures with fans throughout Labor Day weekend. I was able to participate in a roundtable panel with Variety Radio Online and Moana Nui Podcast during this year’s DragonCon to interview both Erica Mendez and Lucien Dodge about their careers.

You can find out more about Lucien Dodge at his official website and on X.

You can find out more about Erica Mendez on Twitch, on Instagram, and on X. You can also check out our prior interview with her from 2017.

You can find out more about DragonCon on their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on Discord. 

You can also buy a membership for next year’s DragonCon here.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H., with Operation Rainfall.

Variety Radio Online: Michelle Moreland, with Variety Radio Online.

Moana Nui Podcast: Anita Riggs, with Noana Nui Podcast.

Erica Mendez: Hi! I’m Erica Mendez. I’m a voice actress who works in Los Angeles.

Lucien Dodge: My name is Lucien Dodge, and I am also a voice actor – sometimes script adaptor, voice director – who works in Los Angeles.

OR: I’m going to open up with a question for you Lucien: Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- was released just a few short weeks ago on Crunchyroll, and you voiced Lord El-Melloi II during the 55-minute anime special. This special is unique because it is the first TYPE-MOON anime to be developed simultaneously for both Japanese and English voices instead of the English voice acting coming later on.

Can you talk a bit about what your experience was like working on this simultaneous production? Did you ever work alongside with Daisuke Namikawa, the Japanese voice actor for Lord El-Melloi II, on this production to ensure a uniform approach to the character?

LD: I did not work with Daisuke Namikawa, unfortunately. I would love to meet him – I’ve been hearing his work for awhile since I’ve been playing the character of Waver [Velvet]. So, funny about that project: even though it was more of a simultaneous production, I would say as far as our work was concerned, it was fairly similar to a typical anime dub. In so far as, most the animation was pretty much locked in, and we were still recording in the traditional fashion as we preview the animation with the Japanese performance – so that’s about the closest that I really got to collaborating with Daisuke. I would hear his voice first, and then we would lay our track on top of it.

But, pretty much 99 percent of the animation was finished and locked in, so there [weren’t] too many differences honestly from working on that project and your typical anime dub, I would say.

Lucien Dodge voiced Lord El-Melloi II in the just released Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- anime special.

VRO: So, I’m going to skirt a bit different, and this is a question for both of you. Welcome to DragonCon, and as you can see, it’s very fan-based and you guys are probably getting fans from every different area of your experience. But: you also, as a voice actor, have to sometimes dig deep for a new voice, right? So all the characters you’re seeing here at DragonCon: is there inspiration in being able to pull from how unique the fans are here?

EM: I guess, like, maybe not intrinsically. But when you’re thinking about characters in general and doing auditions for them, you take people you know in real life and kind of take their voices and maybe fit – if it’s an interesting voice you heard or a funny voice you heard – you kind of take that and work it into a character somehow. Even if it’s somebody you can’t really think of how you heard them or where you heard them. It’s just something that you’re like ‘[o]h, I remember this, maybe see if I can use this for something.’

LD: Something that’s pretty cool is that you’ll see cosplayers add their own unique spin on a certain character, or maybe they’ll take two different characters and they’ll kind of super collide them, like do a cross-over between the two. And sometimes, as voice actors, we do something similar where we might have two different impressions or characters that we like, and we think ‘[o]h, what would happen if we sort of mesh them together?’ So in that sense, maybe there is a little bit of creative inspiration or borrowing of that creativity from each other. Very cool to see.

MNP: Like she said – welcome to DragonCon. Both of you are in positions that pretty much everyone I know wants to be in. How was it breaking into the industry – especially with you Erica, being Mexican American? I know sometimes there are challenges getting into the field. How did you guys get into it? Was it difficult or easy?

EM: I think, luckily for me, especially for voiceover – not to say it’s not hard for some people – but for me, it was pretty easy. I don’t think it was ever taken into account that I was Mexican-American. I think they just heard what I did, and were like ‘[o]kay, this is what we need.’ I broke into the industry mainly because I do young boy voices pretty often, and I guess they needed that at the time. They’re like ‘[w]ell, yours are good, so let’s bring you in for this’ after I auditioned for a particular studio for a while.

So thankfully, it was not too difficult for me, and I’ve been able to sustain that momentum throughout my career. And yeah, it’s a hard question to answer, because I feel kind of privileged in a way because of various reasons. But I know it is hard for some people and it shouldn’t be, you know? Everybody should be treated equally and given fair opportunities to work – especially in voiceover, because you don’t need to look a certain way, you know?

LD: I think it certainly wasn’t easy, by any means. I think for just about everyone, regardless if you have extra hurdles or obstacles in your way, it just tends to take a long time. It takes years of training, takes a lot of time to build up a body of work or trust with clients, with casting directors – to have them bring you in on stuff. It takes a long time to get some kind of momentum in your career going, where you’re working enough that you can sustain some sort of living doing this. If you’re lucky – and that’s not a guarantee by any stretch. So, in that sense, it is definitely challenging and there are no guarantees.

But, for me, this was always the dream, and is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and [I] worked very hard to do. So, whether it was hard or not, it didn’t really matter. I was going to do everything I could to make this happen. So, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

OR: You both did an interview with TheOASG in 2016 [and] Erica, I want to follow-up on a question with you. You were asked “[w]hich dubbing recording method do you find better to work with: pre-lay or ADR (Automated Digital Replacement)?” You seemed to highlight some cons of ADR about how you work separately from other voice actors, and you stated that “I like pre-lay because I get to work alongside my friends, and also VAs I look up to as well.”

Having been on the other side of the booth since then in the seven subsequent years, does that answer still hold true? Or how have your views on each method changed- if at all?

EM: I think, in general, I just like working. It’s hard to fully pick one or the other. Pre-lay is nice though, because you do get to work with other people. Whereas, in anime for dubbing, you’re working alone. Granted, you have the engineer and the director there, and if you know them really well, it makes it a very comfy environment, which is really nice. But it is just nice to be able to bounce off of other people organically. I guess, I don’t know if my answer [has] necessarily changed just because of other work I’ve been doing now – mainly directing and script adapting – but I feel like every genre of voiceover always has its new challenges. Maybe I’ll like one more one day, one more the next day. But, I wouldn’t change what I’m doing in general for the world. And I just love working. Anything I can do, I enjoy.

MNP: To pivot a little bit: video games. I know you’ve worked, Erica, with SQUARE ENIX. How was it working for a Japanese video game company? What were the differences between working here for voiceovers and for SQUARE ENIX.

EM: It’s not too much different, actually. I don’t necessarily work with companies directly. Sometimes, they’ll send representatives to look on in the sessions to make sure things are like, the character’s going according to the description of the character they’ve sent. Or, to make sure scripts are working well and so on, so forth. Just to make sure the director has like, good information about what’s going on in the world. A lot of the time, we’re working on these games as they’ve being developed in Japan. So, they’re getting information as they get it from Japan.

The people that we work with – because [Lucien], you’ve worked on some SQUARE [ENIX] games before – we work with our people that are kind of mediators between the Japanese branch and the US branch. ‘Cause all companies usually have a US branch here as well. But it’s not too much different, I mean, working on the games that I’ve worked with for SQUARE [ENIX] than working with any other game company, really.

OR: [Lucien], you voiced Elliot Craig in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel series since the first game and into The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie. After the second entry, the localization company changed from XSEED to NIS America. Can you talk a bit about what it was like voicing the role during the changeover, if there were any changes in how you were asked to bring the character to life, and if you had to reapply for your own job?

LD: No, I did not – luckily. That does happen in our industry. But luckily, I did not have to reapply to be the voice. By that point, we had established the world and the sounds of the characters to the point where we were basically trusted to carry it on from that point. I don’t recall there being too many bumps along the road during that transition. Typically, with any recording studio, you have the voice director, who is interacting with the clients and they’ve being kind of the in-between and facilitating the information. So, any oddness – they’re basically there to smooth out the process for the actor.

Any rough patches in that road, in that transition, wasn’t really felt – so much as I’m aware – as the actor. Sometimes, you might hear in the background different voices from the clientside talking to the voice director, but the voice director is kind of translating and getting their help in the process [to] move it along for the actor and keeping things going. And again, we had already established the world and the sound of the character by that point. And we’re basically allowed to just continue the work we’ve already established. In that sense, it was pretty smooth sailing.

VRO: As a woman in the industry, women [have] come a long ways in the past 10 years. Do you still find anything challenging in the voiceover for women in the industry, and has it opened doors to empower you to open doors for others in the industry?

EM: I think for most of what I do, which is anime dubbing, because of the nature of anime – I feel like there are a lot more women roles and we can voice young boys as well. So, there’s more opportunities in that realm. But I’ve had an agent for the last few years, so I get to potentially work on things that are the boarder scope of the voiceover field. And I’ve noticed that it can be harder, especially for commercials. I’ve actually been on a hold for a couple of commercials where they’ve also had a male option that they are looking for, and usually when I’m on a hold, they’ll be like ‘okay, we’ll maybe put you in for this job but the client is still deciding what they want.’ And then in most cases, it’ll be ‘[o]kay, they decided to go in a different direction’ which is typically either they’re looking for a different voice type than mine or a male voice. I know in one case, they decided to go with a male voice. I feel like that can be hard sometimes and very disappointing, but it’s kind of the nature of things, I guess, unfortunately. But you do hear a lot of commercials with women in them. I’ve just been in very unfortunate situations in that aspect.

I guess, I don’t know. I can’t really do anything on the voiceover side, obviously, for directing and adapting scripts. I think it’s nice to have someone with a female voice, a fem voice, to be able to write properly for fem characters. So I try to do my best with that. ‘Cause, sometimes, you get people – like Lucien does script adapting as well – and he may be better at the male voice, the masculine voice, because he’s lived that way.  Maybe fem characters are a little harder for him to portray, because he hasn’t lived that life himself, so he doesn’t know how they talk exactly. It’s nice to be, like, able to do the best I can with just making sure things are appropriately said for certain characters that I might understand better than someone else. And then if I don’t know, then I research. So stuff like that. As far as directing goes – I feel like there are a lot fewer directors that are female or fem based, and so I just adding one more to the number in that aspect.

OR: Real quick – what has y’all’s experiences been like at DragonCon this year?

EM: It’s been great. I’m not used to multi-genre cons as much. I do a lot of anime cons, so it’s nice to see the different, way different variety and a lot of the programming and all that.

LD: Yeah, a tad overwhelming at first. ‘Cause this is my first, and was not quite sure what I was stepping into. Very impressive.

EM: It’s been so nice. It’s been great.

LD: Yeah, very, very cool.

Everyone: Thank you.

What are your favorite voice roles of Erica Mendez and Lucien Dodge?

Did you attend DragonCon this year and attend any of their panels?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post DragonCon Panel INTERVIEW: Erica Mendez & Lucien Dodge appeared first on oprainfall.

At DragonCon 2023, I sat down with Dino Andrade and Connor Andrade. A father and son pair who has a great variety of experience as voice talents – even competing for roles on occasion – they have voiced everything from various Marvel and DC properties to assorted anime shows and movies and even to a brand-new podcast called Jump Leads. I participated in a two-journalist panel to talk with both of them about their careers, their experiences at DragonCon, and more.

You can check out Dino and Connor Andrade at their official website. You can also follow Dino Andrade at his official X account.

You can find out more about Dragon Con on their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on Discord. 

You can also buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H., and I am with Operation Rainfall.

Downtown Hott Radio: I am Walil Archer, nice to meet you. I’m getting some behind the scenes [filming]. 

OR: Do you mind briefly introducing yourselves?

Dino Andrade: My name is Dino Andrade, I’ve been a voice actor since the mid-’80s. Probably what I’m best known for is numerous characters in World of Warcraft – High Tinker Mekkatorque, Professor Putricide, Fungalmancer Glop – I’ve been part of Warcraft for 14, 15 years now. And I’m also the Scarecrow from Batman: Arkham Asylum, Speedy Gonzalez for the new Looney Tunes, I’ve been Pop from Rice Krispies [imitates Pop] “Snap, Crackle, Pop! Rice Krispies!” I’ve done radio, campaigns for the Los Angeles Dodges [and] Delta Airlines – I’ve been at this for quite a while.

And this is my son, Connor. Connor is Baby Grizzly for We Baby Bears for Cartoon Network. He’s also been Toddler Groot for Marvel – for Spider-Man: Maximum Venom. He’s been on The Casagrandes, and he premiered in an independent feature called Samsam where he played a Martian by the name of Sweat Pea. I was a villain in that movie, the Marthial – so we worked together on [Connor’s] first thing, and that was pretty cool.

Connor Andrade voiced Baby Grizz in Wee Baby Bears for two seasons.

OR: In a 2013 Comikaze interview with Fanversation, you said that you are “someone who is both Meisner trained and trained at the Groundlings” and that you’re “very improv oriented.” The Groundlings are known for their improv, sketch comedy, and live performances since 1974, and the Meisner acting technique focuses on the actor engaging with their acting partner.

A lot of times with voice acting though, it is just you in the booth and you’re responding with pre-written lines to another person’s pre-recorded lines as you also try to match mouth flaps on the screen. Does your background with the Groundlings and the Meisner Technique apply also to voice acting, and if so, how have you utilized it in your career?

DA: ABSOLUTELY it does! [laughs] When talking about matching lip flaps – you’re talking about dubbing, like working on anime or live action dubbing, so on. Oftentimes, what is written on the page for the dubbing, when we go to actually record it, it doesn’t actually match all of the lip flap. And so we’ve got to very, very quickly come up with a different line, different read, add words, subtract words, etcetera. And that’s where that training comes in, because you have to think on the spot and you can’t just be sitting there going “Ahhh, umm, I don’t knowwwww, I didn’t have time to prep this.” You have to be able to come up with stuff – we can be really collaborative.

When it’s not dubbing, and you’re doing original animation, it is extremely helpful, because you never know what you’re going to wind up doing on the fly. For example, if you’re working on video games, you’re often not given the script in advance. So you don’t really know what you’re recording until you get into the booth, and you won’t have time to prepare – you have to do what my good friend Dave Fennoy said, what he calls ‘instant acting.’ So improvisational techniques and all that work that all the Meiser – all of that comes to a head, all of that comes right in there, and so, yes: absolutely. Absolutely.

A lot of Meisner’s based upon what they call the ‘magic as if,’ where you perform something as if this or as if this, and so on. Those things get you from A to Z very quickly, so when voiceover – we’re oftentimes flying by the seat of your pants that it is, oh boy, so helpful. So Meisner, Groundlings – all of that was huge, huge for me.

OR: I want to follow-up on your video game work.

You voiced the Scarecrow in 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. One of the most interesting parts of the development process, as Paul Dini – the game’s writer discussed in a 2009 interview with the Telegraph – was that Rocksteady knew within five minutes of their first development meeting that they wanted to use voice talent from Batman: The Animated Series to reprise various roles. You also said in a September 2015 interview with 91.8 The Fan that you auditioned for the Scarecrow and the Joker, and that they were specifically looking for someone who could do Mark Hamill’s Joker.

When you tried to book this job – and even when you were actively recording the lines – did Rocksteady also want you to imitate the Scarecrow from B: TAS? How did you find your own version of the Scarecrow for this game?

DA: I was not asked to match what was done in the series. I was just given the audition copy, and an image of what the Scarecrow looked like. The concept of the Scarecrow for me came out of that image – it was like, it was basically acting from the outside in. It was like putting on a costume and seeing how I felt with the costume. And what it was, was seeing the gloves, and seeing the needles coming out of the gloves. And when I looked at that, I just imagined what it would be like if those needles went into my hands and through the arms and across the chest – this kind of rictus band.

As I began to feel that, I began to get [slowly transitions into the Scarecrow’s voice as he stands, leaning forward with his arms outstretched at an angle behind him] an idea of what it was the voice would sound like. And that was where I found it. [goes back to his normal voice] And in fact, most of the game was recorded with me in this position. They actually had to re-mike me, because that’s how I felt it. So, it was all about a feeling that I got, that came from the photo that was sent, the picture that the design arc of the Scarecrow.

OR: One of my favorite roles by you is when you voiced God of Used Book Markets in The Night is Short, Walk On Girl and when you explain how all books are interconnected. Can you talk a bit about your experience with that movie? Did you ever get to meet Tomihiko Morimi, the author of the original book?

DA: I did not. I did not, because that was recorded during the height of the pandemic, and so it was recorded from my home studio.

So, I basically had the English director, Stephanie Sheh – on a screen, via Zoom, and I’m recording from home. And all I could see were just my scenes. And let me tell you: That sequence, because I’m saying all these titles in rapid fire with Japanese names, in order, we had to write all the names phonetically as opposed to trying to get me to understand how to say, because it was just too fast. So, everything was spelled phonetically for me, because that sequence, I’m like: ‘This connects to that, this connects to this, this connects to that, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’

And that just took forever to record, and we just went line by line by line to get the timing. Because, of course, being anime, I’m also having to match the lip flaps. So it’s not just a matter of saying it quickly and as if I knew what I was saying, it’s also got to fit in that space.

And that was, boy – that was, Ooooof. [laughs] I am very proud of that. When we played back the finished thing, wow!

“But DragonCon is about us geeks. And that’s what I love about it. It is our Halloween, our Mardi Gras, it’s us celebrating us.”

OR: You voiced additional Bidoof in last year’s Pokemon short, Bidoof’s Big Stand. What was the booking process like? After all, Bidoofs can only say their name.

DA: Bidoof!

It’s funny, those are things that are a little past my time. For people who don’t know, this keeps you young. I am two weeks away from 60 – [Connor’s] siblings are all in their 30s, I was born September 16, 1963 when The Outer Limits premiered. So, these were not characters from my childhood, right? The characters from my childhood were things like Gumby. I grew up a disciple of Ron Sterling and Gene Rodenberry and Ray Bradberry, and these folx. So, when I got the audition copy, there was no nerves on my part of ‘Oh my god, this huge franchise! I need to be part of it!’

It was just something I knew my kid knows what it is, but I’m just going to create the character as I see. And when I saw [Connor imitates Bidoof] Bidoof, Bidoof! [goes back to normal voice] – exactly – and it wasn’t until after I did it that people went ‘Oh my God!’ and I didn’t know, I just approached it as an actor as I would approach anything. I suppose it is like that for Star Trek – if I got this thing on Star Trek, I’d be going ‘Oh my God!’ you know. I just approached it as an actor and looked at the little character, and thought ‘[w]hat might this sound like?’ and did it. It was only until later that people were like ‘[d]o you know what this is?!” [and I replied] “Not really?” And I was like “Ohhhhh! That’s cool! Yeah, I have heard of that, I know what that is.”

Dino Andrade voiced additional Bidoof in Bidoof’s Big Stand.

OR: [Connor], I have a question for you.

Connor Andrade: I didn’t do it!

OR: Your dad posted on X, previously known as Twitter, that you’ve beaten him out for voice acting gigs. What’s that like for you?

CA: I have?

DA: It was Wee Baby Bears, son. Remember? They did the kids and they opened it up to adults – so we were both reading for Grizz.

CA: That was all – 2018? 2020?

OR: 2020, I think.

CA: 2020 – I barely remember that, I mean, when I think of Wee Baby Bears, I think of going into the booth. My vague memory of being there with the audition company was [deadpan voice] ‘Another audition, yay.’ [returns to normal voice] not expecting to get it for two years. I totally forgot that dad had read for it and doing it with adults at all. I had no idea.

DA: You had to understand that when we hit the pandemic, we were essentially out of work for only a couple of weeks before studios realized ‘Wait a moment, for animation, that can all be done from home.’ These animators had computer stations at home – there are actors who have studios at home. And we were one of those actors who had a full studio at home. So all the sudden, we were just inundated with auditions for everything, because we could work. It was just that blur of ‘[h]ey, there’s this show son, we’re reading for the same part! Haha, good luck!’

CA: And now I’m on the show for two years! Sadly, there is no season three.

DA: It doesn’t look like it.

CA: Warner Brothers did the whole thing – and no season three.

DA: Maybe they’ll change their minds, but we’ll find out. The point is: It was all part of a blur, and it was a lot of joking, you know, as we’re going in and out of our booth at home. ‘Look, we’re reading for the same thing! Ha ha ha.’ But there was no ‘Darn it! Or HA HA!’ It was just a day in the life.

OR: Question for both of you – we are here on Sunday of DragonCon 2023. What has your DragonCon experience been like for this year so far? I know for you [Dino], this is not your first DragonCon.

DA: No, this is about my 15th. I was coming to DragonCon for at least five years before I was ever invited as a guest – because this is my favorite convention. I love DragonCon. I’ve also been to San Diego Comic Con many, many times. But it’s a completely different environment. San Diego Comic Con is about the shows, about the movies, about the books, about the comics – about all of those things that we geeks are into. But DragonCon is about us geeks. And that’s what I love about it. It is our Halloween, our Mardi Gras, it’s us celebrating us. And that’s what I love about it, because I think of myself as a geek who made it, right? I grew up loving great works of imagination, I loved science fiction and fantasy – I wanted to be part of it. And now I am, and have been for quite a long time.

But this is [Connor’s] first! So, go head, tell them what you think about DragonCon?

CA: [My] first time going on a plane, never been on a plane before! But since this was Georgia, and we’re in California, we had to hop onto a tube and go ‘[w]heeeee!’ up in the air. Get off the plane, we’re in Atlanta and I’m ‘[t]his doesn’t feel different?’ And the weather happens, and it’s raining and we’re inside a cloud in our hotel room.

The con itself – way more different costumes, there’s someone dressed up as Clippy from Microsoft, if you’ve never seen that.

DA: What was the giant pink thing you saw?

CA: Yeah! Kirby! There was a giant, inflatable, fluffy Kirby. It was hilarious. You could hug it, it was fluffy but inflatable, so you could squish it. The main atrium thing of the Marriott – it’s amazing. I wish I could have been there when the carpet was still there. The Walk of Fame – we were on the Walk of Fame in a booth. People walked by, you can wave to people and say ‘[h]ello, cool costume!’ It was fun. Everything is in different buildings, which I am not used to. The googly eyes are everywhere, which is funny. It’s very unique, very different. I really like how different and big it is. It is bigger than Comic Con.

OR: To wrap up the interview – I see you’re wearing a Jump Leads shirt. What can you tell us about that?

DA: Jump Leads is a comedy sci-fi podcast. It is an original story – Season One runs six episodes, and it is something that I co-produce with a gentleman by the name of Ben Paddon, who also wrote the episodes and stars in them. I also am a cast member through almost all but one episode. Connor’s also in the show. I also directed a number of the episodes – I directed episodes one, two, and six.

And this is just something that we did out of our love of science fiction and comedy, and wanted to create our own content. So, we made it [and] we’re very, very proud of it. People can go to JumpLeads.zone or anywhere podcasts are available. And we’re currently working on Season Two. It’s very funny, it’s good stuff.

OR: Any idea when we should expect Season Two?

DA: It’s actually being written right now. So, we’re probably not going to start recording until towards the end of this year or the beginning of next. Because, we don’t have any corporate overlords saying: ‘[g]et it done NOW!’ So we’re really taking our time to do a great job with the writing. But it’s something we’re very, very proud of. We’ve gotten great responses to it. And it’s just a lot of fun, a lot of fun.

Jump Leads!

CA: Yeah!

OR: Thank you very much, I appreciate it!

What are your favorite roles of Dino and Connor Andrade?

Have you given Jump Leads a try yet?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post DragonCon 2023 INTERVIEW: Dino Andrade and Connor Andrade appeared first on oprainfall.

In a lot of ways, the PokéDollar in Pokémon GO stops with Michael Steranka. He is the Live Game Director for Pokémon GO over at Niantic, Inc., and he is one of the people in charge of pulling off Pokémon GO Fest each year in multiple cities across the world.

I was able to sit down with him during Pokémon GO Fest 2023 in New York City to talk about everything from the current meta in Pokémon GO‘s PVP, how Pokémon GO Fest locations are selected, the introduction of Vivillon and Meltan into Pokémon GO, the limitations placed on remote raid passes, routes, and more.

You can see my thoughts on this year’s Pokemon GO Fest: New York City here.

You can follow Michael Steranka at his official X account.

You can also find out the latest happenings in Pokémon GO at the official website, on X, on Instagram and Facebook, and on YouTube. 

Finally, you can follow Niantic Inc. on their official website, on YouTube, on Facebook and Instagram, on X, and on TikTok.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with Operation Rainfall, and you are?

Michael Steranka: I am Michael Steranka, live game director for Pokémon GO.

OR: We are here in Randall’s Island Park in New York City for Pokémon GO Fest 2023. There are a lot of people who are ticketed for this event and there are debuts of new shiny Pokémon. Are the shiny rates boosted for this [in-person] event? Or not?

MS: They definitely are. Players who are here in New York City, both on Randall’s Island and the rest of the city – as long as you have a ticket, you’re definitely going to enjoy some nice shiny Pokémon coming out of this event.

OR: You recently released a new feature called “Ready to Raid.” What have the testing results been like for it? Will it be expanded to one-and-three star raids, so solo players don’t have to wait the full time to run the easily-soloably one-star raid by themselves?

MS: The results have been really positive so far. Obviously, with a feature like this, we really want to monitor the impact that it has on our servers, but we also want to make sure that qualitatively, players really enjoy the feature and it’s not causing some unintended UX challenges for folx. That’s why we soft-launched it in a couple of markets earlier this year.

We also made it available for all of our in-person GO Fests – Osaka, London, and now New York [City] – and we’re happy to say that things have been really, really positively received on this front. So no news to explicitly announce on the global rollout of this, but things are looking good – let’s just put it that way.

“I don’t have anything to share on the Paldean Pokémon specifically, but just know that with a new generation comes new Pokémon, and with new Pokémon comes new shakeups.”

OR: Let’s talk about Pokémon Worlds last weekend. It wrapped up in Yokohama this last weekend, and I’m going to give you some statistics from it. Out of the top 32 competitors: 28 ran Medicham, 21 Lanturn, and 20 Altaria. Each of those top 32 players ran at least one of the three, and 12 players ran all three.

You’re a Legendary [ranked] player yourself in every season, which you [again achieved and] announced on X fairly recently. The meta is pretty well defined right now, and you just saw that at Yokohama. How does Niantic view this type of meta? Is there a desire to shift this meta at all? Should I bother competing in League if I don’t run Medicham with maxed out XL candy?

MS: Yeah, great question.

We take a look at the metagame in PVP as something that is always fluid. We never want it to get stale, we never want it to always boil down to the exact same Pokémon for everybody. So, every season in Pokémon GO, we try to release major move changes – whether that’s adjusting the parameters of existing moves, giving new moves to new Pokémon, or even launching new Pokémon that can shake things up quite considerably. When we look at the breakdown of teams at the World Championships, there definitely was a high concentration of certain Pokémon in a lot of teams – particularly Medicham, which was prevalently used.

I personally don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. When you look at other Pokémon competitive games, like the VGC and whatnot – in years past, you’ve seen things like Landorus being pretty much on every single player’s team. There’s ways that Pokémon can help centralize and solidify metagames, and that often times is what you kind of want when you’re designing these things ‘cause it gives you something to counter, right? The metagame that you can counter.

If a game is waaaaaaay too distributed, that can actually lead to a little more unhealthy team building dynamic, where you have no idea what you’re trying to build against and what you’re trying to build for, versus having a little bit of coalescence around some key strong Pokémon.

That being said, if you look at the top two teams – that placed first and second – there’s actually 12 unique Pokémon that were brought across those two. So, it does allow for quite a bit of diversity and play, even in the current meta. That being said, we are definitely going to have a pretty big shakeup next season, as I alluded to on steam at the World Championships.

Pokémon GO Grand Finals at Pokémon Worlds 2023 in Yokohama, Japan. 

OR: With [Pokémon:] The Trading Card Game, they rotate out expansions, so you’re literally dropping new set of cards [in]. With the video game, The Pokémon Company has been on a yearly release schedule for quite awhile now, and they rotate out the entire game. You really can’t just drop all the Pokémon in Pokémon GO though.

MS: Yeah, you can’t drop all the Pokémon, and we also never wanted [you] to feel like you invested so much of your time and resources into a Pokémon and then it gets completely nerfed out of the metagame. When we make big shifts, we typically are trying to make other Pokémon more relevant, and we never want something to fall from the top three usage to the bottom 100 in the game. But GBL is very different from something like the World Championships.

The World Championships series – you are allowed to bring almost every Pokémon that has been released in the game, but in GBL, we give players a lot more opportunities for creative teambuilding by having condensed metagames. Things like Evolution Cup or Catch Cup – the different Leagues you can participate in as well. So hopefully, across all of those different things, players find that they’re able to come up with really fun, unique teams and still find success in the GO Battle League.

OR: Follow-up: When you’re introducing a new Pokémon, such as Paldeas Pokémon in September, how important is PVP when designing the move and TM pools, spawn rarity and all that? Everything else that goes into releasing a new Pokémon – where is PVP[‘s importance]?

MS: We don’t think that every single Pokémon released needs to be a top performer in PVP, but every time we release a new batch of Pokémon, it is an opportunity for us to take a look at that and determine ‘[d]o we need some sort of shakeup right now?’ I don’t have anything to share on the Paldean Pokémon specifically, but just know that with a new generation comes new Pokémon, and with new Pokémon comes new shakeups. It’s not just going to be the move changes that we make at the start of the next season. You’ll see Pokémon get introduced throughout the season, new moves being introduced through Community Days that will also keep things fresh through the course of the three months.

Paldeas Region Pokémon will be coming to Pokémon GO in September 2023.

OR: When you’re introducing a new generation of Pokémon, what type of access does The Pokémon Company give you? For example, with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, did you have access to that slate of Pokémon to get a jumpstart on them before those games came out? Or are y’all playing catchup?

MS: We have a really tight collaboration with The Pokémon Company out in Tokyo. I can’t really speak to the nitty-gritty about how early or late we get access to upcoming Pokémon, but I am happy to share that nothing is an afterthought, right? We work very, very closely. There’s nothing that goes out in Pokémon GO that The Pokémon Company isn’t aware of. We work very closely with them on all facets of the game. Whether that’s the release cadence of new Pokémon, or how we’re spec’ing out new features in the game, to what kinds of live Ops we’re building on an on-going basis. So it’s much more of a tight-knit collaboration than you might expect.

OR: Meltan, and its evolution [Melmetal], was a Pokémon GO initial release. What was that experience like working with The Pokémon Company for that?

MS: That was, honestly, one of my favorite things I’ve had the pleasure of working on in my entire time with Pokémon GO. It was the special tease that we were able to do during the Chikorita Community Day. At that point, we had never introduced a new Pokémon in Pokémon GO before, and so it was a huge opportunity to surprise players. Many players thought it was actually a glitch at the time – ‘[w]hat the heck is this thing we’ve never seen before, it doesn’t have a name?’

After the Chikorita Community Day wrapped up, Meltan started to appear everywhere before anyone had ever seen it. If you tried to catch it, it would turn into Ditto unfortunately. *laughs* But it was such a fun tease that it was a really delightful moment for players. You know, I hope we can do more [of it] in the future.

OR: Was introducing a brand-new Pokémon the Pokémon Company’s idea to bring to the game, or was it y’all approaching them to bring it in?

MS: As I mentioned, we have such a tight collaboration that we’ll do brainstorms that it’s not necessarily one company to the other, but something that we jointly bring to life.

“I hope that even you can agree that when you’re able to meet the community, to come out to a GO Fest like this, these are experiences that no other game can provide.”

OR: Let’s talk routes: How’s that going for you?

MS: Routes has been such a truly Niantic mission-centric feature. It’s one of the hardest features we’ve ever built, because – as you can imagine – there are so many considerations that go into what types of routes get approved to be put into the game. We want to make sure that they’re interesting, that they’re safe, that there’s no abuse going on from player-to-player anytime there’s a UGC component added to things.

So, the rollout has definitely been one that we wanted to not take lightly, and we wanted to make sure that the initial set of routes out in the game are quality ones that we can stand by. And now we’re really starting to ramp up and make sure that there’s a broader set of routes out in the world that anybody can participate in.

OR: What criteria does [Niantic] look at when they reject a route or when they approve a route or later revoke it? What kind of things trigger that?

MS: To be honest with you, that’s probably not one that I can answer with authority. I haven’t been as heavily involved in the production of that feature and the moderation set there. That might be something I have to pass on, I’m sorry.

OR: For those of us who cannot make routes yet, like yours truly, and don’t live in an area where there are routes, have you explored ways for us to get cells?

MS: Zygarde cells?

OR: Yes, Zygarde cells.

MS: As of right now, Zygarde cells will be exclusive to routes. Definitely hear the challenges that players might face if you don’t have access to routes where you currently live. We’re trying to expand the access to be able to create routes. That’s something that’s only going to spread further and further. So [we] definitely ask for some patience as we get the system solidly in place. The rollout is not something we want to take lightly, right? We definitely don’t want there to be bad routes or unsafe routes or routes with descriptions or points that could harass other players or things like that.

I know that it maybe has been rolling out a little more slowly than some players might be hoping for, but just know that’s because we’re taking it very, very slowly and we want it to be a good experience once you do have access to it.

OR: You did an interview back in May 2023 with ZoëTwoDots, and you said: “We believe that by having these experiences that you have to go out to fully enjoy, you’re able to enjoy the game and the world around you so much more than any other video games can provide.”

You addressed the issue that I’m about to bring up on The Battle Catz Podcast last month with remote passes and XL candy, but I want to expand beyond that with the Pokédex and raids: I live in an area where there is not a Pokémon GO community, and I have to travel 40 minutes to raid. This [Pokémon GO Fest] is the first time that I’ve raided in several months. I otherwise have to depend upon Remote passes to participate in raid hour. I’m fairly limited in what I can do when it comes to catching new Legendary Pokémon – and even the Niantic Campfire app is incredibly limited within my area.

Looking at that quote that you gave in that May 2023 interview, how should I be able to fully enjoy the raid aspect of the game and hope that I can get a second shiny Uxie? Because I organized my own raid in September when the [Lake] shinies came out in New Zealand and England – and I cannot do that now. How do you balance your aspirational beliefs against my practical gaming experiences?

MS: That’s what it is, right? It’s a balance at the end of the day. I guess what I would say to that is that we made an explicit decision to not remove remote raid passes from the game, right? You are limited in how many you can do per day, but based upon the raid rotations that we have and how long they are available for, my hope is that players are still able to engage with that aspect of the game.

But yeah, we did make the call to put limitations in place, because what we saw was that ended up being the primary way a lot of players were playing Pokémon GO, and it was just antithetical to what we believe this game is intended to do. We really stand by that. I hope that even you can agree that when you’re able to meet the community, to come out to a GO Fest like this, these are experiences that no other game can provide. And that’s where we really see the strength of Pokémon GO and that’s what we want to continue to lean into as we develop the game further.

OR: A feature that is incredibly useful is that you can ‘lock’ a Pokémon from being traded by pressing the Star icon on the top right. Have you considered a feature to custom lock a Pokémon from being purified, leveled up, traded, etc – so, say, a certain journalist cannot accidentally purify a second shadow Pokémon while playing half-asleep one evening?

MS: *laughs* That’s actually really funny. I did another interview yesterday where the exact same feature was suggested. This is definitely one that I’ll bring back to the team. Everything, unfortunately, is subject to prioritization and what we do in terms of a quality-of-life feature like that takes away from resources that can be used to build a brand-new system in the game, as an example.

So, no promises that that will be specifically addressed, but hearing it twice in two days is something that I want to make sure that I take back to the team.

Continue Onto Page Two To Find Out About Implementing Vivillon, Michael’s PVP Teams, and how Niantic Selects Sites for Pokemon GO Fests! ->

The post Pokémon GO Fest 2023 INTERVIEW: Michael Steranka (Niantic) appeared first on oprainfall.

After the first full day of FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2023-2024, the media present at the event were lucky enough to have a sit-down discussion with Naoki Yoshida, the producer and director for FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, to talk about the upcoming expansion DAWNTRAIL, ask about the game’s development process, and discuss ideas for potential future content (including playing older FINAL FANTASY titles inside of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online!), and more.

Here is a truncated (for now, at least!) summary of the panel discussion:

Famitsu: You mentioned the theme color for DAWNTRAIL is gold; could you tell us what kind of guidance you provided to Mr. Yoshitaka Amano when you asked him to create the illustrated logo?

Yoshida-san said that when they were discussing with Amano-san about the illustrated logo, he told Amano-san the theme was adventure, and that they want to capture that feeling of excitement about seeing uncharted territories as the Warriors of Light go by sea to the new continent. Plus, there is a major palace landmark in the area. Further, when Amano-san was working on the logo, he was working on it in black-and-white. They wanted Amano-san to create the illustration and then scan it in as digital data so that they didn’t lose the delicate elements of his work. The team then applied the gradiates afterwards. He further explained that he did tell Mr. Amano that the expansion’s theme color will be gold, and that he did ask him to include a rainbow in there. The FFXIV team also takes inspiration from Amano-san’s work too.

Sektor.sk: ENDWALKER brought an end to the story we’ve been following since the beginning of FFXIV. DAWNTRAIL starts a whole new story. Do you already have an idea of how vast this story will be and how many more expansions will develop it?

Yoshida-san explained that it wasn’t necessarily their intention to create one long, continuous story. What they do is foreshadow certain elements, and then try to tie up the loose ends through the successive expansions that are released. With DAWNTRAIL, they will continue doing that and whether the story from DAWNTRAIL goes on as long as the one between Hydaelyn and Zodiark did depends on player response. He said he also has enough ideas to fill two expansion packs, but he can’t tell what ideas he has at the current time.

Areajungones: Were you inspired by any specific cultures in the real world to create the regions featured in DAWNTRAIL?

Yoshida-san explained in a short answer: ‘Yes’, but he wants to keep it as a surprise for when they reveal more information at a later time.

IGN Brasil: What will be the features in DAWNTRAIL that will help old players to get back to the game or even bring new players to the adventures in this new area? How can they avoid getting lost in the current lore and get up-to-date to play DAWNTRAIL?

He said that this question gets asked whenever a new expansion is announced. He said that older content isn’t ‘old, old’, and they continually add new content to it and it is all very story-based. Plus, players can use NPCs to push through the story content instead of playing with other players. He compared it to a TV series as a season six that people can want to jump into, but he has made it so that the first season (presumably A Realm Reborn) is still relevant and so people should start with that.

GLHF: The way that Fan Fest rolls out development staff like rockstars is pretty unique, what do you and the development team feel like at events like Fan Fest, where you will so often be stopped and asked for photos, et cetera?

Yoshida-san said that they don’t necessarily treat developers like rock stars when they bring them out and that their job is to make games and not be rock stars. He believes that developers are not meant to be out in front like that and he sees comments on the livestreams commenting about his age and weight. He also said it was important to understand what the players want, the developers are making, and what the media is interested in reporting helps to create an understanding that keeps the game interesting and that allows them to keep updating the game.

He is flattered when people stop him and ask him for photos. He likes to accommodate as long as there is time, and people are fine with him being a middle-aged man. He talked about two photo experiences: at the first North American FAN FEST experience, he was picked up princess-style in one photograph, and in Japan, one girl asked to pick him up and ‘back drop’ him like in a wrestling-move. He finally did caution that there was a photo he once took with a Free Company that was uploaded to social channels, and everyone but his face was obscured. He asked people to show their faces and to show that they are having a good time.

Eurogamer Germany: Are any crossovers between FFXIV and FFXVI planned?

Yoshida explained that he is unable to divulge on it now, but they are hoping they can say within the calendar year.

Operation Rainfall: Patch 5.3, released on August 11, 2020, overhauled a lot of the main scenario quests and duties from A Real Reborn. Can you talk about what it was like revisiting that content and deciding what to keep, what to remove, and what to revise? Is there content you wish you would have kept after all?

Yoshida-san explained that there wasn’t anything he wishes he could have kept after all. He explained that when they were shaving down the content, there were multiple ways to assess what should be removed: First, they researched what content players decided to drop out of and then pinpoint that. Second, there were quests the development team felt they had done too much on and wanted to rein it back. Finally, they looked at the different NPCs, the quests they gave and their role with the lore. Based upon that, they would decide what NPCs could go away, and that was the hardest task.

Easy Allies: Would you consider implementing cross-regional Data Center visiting, or even a cross-regional Data Center Duty Finder queue system?

The technical aspects of being able to travel between the different data centers is built, but they want to spend more time figuring out if it is okay to open the ‘floodgates’ for everyone to intermingle because they don’t have enough information to see how intra-data center is utilized. Yoshida-san said he has had many discussions with his server engineer about how to make it work, including recently, and they keep having to have more meetings to discuss it. They don’t want to give up on the idea.

Frandroid.com: After Variant and Criterion Dungeons, do you plan on working on more 4-player endgame content like this? What was the feedback so far and does it mean we won’t have new 72 players content in the future (big fan of Bozja here)?

Yoshida-san explained that they would like to continue releasing more content in that format, and they will listen to feedback to reflect into the game. They still want to enhance the content they are offering in Variant/Criterion dungeons, and they will implement more content in that kind of format. As for content like Bozja and Eureka, they still want to do content like that and they will continue to come up with new challenges.

MMOS.com: Ideally, I’d love to buy FINAL FANTASY I and put it in an Arcade cabinet in my house. Being able to put the first few FINAL FANTASY games in FINAL FANTASY XIV would be amazing, even if it was in the cash shop only. Can we ever expect something like this?

Yoshida-san said that they’ve been trying to attempt this since a year-and-a-half ago. With the FINAL FANTASY Pixel Remaster series, they thought it would be cool to play it in your estate or at the Gold Saucer, and they’ve tested it out. They realized that the Pixel Remaster games are playing on a ‘middleware’, and they would have to build another system inside of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online to play the middleware to play FINAL FANTASY Pixel Remaster. He half-jokingly, half-seriously, asked for a ‘super programmer’ who can build Pixel Remaster in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online to apply to SQUARE ENIX Japan to build this.

He explained that FINAL FANTASY XIV Online is like a ‘theme park’ for FINAL FANTASY games, and so he would like to include it. Finally, he said the question stated ‘paid shop only’, and he didn’t want to be called out later on for why it was on the Mogstation. He said that maybe they could consider that FINAL FANTASY I-III COULD be free, but they can’t give everything away for free.

Inverse: Have you thought about expanding FFXIV into other mediums, like anime or a TV series? Would you like to see that personally?

Yoshida-san stated that if he is allowed to be the overall supervisor/director, then he would love to have a FINAL FANTASY XIV Online television series. He explained that he is the producer/director of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, he is the head of Creative Business Unit Division III, and a SQUARE ENIX board member, and he doesn’t think that he can also direct a TV series.

He said they are ‘quite open’ to offers from other parties to do a spin-off movie, anime, or TV series. Interestingly, he said they have been approached in the past, but due to the pandemic, nothing has been followed through to ‘concrete’ discussions.

He said he is concerned that if a project is approved, it won’t destroy the image the players have of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online and he wants to ensure that it is of high quality.

Are you excited about the upcoming DAWNTRAIL expansion?

What do you hope to see announced at the live Letter from the Producer this morning on Day 2 of the FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2023-2024?

Let us know in the comments below, and in the meantime be sure to check out my FINAL FANTASY XIV Online cooking series: Cooking Eorzea!

The post FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2023-2024 (Naoki Yoshida) Media Panel Discussion appeared first on oprainfall.

Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is a strategic RPG title that takes place in the world of Hinomoto, where the days of noble warriors are ending and two characters — Fuji and Pirilika — find themselves having to team up against the world around them. The latest entry in the Disgaea franchise also comes loaded with new features such as Jumbification, Item Reincarnation, and more character classes than ever before.

I caught up with Shunsuke Minowa, the director of Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless, after trying out a demo of the upcoming title that I will be sharing my impressions of later this week. During our interview, we talk about the game’s new features, where the story ideas come from, what he sees of himself in this title, and more.

You can find out more about NIS America and Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless at the official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, on Twitch, and on Discord.

Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless will be released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and on PC (Steam), on October 3, 2023.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: Hello, my name is Quentin H. with Operation Rainfall, and you are?

Shunsuke Minowa: My name is Minowa, and I am the director of Disgaea 7.

OR: Could you briefly tell us what Disgaea 7 is about?

SM: This series — the Disgaea series — has been around 20 years, and this is the newest installment in the series. And this one was really about getting back to the [series’] roots and creating a very Disgaea-like Disgaea game.

OR: You mentioned this in a few interviews you’ve done so far — about going back to the roots. Can you explain why you chose this approach versus like Disgaea 6, for example?

SM: Actually, Disgaea 6 was a big influence on this — because the goal of that one was to get new fans. As a result, for example, we had to curtail some features like the leveling feature or the number of characters. So we had to reduce some features, squeezed things down a bit to make them accessible for new fans. But as a result, our existing fans were missing some features that they’d seen in previous games. So we wanted to correct some of those things we did in Disgaea 6 and focus on the features that our fans expect.

“The fun of Disgaea is in leveling your characters, making them stronger, and the strategy that goes into that.”

OR: In Disgaea 7, you have two main characters — a first for the series: Fuji and Pirilika. Can you talk about these two characters a bit, and why you chose to have two main characters instead of just one, like in prior entries?

SM: Fuji was envisioned as a very classic ‘demons’ demon,’ who embodies all the characters up until now like a typical Disgaea protagonist, but with an interesting caveat of being in a bushido-themed world. So the interplay of his demonic nature with the bushido world is one interesting thing. But the contrast: Pirilika is very, very optimistic, [and] has a very rosy-tinted view of the world. So the idea was to have this strong contrast between the two characters and that’s why we had two [leads].

OR: Why have two characters that embodies these characteristics, instead of just one that embodies these characteristics or just bounces off of secondary characters?

SM: One point is that it did make for making scenes easier — writing the story. Also, by splitting it, you can further emphasize that difference: You can really say this character is all about the ‘good,’ this character is all about the ‘bad.’ So, it really emphasizes the dual nature of this game.

OR: Disgaea 7 has 45 different classes available for people to play with. You introduced four new classes in this game. How did you develop them to find their own niche to both stand on their own when there are so many options already out there, and yet also complement the already-existing gameplay and world?

SM: Starting with the 41 previous characters: these ones have been in previous games, so that was really a matter of revisiting them, right? So we had something to build on — we weren’t starting from scratch. For the new ones, for the development process, we can break it down into two categories: There’s the upper-level ones like the Big Eye and Maiko. They lend themselves to people who want to 100% the game and really get into it. And then there are the lower-level ones, the Zombie Maiden and Male Bandit.

A big thing here is the comparison and contrast: We like to contrast female and male characters. For example, we have a Male Zombie but now we have a Zombie Maiden. We have the Bandit versus Female Thief. So there’s a contrast and having a good array of different strengths of characters. So that’s how we make them ‘pop,’ so to speak, by going in a direction we haven’t before and by focusing on those contrasts.

OR: Can you explain what ‘Jumbification’ is, and what the development process [was] in balancing it into the gameplay?

SM: As you just saw in your playthrough — movement is sometimes a sticking point in SRPGs. So one big feature in how to address this in the Disgaea series is lifting and throwing. That’s a great way to deal with tricky movement, so we wanted to double down on it, essentially. We’re already adding new battle features, and we thought this was a great chance — maybe we can create a way to attack without moving at all, plus it just looks great, right?

So this really came from a discussion with the designers. We already had these 3D models, and so we said: ‘So even if we blow them up to huge proportions, they will still look great, right?’ So this lended itself to the exact game mechanics I was already envisioning. This time, it was really easy to combine the 3D with this vision I already had, and that’s where Jumbification came from. And adding onto that, we added these Jumbo abilities — so when you’re Jumbified, you can have these fun attacks, do more damage, to make battle even simpler and more fun and quicker and be more exciting.

OR: In a May 31, 2023 interview with Push Square, you said “[i]n Disgaea 6, unlimited use of auto-battle resulted in a loss of the series’ original replay value and enjoyment of raising characters” and so “[i]n this game, we have implemented a cost for using auto-battle and made it possible for players to save that cost by making smart choices.” In another interview with Siliconera, you also stated that upon reviewing fan feedback, we “came to the conclusion that we must address the following things” that included “remove or improve auto-battle.”

Can you please elaborate on that auto-battle cost and how players can save that cost? What other options did you evaluate in how to revamp the auto-battle system? Was actually removing auto-battle ever seriously evaluated?

SM: So actually, it was sort of 50-50 on the total removal. Initially, some people wanted to leave it in a partial format, and some people wanted to do away with it. So there were three options: one was to cut it, one was to introduce the new cost mechanic, and one was to leave it as it is. So those were the three basic ways of addressing the feedback we received.

The fun of Disgaea is in leveling your characters, making them stronger, and the strategy that goes into that. We realized that AI battle came in conflict with that — so the idea to balance those two concepts was to introduce this cost. The basic structure was that at the end of battle, you gain one unit of ‘Poltergas,’ is what they call it in English. By spending that unit, you can run an auto battle. The way you use it effectively and economically is by getting your demonic intelligence involved. For example, you can cut three turns down to one turn. So you want to combine the auto-battle features with this new cost mechanic so you use your Poltergas wisely and get the most bang for your buck while also keeping that strategic leveling element.

OR: I want to follow up on that comment about how the fun of Disgaea is leveling your characters. Disgaea 6 shook up the EXP formula for the series by granting the characters shared EXP only after a map is completed, which allows a player to level their characters more evenly. Yet in Disgaea 7, the EXP system reverted back to granting individual EXP during battle. Can you talk about that formula reversion, and why you chose to go back to the prior method?

SM:  It’s got to do with the same reason that we increased the generic character classes again. It’s the same thing with the leveling — we want you to have the same connection with the characters. We want you to feel like ‘I’m leveling this character!’ and you’ve got that fun, personal connection with all those individual characters.

“So, I actually am not very good at SRPGs. I think they can be a pain sometimes, with some of those mechanics. So for me, what was so great about the Disgaea series is that they make those mechanics fun and that there is a lot of depth to those mechanics.”

OR: Bonus Gauges are gone, and instead there are chests awarded based upon completing certain objectives, like completing the battle in a certain number of turns, taking damage only a certain number of times, etc. Can you talk about this gameplay mechanic, and how you developed it? How did you choose what conditions to set per map?

SM: The reason we focused on this rewards system format actually had to do with the auto battle. You’re not just trying to lower the cost — again, we’re trying to provide more challenges, more engagement for the player. So, while you’re focusing on clearing the stage, you also can focus on things to clear in the stage. Like it’s objectives within objectives. That also increases, I think, the play merit, and also — for example — if you’re playing normally, you check off maybe one or two. But if you’re really focusing, you can get everything. So it increases the play value and the depth of the play objectives.

OR: One of the things that has been ever-growing in the Disgaea franchise is the ‘power creep,’ for lack of a better phrase. For example, in Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, the level cap is 99,999,999, and you can dump hundreds of thousands of points into different stats. Yet, in Disgaea 7, you move away from that to a much lesser 9,999 level cap — we saw all [this] in the demo. Can you talk a bit about that?

SM: This has been something for a lot of the games in the series — we like to always experiment with adding features or removing ones to change things up. That was just for Disgaea 6 that we did this 99 million [level cap], and so we thought ‘Okay, let’s go in a different direction’ because it was a little tricky to balance when it got that big — it was hard to manage those numbers. So we thought ‘this one, we will go in a different direction.’

OR: Now, this is the first time you’ve directed a game, correct?

SM: Yes.

OR: I believe you were a programmer previously on Disgaea 4 and 5?

SM: Yes.

OR: Can you talk a bit about what it is like stepping up from being a programmer, which handles one specific part of the game, to helming the entire project?

SM: The fun part, for example, as a programmer, is that you get to focus in on your area and speak with the director about it. But as the director, what is interesting is that you have the bigger picture in mind at all times, and you’re juggling things — for example, you’re balancing the gambling aspect or the leveling aspect. And you’re focusing on how we can pick the best of all these different areas, instead of just drilling down, you’re trying to raise everything at once and have that bigger image.

OR: Donald M. Murray once wrote: “All my writing — and yours — is autobiographical.” What of yourself do you see in Disgaea 7?

SM: Are you talking about more the mechanics or the story?

OR: It’s whatever — what of yourself do you see in Disgaea 7?

SM: So, I actually am not very good at SRPGs. I think they can be a pain sometimes, with some of those mechanics. So for me, what was so great about the Disgaea series is that they make those mechanics fun and that there is a lot of depth to those mechanics. And so, for me, that is something I really wanted to focus in on and make even better — making not-so-much-fun stuff, fun.

OR: You also mentioned something about story — do you see something about the story in yourself?

SM: I really like these ‘David and Goliath’ stories — the giant killers. I wanted a small but powerful character. So, I talked with the writers, and the result of that was Ao and Suisen.

OR: Can you talk a little bit about any DLC prospects for Disgaea 7?

SM: One kind of conceptual level where the DLC is a little bit different this time is that before, we would have the same DLC characters from the same game appearing as a set. But this time, we thought it would be interesting to combine different characters from different games into new combinations, and that provided some interesting new scenes as a result.

OR: To someone who has never picked up a Disgaea game before and is interested in trying out Disgaea 7, what do you have to say to them?

SM: As I’ve mentioned before, this game is so much about going back to the roots and rediscovering that Disgaea-ness of Disgaea. So if someone plays this game, they will be able to have a retrospective of the entire series, and in a sense, just by playing this game, they can experience the whole series up to now and see what makes it so great.

OR: Thank you.

Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless will be released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and on PC (Steam), on October 3, 2023.

Are you excited for Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless? What classes are you hoping to play as?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW: Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless’s Director Shunsuke Minowa appeared first on oprainfall.

One of the most venerable SEGA titles, Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis, is on the cusp of releasing a major new update to the game in just a few days. With new content ranging from being able to create your own personalized spaces, new outfits, and even cel shading graphics, Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis ver.2 is bringing quite a bit of new content to this online game.

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to conduct an email interview with Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis’ series producer, Yuya Kimura, about a variety of topics ranging from the path to bringing PSO2 to North America, the collaboration process with other IPs, about the content coming in the upcoming ver.2 update, and more.

You can check out the latest on Phantasy Star Online 2 at the official website, on Twitter, on Twitch, on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, and on Discord.

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis ver.2 is being released on June 7, 2023!

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: Could you please introduce yourself?   

Yuya Kimura: My name is Yuya Kimura. This year marks my 21st year working at SEGA. I’ve been involved with the Phantasy Star series ever since joining the company. I planned and launched PSO2, and served as its director until the service began. Afterwards, I oversaw the development and operation of PSO2 as the series director for around nine years, and I am currently the series producer for PSO2 New Genesis.

OR: Do you play Phantasy Star 2 Online New Genesis in your spare time? If so, can you tell us a little bit about what your gameplay experience is like? What do you like to play or do for fun outside of PSO2 NGS?

YK: I would rather keep the focus on the team and the game instead of my own personal play style.

OR: You were the Quest Director and one of the scenario writers for Phantasy Star Universe and its expansion, Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus that was released between 2006 and 2007, and for which online service ended in 2012.

The main protagonist, Ethan Weber, a GUARDIAN named Karen Erra, the PSU theme song “Save This World”, and other callbacks appeared for a limited time in Phantasy Star Online 2 in 2016 for PSU‘s 10th anniversary. What was it like revisiting these characters and Phantasy Star Universe‘s music as a series producer for the 10th anniversary event when you had originally helped to shape PSU and these character’s stories back in 2016?           

YK: As I joined the Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 team during its operational phase, Phantasy Star Universe (PSU) is the first title in the Phantasy Star series that I was able to join in the initial development phases, before the service began. This makes it one of the more memorable games in the series for me.

I wanted to implement content from PSU in PSO2 as a collaboration with myself, as I was serving as the series director at the time. I was in charge of designing which characters and content would be implemented, as well as creating NPC characters such as Ethan and Karen.

Over time graphics have evolved greatly since PSU, so I was really happy to have Ethan and Karen appear on game screens once more, and I was deeply moved by reactions for players who enjoyed the nostalgic feeling of that time.

“Player feedback and opinions are collected through posts to official support channels and comments on various social media platforms.

[…]

During weekly meetings, the team of directors and I discuss and decide on the responses and methods regarding these matters.”

OR: One of the unique aspects of Phantasy Star Online 2 and Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is that the game frequently had crossover events with various intellectual properties that are owned by SEGA (such as Persona and Project DIVA) and non-Sega titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and FINAL FANTASY XIV Online.

Can you talk about how SEGA and non-SEGA collaboration events are developed to keep these events true to their original franchise roots while integrating them into Phantasy Star Online 2 and subsequently in Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis? How do you go about deciding which IPs to include within the game, and how involved are the IP owners/developers in co-developing or signing off on the crossover content?

YK: In deciding which IP to collaborate with, we consider IP that have a high affinity with the PSO2 series and its players. Most of the time we will propose the project to the IP that we wish to collaborate with. For mutual collaborations, sometimes we get the offer from the other party and then we launch the project. Once we’ve decided to move forward with the collaboration, we create a detailed plan for the content to be distributed and supervise it. We also have the created content supervised in detail before it’s distributed, including the detailed text level and the content of the announcements beforehand.

OR: Phantasy Star Online 2 was originally released in Japan back in July 2012, and a Western release was only announced at Microsoft E3 2019 Press Conference. Can you talk about the lengthy delay in bringing Phantasy Star Online 2 to the Western audiences, and what the internal decision process was like that led to the ultimate decision to bring the game over? Did you ever consider not releasing the game for Western audiences?

YK: Actually, for a time we had considered expanding into the North American and European regions immediately after the release of the Japanese version. But, at the time, we were unable to establish an operations system outside of Japan, and after the Japanese version was released, we found that the development and operation was far more difficult than we’d imagined. So, we ended up putting it on hold. Afterwards, we established a cooperative system with management companies in each Asian region and launched the service in 2014, but we were still out of our depth, so unfortunately the service ended after about three years.

Development of the overseas version stagnated once again after the Asian service ended. But when it was decided that development of NGS would move forward, and that the service would be offered simultaneously in both Japan as well as globally, we decided to launch PSO2 in North America in April 2020, and afterwards launched the game globally in August.

OR: One of the hallmarks of Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is the various types of Scratch Tickets where you can win various fashion, hairstyles, and more from. Can you talk about how you design and develop the various items that are constantly being added in the game that players can win through Scratch tickets?

YK: Primarily, I, as the producer, along with the item director and game designer, create content plans and communicate them with the art team. The art team then refines the details while consulting with the planners about concepts and decides who will be responsible for creating the design based on the plan. The design work may be done by internal or external staff.

Initially, three rough design proposals are presented and discussed with the art director and planners to narrow it down to one proposal, which is then used as a basis for the finalized drawing.

Once the drawing is finalized, the items director determines color changes and decoration specifications, and puts in a request to the modeler to create the item. The art team and item department director supervise the completed model, make final adjustments, and then finalize it.

For outfits, it takes approximately 8 to 10 months from the planning stage to release.

“In August we plan to release end content quests that will have a significant amount of random elements, designed for party play, and will encourage multiple attempts.”

OR: The new Slayer class, which uses a Gunblade weapon, was just released in Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis in April 2023. Can you talk about the class, and what it was like developing it? What has the player response to the Slayer class been like so far, and how do YOU personally feel about it?

YK: This class has been designed for skilled players who can fully utilize the technical controls and can combo their attacks to unleash even stronger attacks. Not only does it incorporate elements such as switching Photon Arts and multiple counters, but it also makes the movement and Active Skills of the Photon Arts themselves easy to understand, so we hope that many players will give it a try.

Since its release, we’ve received a lot of positive feedback from many players about how satisfying the action is. I’m very happy to hear that.

OR: What can you tell us generally about the new Ultra Evolution update? Why did you decide to title it Ultra Evolution?        

YK: Ultra Evolution was a temporary name. The official name at launch will be PSO2 New Genesis ver.2, so I will skip this question.

OR: One of the biggest changes in the [PSO2 New Genesis ver.2] update is the upcoming Creative Space and Connect System. Can you talk about what Creative Space is, including about what are Genesis Points, and how the Connect System will encourage social gameplay?

YK: The Creative Space is a crafting zone that gives our players a high degree of creative expression. Players can freely combine Build Parts such as building materials and furniture to create houses and buildings, and edit the terrain to create beautiful landscapes.

Genesis Points are a new in-game point system, obtained by using the Creative Space and playing its related tasks. Players can use these points to purchase Build Parts and items that would be useful in battle, such as Capsules.

The Connect System is a feature that links the parts that have been arranged in the Creative Space. Using this system, players can create their own obstacle courses and mini-games. In this way, players can create their own gameplay experiences and share them with others, enabling a truly creative and social playstyle unique to NGS.

OR: There is a new enemy type coming in the [PSO2 New Genesis ver.2] update. Can you tell us about it, and how the development team created a new type of enemy that was not merely a retread of prior content in the game?

YK: The new enemy race is called “Starless”. To create more challenging battle content after the major update, we have designed them to be clearly superior entities compared to the previous enemies, such as the DOLLS.

Following the update, they will appear in the open field, but some Starless enemies will specifically appear as targets to be defeated in future high-difficulty content.

OR: You’re also introducing cel shading [in] the [PSO2 New Genesis ver.2] update. Where did the idea to introduce these alternate graphics scheme come from, and how is it being implemented into the game? Will players still be able to use the classic graphical style?

The character creation system evolved greatly from PS02 in NGS. As we were considering how to further advance and evolve the system and that’s when we began considering cel shading implementation. Generally speaking, games that use cel shading had planned for that from the start, so they create dedicated game systems and assets for it. Since we’d be introducing this later on in NGS, honestly I felt that implementing cel shading would be impossible, so I asked the lead development staff at the time to experiment with it while expecting that it wouldn’t be possible. However, the dev team researched it over a long period of time while also working on their normal dev duties, and at some point made a presentation of their experiment results. After that, we decided to introduce it together with ver.2.

Cel shading is an optional function, so you can toggle it on or off at any time in the Salon.

OR: In the NGS Headline video, dated April 25, 2023, you discussed how Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is managed: the PR/management staff are in charge of relaying new information to players, and the developers and yourself “focus on game development and keeping up to speed on the reactions and opinions of players.” You also discussed how you had originally intended to deliver regions, weapons, and classes at a quicker pace with the launch of PSO2 NGS than what ultimately happened.

Can you talk about how you gather those reactions and opinions of players to analyze? Is there a specific feature players have asked for that stood out the most for you? How do you balance integrating what players want in the game with the development timeline that you already have planned out?

YK: Player feedback and opinions are collected through posts to official support channels and comments on various social media platforms. Dedicated staff, including Hiro Arai, compile and summarize this feedback. The development team also checks posts and social media daily to gather relevant reactions and opinions for consideration. During weekly meetings, the team of directors and I discuss and decide on the responses and methods regarding these matters. We also review the progress of implementing improvements and adjustments that were previously decided upon. For cases where progress has been made in terms of addressing certain issues, we may consult with Hiro and the operations staff to inform users about the direction through the Headline program or on Twitter, and sometimes Hiro himself checks on the progress.

However, the speed at which improvements and adjustments are actually reflected in the game varies and cannot be generalized. It depends on the complexity and urgency of implementation. Simple changes can be reflected within two or three months, while more challenging ones may take six months or more. Furthermore, since these developments were not originally planned, we have to decide whether to prioritize them based on how urgent the changes are, which may lead to delaying or reducing our original development plans. Generally, we develop content that will be released six months to over a year in advance. If it’s something that’s difficult to do but not very urgent, even if we have accepted the requests or opinions, it may take a year and a half to two years or more for them to be implemented.

OR: What updates for endgame content, not including for fashion, are coming in [PSO2 New Genesis ver.2]?

In August we plan to release end content quests that will have a significant amount of random elements, designed for party play, and will encourage multiple attempts. At the same time, we are also planning to release ultra-difficult quests geared towards party play, such as the Duel Quests that are available now, that features one very powerful boss fight.

“Even though it’s already been two years since NGS was released, compared to other online games, NGS has been designed to make it easy to catch up to players, even if you’re new.”

OR: The ARKS Ship Casino has yet to make an appearance in Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis. Is that a feature that players can expect to eventually return?

YK: We do not have any plans to implement the PSO2 Casino in NGS. Even if we were to transfer it over into NGS as-is with very minimal changes to the functionality, making it playable in NGS would be far more difficult and time-consuming than players might expect. As the Casino is still playable in the PSO2 blocks, rather than try to transfer over an experience that already exists, we’d like to focus on implementing new and unique gameplay experiences.

OR: To someone who hasn’t played Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis before and is thinking about starting the game with the upcoming [PSO2 New Genesis ver.2] update, what do you have to say to them?

YK: Even though it’s already been two years since NGS was released, compared to other online games, NGS has been designed to make it easy to catch up to players, even if you’re new.

Also, the centerpiece of NGS ver.2 is the Creative Space, which can be played after clearing the tutorial and the prologue, which should take less than an hour. As such, I believe that ver.2 is a great opportunity for players to give the game a try.

I want to thank SEGA for helping to set up this email interview!

Are you excited for the ver.2 update? What kind of Creative Space do you want to create?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW: Yuya Kimura Talks Phantasy Star Online New Genesis ver.2 appeared first on oprainfall.

At GDC 2023, I sat down with Ana Ribeiro, the creator and director of the Pixel Ripped franchise; Ricardo Justus, the founder and CEO of ARVORE Immersive Experiences; and then later on David Lowey, the senior director of games, sales, and distribution at Atari. In the second part of our two-part interview, we talk about how ARVORE recreated the 1970’s Atari Sunnyvale Studio, what sets Pixel Ripped 1978 apart from prior games in the series, and more.

If you missed Part One of our interview, you can catch up here first!

You can wishlist Pixel Ripped 1978 on Steam and on PlayStation now.

I also demoed Pixel Ripped 1978, and you can check out my thoughts on it here.

You can visit Atari at their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

You can visit ARVORE at their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Discord.

You can find out more about Ana Ribeiro on her Linktree and about Pixel Ripped on its Linktree.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: One of the features touted about this game is that you can revisit an authentic recreation of the Sunnyvale Atari studio in VR. How did you go about re-creating that studio? Did you ever talk to any of the old Atari employees from that time?

Ricardo Justus: Yeah, they gave us access to some of the Atari employees to talk to. They showed us a lot of pictures of the office. We based the colors – we designed that sort of cubical space for the purpose of the gameplay, first, because it needs to serve the purpose of the gameplay. Again, it’s not supposed to be a history lesson. But we used all the colors of the actual office, what it actually looked like to try to recreate it.

Ana Ribeiro: The desk, the cubical. The walls-

RJ: And they did give us access to talk to some ‘OG’ people. And also, like I mentioned, access to consoles that weren’t released and were prototypes and in production cartridge lookalikes.

AR: They had the arcade team working inside the office [too]. So I was like ‘cool’, and I asked the sound designer ‘[c]an you do some sound of arcades in the background?’ And that’s something I didn’t know that [Atari] had the arcade team working in the office. We did a big change after we signed with Atari in the office. The computer – it was like ‘Ah, we can use the Atari computer!’ and so we changed to that. I think it has been fun.

“This is, I think, the biggest difference in this game- that we’re giving players the opportunity to go inside [Atari and Atari-like] games, to explore, and [Pixel Ripped 1978] became a much bigger game because of that.”

OR: Can you get up and walk around the office and check it out?

AR: No. You can, illegally [but] there’s nothing there.

RJ: Beyond a little bit, there is nothing there. The idea is that the real life portions are still static. You’re still sitting down, similar to the other Pixel Ripped games. You’re [only] moving around inside the 3-D game. But you do go to different places.

AR: If you leave the chair, you’re going to see an empty office.

RJ: You go through her childhood home – I’m not going to spoil other places, but her dorm room in her college. In the office, it’s her cubical but the cubical changes as well as the game evolves.

OR: I want to follow up on something – you kept saying that this is not a ‘history lesson’. Why did you choose deliberately to not make it like a ‘love letter’ as historically accurate as possible?

RJ: It is a love letter, but Pixel Ripped has always been more about the feeling and nostalgia than doing a pixel-perfect recreation. For us, the appeal is not – if you want to play those games, you can play those games. There is literally a VCS console. You can buy it and play those games. There is an Atari 50, which is just launched and is a great history lesson. That’s not the intention of Pixel Ripped. Pixel Ripped is about the memories that we loved [while] growing up. It is a bit of rose-tinted goggles of ‘[h]ow do we remember these games?’ So we do embellish them a little bit – we’ve always done that. If you look at Pixel ’89, no GameBoy game looked like that. But if we put a legit GameBoy game there, it probably wouldn’t have that much appeal with modern audiences. We have rose-tinted goggles when we look through the past.

AR: There are many design decisions that we make. Atari wouldn’t play music in a loop. The memory was an issue. So you don’t have music looping through the whole thing. We tried to make it, as much as we can, as close to the system. But if people cannot understand [for example] that it is the same bear inside the game [that you were playing outside of it] – then these are a little higher graphics and resolution. We wanted to look exactly like it, and we were really careful. But if something goes against the design or narrative, we chose making a better game. Bump up the realism a little bit to make a better game.

RJ: We’re trying to make a better game. We’re trying to invoke the past, and that feeling. It’s always been a balance of ‘[h]ow do we invoke that and still keep it cool and fresh and funny and fun and engaging?’ while respecting the past. We’re not disrespecting the past, we’re trying to recreate it in all that context and not just emulating. We could easily put in the games in there. We had access to the games, we could put Atari games inside the game. But that’s not what we’re trying to do. It’s not supposed to be a game emulator.

AR: It’s difficult choices we make in every game we do. We always prioritize ‘[o]kay, let’s make it legit and if we get to a point that it’s better for the game, it’s better for the narrative’, then we do a decision as a team and we talk about it. Even the joystick with two buttons – I was super worried about it: ‘Can we put two buttons on the joystick of Atari? But it’s the original, we want to keep the one button.’ So, we worry about even putting two buttons on, and it was a big thing. And we talked to Atari. We are concerned and aware, but we need the freedom to do some things that wouldn’t happen in an Atari game.

RJ: We prioritize the gameplay and the fun. Immersion and the feeling of nostalgia. We consider it very much a love letter to the past, even if it is an effective memory and a sort of embellished vision of the past.

[At this point, Mr. Justus had to leave the interview for another meeting]

OR: This is the third game in the “Pixel Ripped” franchise: There was first Pixel Ripped 1989 and Pixel Ripped 1995. What can fans of those prior games expect to see in this newest franchise entry?

AR: I’m really excited to answer this question! In 1989 and 1995, it’s all about a game within a game – you’re playing the ‘game’ while being distracted in the ‘real world’. We didn’t want this game to be the same – we wanted to keep it so [it still is] Pixel Ripped, but we wanted to innovate. There was a feature cut from 1995, and it was a big thing for the team. We had planned to give you the ability to go into the [game] world in first-person. And then we had to cut this from the game. And it was a really difficult time for the team: ‘[o]h, we’re cutting this and we’re so excited about it.” When we released 1995, many reviews were like ‘[o]h this game is great, but I wish we could be dodging in first person. I love being inside the game world, I wish I could walk around, explore the game world, talk to NPCs, go inside the houses, do some combat, choose some powers.’

We were reading those reviews and we were like ‘[w]e know, we wanted to do it too!’ And so, it was a big wish from the team for a long time – and from the fans. And in the previous games, you’re passively there – just watching things. So, we made sure when we started this game, we were like ‘This is going to be the main thing of this game.’ Because we don’t want it to be cut out. This is, I think, the biggest difference in this game – that we’re giving players the opportunity to go inside [Atari and Atari-like] games, to explore, and [Pixel Ripped 1978] became a much bigger game because of that. We had the platformer game, and the VR world – and now you can explore in first-person. And it was a hard thing to do. Pixel Ripped is famous as [being playable while] seated as a comfortable VR experience. So doing the first-person walk as a first-person shooter and combat – it’s a hard choice for us, because we don’t have the time to focus on just the first-person game. We’ve got all the other games inside of this game.

We’re concerned: ‘[w]hat if players, when we release this game, [find] walking to be too much?’ But we tried to make combat that is comfortable and not too heavy like an accurate first-person combat game. It’s more about ‘I’m exploring, does any NPCs have things to do that are fun?’ It’s easy, and I think the coolest thing about this game, also, is a mechanic I wrote.

The first mechanic I made about Pixel Ripped, when it was a student project – which gave the name of the game, 10 years ago – this mechanic is [that] you can break the world into pixels.  The whole world is made of pixels, and imagine you can cure an animal [by] dropping pixels on them. You save those pixels, and you can add pixels to other objects. So that’s the moment you add the pixels to the bridge. This is the first mechanic of the game, and I am happy that we can finally use it. When we started the game, I was looking back into the files and I drew a picture of this mechanic and I was like ‘[o]h my God, I never used this! Let’s use this, this is so cool!’ And it’s the name of the game, and we finally used it.

The biggest power of Dot- Dot has [is] the pixels inside of her. This is also something we wanted to use, because it’s innovative of the franchise, it’s not just about being the shooter – so you can effect the world as Dot by adding pixels to objects, adding movement, and fix some stuff. You gain three powers in the game – Dot powers.

I’m really excited!

“I want to make a game for my own audience- people who like to sit down and enjoy the experience.”

OR: When is Pixel Ripped 1978 going to be released, and for what platforms?

AR: We don’t have the date – but we can say Summer this year. We are now in beta, so we are going to feature freeze and polish [it] really soon. For sure, it’s going to be on PlayStation VR2, Steam VR, Quest 2 – all major platforms.

OR: One thing I noticed while playing – how did you decide upon the locomotion for the game?

AR: Yeah, the locomotion – we have a teleporting option that you can choose in the game. We’re still polishing, still working. Many people prefer going without [teleportion], so we leave it deactivated. It’s a challenge for us, because it is the first game that we’ve done with first-person movement. Pixel Ripped was always static [before]. Teleport is old now, but we need it because some people are new to VR and people get dizzy. We were watching the testing – a few people, really few, maybe 20 people – used the teleport. So we’re still deciding what is best, but it is pretty standard that we’re not innovating [locomotion], we’re doing something standard. The first games – they were adventure style, they were not like the big shooters like Population – I love Population – but, Pixel Ripped isn’t that. We had to do a lot of QA – that’s where we are now, QA, QA, QA. A lot of testing to improve the most that we can.

OR: It’s different than previous [entries] in the series.

AR: Yeah, we worried that sometimes – we have these combat ideas and we’re like ‘Oh, let’s make it so you have to do this, and you have to do powers, and move around.’ Our audience – I just want to sit down and play a game, I want a challenge. I played Beat Saber 10, maybe 15 minutes and I’m tired. I feel like I wanted to make a game that is also accessible.  Not many people can be standing around a bunch of stuff. Sometimes, there’s a boss battle that you’re throwing a lot of paper. And we create this feature where you can use the trigger to throw stuff.

Because, we’re like, ‘[n]ormal people would be tired throwing stuff’. I want to make a game for my own audience – people who like to sit down and enjoy the experience. I have many people say ‘I love that I can sit down and play a VR game.’ There are a lot of games where people are standing and stuff. It’s like ‘[c]ome on!’, [especially] when it’s a long game. It also [fits] the narrative and is immersive. You’re playing the game like you used to play – we play sitting down, so it helps with immersion.

We just worry that when we start testing, a lot of people in the real world are sitting down while playing the game. A lot of people, when it goes to the alternate world and they start walking around, they start walking around in their office. And it’s a confusing design choice, because we’re making one world that you move in. And that’s an expectation that we are aware that people have, because while you’re moving in one world you’re not moving in the other one.

I want to put something [in the office] that if you look [outside of boundaries of your walled cubicle], you’re ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be over here!’ while we’re working on the next Pixel game and we close the curtains. I would like to do something fun like this [for] people walking around, sneaking and looking where they are not supposed to be.

[David Lowry had entered during Ms. Ribeiro’s prior answer and sat down with us.]

OR: Could you introduce yourself, please?

David Lowey: I’m David Lowey, I’m with Atari, I run PR and distribution.

OR: To someone who may not have picked up the Pixel Ripped franchise before and this is the first time they are picking it up, what do you have to say to them?

AR: Go for it. If you want to be transported back in time, have a blast – Pixel Ripped is going to blow your mind. It’s a fun experience, and there is comedy – it’s a chill experience. We know that the main audience is around 35 to 40, but every age enjoys this game. It’s a game made for gamers, to celebrate video game history. It’s to celebrate also to be a gamer. There’s many things that all gamers relate to, like trying to play a game on the TV and your brother is in front of the TV. So yeah, I would say: ‘Pick it up, you don’t have to play the previous Pixel episodes.’ You can play Pixel Ripped 1978. It’s not out yet, so you can play Pixel Ripped 1995 and 1989 on Quest, PlayStation VR, and Steam VR.

It’s a different game – it’s kind of niche. So, if you want to try something different in VR, and you don’t want to do too much exercise – it’s really chill trip back in time with history of gaming.

DL: It’s a franchise. And franchise don’t get that way if the core of it isn’t good. There is something about the first game that led to the second game. I know part of this is just Ana’s vision that goes back to the original assignment in school, but also the success has led to the opportunity to do even more and explore different things. Not only different periods of time, but different elements of gameplay, and it’s sort of fun being part of that, certainly for us. And we know it will go on beyond us, but we’re glad that we have this moment [with them].

AR: Such a great fit.

DL: Super fun.

AR: It’s just perfect. Like, a perfect match.

OR: Thank you.

You can wishlist Pixel Ripped 1978 on Steam and on PlayStation now.

What do you think of Dot’s powers, and are you excited to see Atari’s Sunnyvale Office from the 1970’s?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post GDC 2023 INTERVIEW: Pixel Ripped 1978 (Part Two) appeared first on oprainfall.

At GDC 2023, I sat down with Ana Ribeiro, the creator and director of the Pixel Ripped franchise; Ricardo Justus, the founder and CEO of ARVORE Immersive Experiences; and then later on David Lowey, the senior director of games, sales, and distribution at Atari. In the first part of our two-part interview, we talk about how ARVORE’s partnership with Atari came about, what classic Atari games are included in Pixel Ripped 1978, and more.

You can wishlist Pixel Ripped 1978 on Steam and on PlayStation now.

I also demoed Pixel Ripped 1978, and you can check out my thoughts on it here.

You can visit Atari at their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

You can visit ARVORE at their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Discord.

You can find out more about Ana Ribeiro on her Linktree and about Pixel Ripped on its Linktree.

Please return Friday for Part Two of our interview!

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and you two are?

Ricardo Justus: I am Ricardo Justus, and I am the CEO and co-founder of ARVORE, the studio behind Pixel Ripped.

Ana Ribeiro: I am Ana Ribeiro, the creator and creative director of Pixel Ripped.

OR: Can you just briefly tell us what Pixel Ripped 1978 is about?

AR: It’s a love letter to the history of gaming. It’s the third episode in the series – we’ve released two games. The first was 1989, which was about the GameBoy [and] 1995, which was about Nintendo versus Sega Genesis, 16-bit, the release of PlayStation One. And 1978 – it’s about the origins of the series, how Pixel Ripped’s world was created. So we had to be in the Atari-era. This was the first time that we actually partnered with a big company. So, we are doing it with Atari. We are referencing – not just homages – we have Atari cartridges such as Food Fight on the Atari 2600. So these episodes – you are actually playing as the creator of Pixel Ripped [who is] a developer who works inside of Atari.

Pixel Ripped is all about you playing a 2-D game while you are being distracted and influenced by the world around you in VR. Different from other episodes, we did this game much bigger – for the first time, you’re able to go inside the game in first person and interact with NPCs, have combat. This is super exciting because we’ve wanted to do this for a long time, and we’re final able to because of this partnership with Atari. Not just using their IP – but to make a bigger game. When Ricardo met them, we were already one year in development of this game. We were able to, with the investment, have another year of development in the game. And with many features that were cut, we were able to put it into the game.

So, in comparison to the previous episodes, which were around three hours-ish, this one is around five to eight hours, depending on the player.

RJ: There is a lot to explore. There are a lot of Easter eggs, a lot of things to find.

“Atari gave us a significant amount of creative freedom. They let us play around with their games and do glitched versions and stuff like that. And even talk about the crash, which is a major plot point of the game.”

OR: And we’re going to touch on that in just a moment. You mentioned a partnership with Atari. How did that start, and what has it been like working with Atari?

RJ: Like she mentioned, we were one year into development. This was last year – I was at the DICE Awards, because we were nominated for our previous game – the game we launched in 2021. I was there for the event, and I sat down. It was a very serendipitous connection.

We were already one year into development, we had the teaser ready, we were ready to announce it. We were planning to launch it last year. And then I sat down for lunch at a table at DICE, and people with Atari T-shirts sat down in front of me. I said ‘[a]re you from Atari?’ and it was Wade Rosen, the CEO of Atari. We started talking. I said ‘I gotta show you the game we are making.’ And I was initially asking them if we could license the IPs, if we can actually use the consoles and the brand and all of that – and the games. And he was like ‘[t]hat’s easy, but we want to actually publish the game.’ They are now doing a lot of game publishing and are bringing back classics and such as that. And I said ‘[y]eah, let’s talk’ and the conversation evolved from there.

And we cancelled our announcement plans, obviously, and that actually, through their partnership, added a year extra of development on top of what we were already doing. We were just doing Pixel Ripped homages to the titles. It was still ‘Atari,’ in our world, but [by] a different name. And now we’re able to reference Atari, and on top of that, they gave us a lot of references. They showed us what an in-production cartridge looks like, they gave us access to a list of games – even games that were in production that were never launched-

AR: -and posters-

RJ: -and logos-

AR: -the office-

RJ: -the Atari computer on your desk [that] you use. All that cool stuff. We just incorporated all that and made [the game] much bigger and cooler.

OR: One of the biggest surprises for me is that you choose the year 1978. To provide context for the readers: that is after the September 1977 launch of the Atari VCS and two years before Atari obtained a license from Taito to develop a home version of Space Invaders that launched Atari into the atmosphere. Why the year 1978 and why VR?

RJ: So, this game actually takes place – it’s different from the other Pixel Ripped – because there is time travel. If the story wasn’t multidimensional and complicated enough, we added time travel to the game. The game actually spans from ’72 to ’83. The sections in the office take place in ’83. The game goes through the entire Atari era up until the crash. So – we chose ’78 for the title because it invoked that kind-

AR: -that is a bit spoiler if we say exactly why, because you travel a lot. You travel many years, and the whole plot is that you’re going back in time to fix the memory of the developer-

RJ: -Satalord is corrupting the memories of the creator of Pixel Ripped, and you’re going into different stages of her life across the seventies that inspired Pixel Ripped. There’s a big significance of ’78 in that context, that decade also invokes that aspect of it.

AR: Yeah, it’s really important that – we can’t really say why, it’s a big spoiler. But it’s not the year that you spend the most [in]. Like in the previous Pixel Ripped, you spend entirely in that year, in 1995 [and] in 1989. In this one, you go through so many years. It’s the first game in that we are doing time travel, and other dimensions.

RJ: And Pixel Ripped is not a history lesson. It is about invoking an era. ’89, we were invoking the end of the 8-Bit era and GameBoy and all of that. But the year is just to set your expectations. In ’95, we condensed all of 16-bit which was actually the end of that era. ’95 was the launch of the PlayStation. We condensed all that. We’re taking some liberties to put you back in those periods. But in this game, there is actual time travel where you’re jumping into different points of the 70s and early 80s.

AR: There’s even an adventure game at some point. Video pinball in ’72. An RPG-

RJ: -yeah, there’s a level with RPGs because Dungeons & Dragons was born in 1974. So, we’re touching on all of that and the name has a significance once you’ve played the game. But it’s more about invoking the era.

OR: What games are included to be repaired, and how did you select which games to include?

AR: *laughs* That was hard to select.

RJ: There’s games you actually play Pixel Ripped to find versions of, there’s games you go in, there’s games we’re referencing new Pixel Ripped-ified versions of. But a lot of the Atari classics are in there like Pong, Break Out, Centipede-

AR: –Missile Command, Asteroids, Haunted House, Food Fight, Crystal Castle–

RJ: -Revenge is a big one. There’s a bunch of references. There’s even small references to non-Atari games at the time.

AR: Like we did in the previous games.

RJ: We just touched on, because we couldn’t not reference certain games of the time. But we’re trying to invoke all of this, but we’re not trying to emulate these games. This is sort of a Pixel Ripped alternate history of it, where Pixel Ripped is an Atari classic. So, we’re playing around with this. And that was one of the benefits of this partnership; Atari gave us a significant amount of creative freedom. They let us play around with their games and do glitched versions and stuff like that. And even talk about the crash, which is a major plot point of the game.

AR: Yeah, a feature – what he said about choosing the games – it was really hard for us because, also, we tried to choose games that fit with the narrative because we didn’t know about Atari until the game was one year in development. We had these missions where we had characters, NPCs – before, we had characters that kind of looked like this person, and there were not many characters in the Atari era [that were] recognizable characters. So, we kind of looked and tried to find the most interesting and charismatic characters of those games, and mentally, the one that stood out was from Crystal Castle, [Bentley] Bear – so we have this world to go into, and they [encounter] Bear. So, we actually created cartridges from games set in those worlds. You grab a cartridge – imagine you own an Atari, and you are doing a sequel from those games. We didn’t want to just copy.

RJ: We also tried to transcend – there’s a Centipede cartridge you play around [with].

AR: The glitch ones – we chose the ones that kind of fit with the gameplay, because there is a moment where your friend – the one with the donuts [in the demo] – she asks you to fix some bugs and comes for each mission with a broken cartridge – like [she comes with] Food Fight, and Food Fight is broken. And we felt Food Fight was great, because we actually have to throw pizza to cure the bugs.

RJ: The bugs actually come out in pixel art fashion out of the screen, and you’re actually throwing pizza. So, you’re actually throwing food in Food Fight. It’s very meta.

AR: In Centipede, we also made [it] with bugs. It’s kind of like ‘What if these games were broken with bugs?’ Atari was supercool: ‘Can we break your games and put bugs in them?’ And the three games we chose were Haunted House, Food Fight, and Centipede–

RJ: -for the bugs portion.

AR: The games, I feel like – we wish we could have done all of them. Missile Command, we tried but it didn’t really fit. We have to do this VR gameplay while playing the game, but all those games are referencing posters or dialogue.

RJ: There’s a reference to lots of games. Some of them we touched gameplay aspects, some of them we referenced with gaming.

AR: Some of them we went deeper. Definitely made sure we used them up, because there were so many classics. And the posters were amazing- the art from Atari at that period was incredible. It was an honor to be able to use those posters.

You can check out Part Two here now!

You can wishlist Pixel Ripped 1978 on Steam and on PlayStation now.

Have you played either of the prior Pixel Ripped titles? What do you think of the upcoming title set in the 1970’s?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post GDC 2023 INTERVIEW: Pixel Ripped 1978 (Part One) appeared first on oprainfall.

One of the best-known visual novel series comes from the Science Adventure universe that has illuminous entries such as STEINS;GATE. In the newest entry by Chiyomaru Shikura, ANONYMOUS;CODE takes place in 2037 where a digital society is at an end and Pollon Takaoka meets a mysterious girl named Momo while he is also trying to save the world.

During GDC 2023, I caught up with Yu Namba, the localization producer from Spike, Chunsoft, Inc. for their latest mainline entry. During our time together, we discussed how ANONYMOUS;CODE is being localized, how translating computer graphics and onomatopoeia are approached, and more.

You can find out more about ANONYMOUS;CODE at the game’s official website.

You can also check out other Spike Chunsoft titles at their official website, on Facebook and Instagram, on Twitter, and on YouTube.

You can wishlist ANONYMOUS;CODE now on Steam.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: Hello, my name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and you are?

Yu Namba: I am Yu Namba, localization producer from Spike Chunsoft[, Inc.]

OR: What is ANONYMOUS;CODE about, and how does it fit into the larger Science Adventure universe?

YN: It’s about this guy- a hacker- who gains the ability to ‘save his state’ in real life and later load that state, so that he can go back in time and [redo what he experienced before] for a different outcome.

OR: Let’s expand on that: at Anime Expo 2022, Chiyomaru Shikura appeared in a special video message announcing ANONYMOUS;CODE and said -in writing- that “[t]he game is full of distinguished hackers” and “[t]he system screen of your game console is no longer a safe zone!” Can you please explain a bit more about this?

YN: I mean, he is the mastermind behind pretty much the entire Science Adventure series, so it is difficult for me- just a localizer- to get his full understanding of everything he has worked on. But one aspect about this game is the protagonist’s ability to save and load. But the way how it works in the game is that the player gets to ‘nudge’ the protagonist, telling them when to make that save or do a load and whatnot. So it’s a meta, I guess, where the player intervenes with the story of the protagonist directly.

OR: Let’s get to the point: will the English localization of ANONYMOUS;CODE have all the same content as the original Japanese PlayStation 4/Nintendo Switch release?

YN: Nothing has been censored. Text-wise or graphically.

” However, I believe that visual novels have their own strengths and difficulties when localizing. There are pretty pictures and whatnot, but it’s mostly about storytelling in mainly text- with voice, of course.”

OR: How long has Spike Chunsoft been working with MAGES. and Chiyomaru Studio on the localization effort?

YN: It started back in 2021.

OR: Can you talk with us a little bit about what the localization process is like for a title such as ANONYMOUS;CODE?

YN: I can only talk about ANONYMOUS;CODE, but we went with a tagteam [of a translator] and an editor. We reached out to a gentleman by the name of Andrew Hodgson, also known as Andrew ‘Steiner’ [Hodgson], who’s done the translation of STEINS;GATE. Him having extensive knowledge of the series as a whole- we thought it would be an ideal choice as a translator for this title, since it does have references to other titles of the series.

OR: This isn’t Spike Chunsoft’s first time localizing an entry in the Science Adventure series, with the company having most recently localized Robotics;Notes DaSH. What lessons, if any, did Spike Chunsoft learn from localizing prior titles into this latest entry?

YN: If we’re talking about authenticity and integrity of the title within the series, [a big point for us was to go with a specific translator to handle the localization.] On top of that, for the integrity of the localization itself- not about the series, but the actual quality of the text and voice that’s been localized- we had other pairs of eyes take a look at everything we worked on to try to get everything correct.

OR: One of the most highly praised aspects of Spike Chunsoft’s localization of Robotics;Notes DaSH was that there were more CGs -computer graphics- that were localized into English than before. Does Spike Chunsoft intend to translate all of the CGs into English this go around? Can you also talk about the process of translating and localizing CGs, like when there are elements such as ‘handwritten notes’ that the player would encounter to keep it true to the original Japanese version?

YN: Graphic elements-wise, in ANONYMOUS;CODE, players will really quickly pick up that there are graphic overlays simulating how a person would access their AR without the use of any peripherals. This is made possible in a fictional future of 2037 where the game takes place. You can just think and contact your friends with a message or a video call or whatnot. You can access search engines and look something up really quick, and you’ll see the results in your vision.

But all those components, in the original game, are Japanese, right? So, we worked together with MAGES. to make them into English. Not just to keep the content the same, but in some places, make sure that it reads better in English than in Japanese. You know how in Japanese, some things are written vertically? English elements didn’t look good in that perspective. So, we requested that it be redesigned so it could be horizontal. Most of the things- they were really happy to oblige. I think people would have small, if not no, issues while looking at the graphical representations in the game.

OR: How are y’all approaching onomatopoeia sounds within the game?

YN: There are [scenes where the game progresses in] a comic book-style. It was actually the translator, Andrew Hodgson, that suggested that the onomatopoeia within those scenes be localized as well. We approached MAGES. with the idea, and they said that they would see what they could do. And the end result, as you can see a little bit in the trailer already, looks awesome.

OR: Spike Chunsoft has localized a bunch of titles in the past ranging from visual novels [such as] 428: Shibuya Scramble, YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World, and ANONYMOUS;CODE. How is it different localizing an adventure video game such as the recently published AI: The Somnium Files – Nirvana Initiative versus a visual novel such as ANONYMOUS;CODE?

YN: That is hard, only because I only joined the company recently. I don’t have previous experience with any of the [other] Spike Chunsoft titles from the localization standpoint. However, I believe that visual novels have their own strengths and difficulties when localizing. There are pretty pictures and whatnot, but it’s mostly about storytelling in mainly text- with voice, of course. So, you really have to depend on how good that story text is localized for people to not veer off from their attention- like, [while] reading the story. There’s a lot that can happen for people to go that way, and certain phrases that may be awkward or things that may not translate well if directly translated from Japanese to English when a Western audience reads those. So we took extra caution to have the language as palatable to the Western audience as possible.

OR: When should players expect ANONYMOUS;CODE to be released?

YN: We are going to have the game out on September 8th, so not too far away. Half a year from now?

OR: On what platforms will it be released on?

YN: We will have it on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and also on Steam.

OR: To someone who may not have played any prior games in the Science Adventure universe, can they pick up ANONYMOUS;CODE and enjoy it, or would they be better off playing prior entries first?

YN: For myself, this was the very first time I’ve played a Science Adventure game from start to finish. I did have a little knowledge about STEINS;GATE, but that was it. I really enjoyed the game, and it also made me want to know more about the other titles in the series. I strongly recommend people to pick up this title- especially since it has English voice! And if you guys like this title, then I would love for everybody to pick up other games as well.

OR: Thank you very much!

Have you played any game in the Science Adventure Universe? If so, what is your favorite entry so far?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post GDC 2023 INTERVIEW: ANONYMOUS;CODE appeared first on oprainfall.

During this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to talk with Kazutaka Kodaka (creator/writer of the Danganronpa series) about his upcoming title, Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE. 

Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE is a lucid-noir detective adventure starring a detective-in-training named Yuma who is trying to solve mysteries in a city where it is always raining. Set to be released on June 20, 2023, for the Nintendo Switch, Master Dective Archives: RAIN CODE is coming out with both a standard edition and a “Mysteriful Limited Edition” that includes a plush, an art book, a steelbook, a soundtrack, and a physical game copy inside of a decorative box.

You can learn more about Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE at the game’s official website.

You can also follow Katzutaka Kodaka at his official Twitter account. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: Hello, my name is Quentin H. with Operation Rainfall, and you are?

Kazutaka Kodaka: [I] am Kazuktaka Kodaka, scenario writer of RAIN CODE.

OR: What is Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE? Can you tell us a little bit about the game?

KK: It is a game where the Master Detectives solve mysteries and they will solve these mysteries through the ‘Mystery Labyrinth’. They find paths through the dungeon by solving those mysteries.

OR: Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE has you [reuniting] with several of the people involved in the Danganronpa series: Jun Fukuda, Takekuni Kitayama, Rui Komatsuzaki, and many others. How is it working with these people, and others, again on a new IP?

KK: They know their hobbies, likes, and [dislikes] with each other- so they can share their ideas with me.

“[I’ve] been thinking that the gameplay is something isn’t like one of those elements that shows the scenario. Most of the games are- the gameplay, scenarios- are made for the gameplay. But [I] want to take the opposite- where the gameplay is for the scenario.”

OR: An interesting plot device that you return to time and time again with the works you create is ‘amnesia’. For a pair of examples: in your interactive film adventure Death Come True, Makoto Karaki wakes up with amnesia and in your light novel, Danganronpa Zero, Ryoko Otonashi has anterograde amnesia. Now, in Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE, you utilize that again with Yuma, who is “an amnesiac detective-in-training”.

What is it about amnesia that has repeatedly appealed to you across your career so far? Why did you choose to keep returning to it in each of your works, and was there a specific influence in media for you to do so?

KK: By making the protagonist having amnesia, the players could have a connection with the protagonist. Together, they could see the story together.

OR: You said in a pair of November 28, 2021 Tweets that you’ve been working on Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE since Danganronpa V3, which would mean that you’ve been creating this title since 2016 [and] you also said that you would like to make it a culmination of the detective mystery games that you’ve been making for over ten years.

How has this game and it’s scenario evolved since you started working on it while you were still at Spike Chunsoft, and how are you making it a culmination of the genre you’ve been creating for over a decade now?

KK: For Dangonronpa, [we] wanted to have the scenario in 2D. By having it in 2D, it could be…cheaper, I guess? [We] just wanted to create a fun game with less ‘stuff’. When [we] were creating a new game in 2020, [we] thought: ‘[We] won’t be able to create a new game with the same method as Dangonronpa’. So [we] wanted to create a new genre of the mystery game, that will have a 3D world, so that it will be different from the passive 2D mystery games.

OR: In a 2020 video interview with Archipel Caravan, you were asked: “What do you pay attention to the most in game creation”. You said: “One more aspect is to make games whose existence is meaningful. I don’t want to make something that looks like another game, or seems taken from something else. I pay attention to why the game is being made.” How is Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE meaningful, and why is this particular game being made?

KK: [I’ve] been thinking that the gameplay is something isn’t like one of those elements that shows the scenario. Most of the games are- the gameplay, scenarios- are made for the gameplay. But [I] want to take the opposite- where the gameplay is for the scenario. For RAIN CODE, [I] wanted to create [a place where] you go through the dungeons and solve mysteries. [I] wanted to create [where] the players can have more understanding of the scenario when they do the mystery dungeon gameplay and solving those mysteries. [I] think, for RAIN CODE, players can feel as if they are riding on a Disneyland attraction while they are solving mysteries.

OR: You used to write a regular column series for Weekly Famitsu titled “Total Despair Kodaka”. In your first column for the week of August 21 to 28, 2014, you wrote about how you wanted to become a filmmaker and how you studied film in school. How has this educational background influenced how you write and create video games?

KK: [I] really don’t know if it has had much of an influence. [I] don’t feel that this experience has affected [my] scenario writing. For RAIN CODE, there are many cutscenes that are like film parts- and because [I] learned about filmmaking, I could say something about [that]. And even for music, [I] can say something about it. [I’ve] even worked at a game shop, so I have knowledge about game making so [I] could say things I want to say.

OR: Donald M. Murray once wrote: “All my writing -and yours- is autobiographical.” What of yourself do you see in Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE, and how does this game show who you truly are as a person?

KK: [I] know that my works are fiction, I don’t really put much of my knowledge or [my] experience in games. Instead of having [my] own experience, I put in more elements from the things I like.

OR: What kind of things?

KK: The atmosphere is taken from Tim Burton- I put whatever I like into this game.

OR: You’ve been teasing everyone with how Tookyo Games has been working on an indie game since you launched the company, with most notably during an interview with Famitsu back in August 2021 where you suggested that you wanted to make a game that could not be released on a home console, but would be something instead could be distributed onto a CD-ROM and distributed to fans who come to an event.

Do you have any updates about what kind of indie game that you’re thinking about?

KK: There are making games, but we cannot release or announce it right now.

OR: I had to ask! To those who are looking to pick up Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE, what do you have to say to them?

KK: [I] think that out of all [my] games, this is the best one. But it’s really hard to explain without spoilers. So players will definitely play it, they will find out how fun it is. Going back to the first question: it will be a mystery game, so many players who don’t play mystery games will enjoy RAIN CODE.

Are you excited for Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE’s upcoming June 2022 release? 

What do you think of Kanai Ward and Yuma?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post GDC 2023 Interview- Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE appeared first on oprainfall.

Dragon Con, with all of its many themed tracks that range from puppetry to urban fantasy and filk, has something for everyone to enjoy. At this year’s Dragon Con convention (which had 65,000 attendees), I sat down with voice actor and streamer Sean Chiplock. Known for a variety of roles in video games such as Genshin Impact and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to anime titles such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind and Re:Zero, Sean Chiplock has established himself as a premiere talent within the voice acting industry.

In Part Two of a two-part interview, I (along with Senpai Project), talk with Sean Chiplock about what it was like to revisit Revali and Teba for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and as Spade/Dail for Freedom Planet 2, his favorite junk food, and more.

If you missed out on Part One, you can check it out here.

You can follow Sean Chiplock on Twitter to discover all of his upcoming projects and join his streaming community on Twitch.

You can find out more about Dragon Con on their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on Discord. 

You can buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

This interview was edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: What was it like returning to the roles of Revali, Teba, and Deku Tree in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in 2020?

Sean Chiplock: A huuuuuge difference in terms of confidence and overall performance quality. The first time I recorded for Revali and Teba, I was – pardon my French – scared shitless. Like I mentioned before, the risk of people looking at it the same way that they did the unofficial CD-i games- or should I say the non-canon CD-i games. The fact that Revali was a character that I really struggled to find the right tonality for at first – he frustrated me so much that I had a mental breakdown. The confidence was stronger when we came back to do the DLC for Breath of the Wild, and by the time Age of Calamity came around – I was homed in. I understood the characters, I understood the lore of the world, which was something that I didn’t have when I came in for Breath of the Wild. I was doing it fresh, I was doing things as we went along.

So, the confidence was at an all-time high, and during Breath of the Wild, I was trying to repeat lines to get back into character. In Age of Calamity, I was ‘now I am Revali, now I am Teba, now I’m Revali talking to Teba.’ It was seamless, and it was definitely the game- it was one of the ones I streamed because I wanted to hear the final project. That was the game where I no longer heard myself performing as these characters, I just heard the characters saying their stuff. And that was such a cool moment for me – I was already excited to play the game, because I – everyone’s got a bit of a Dynasty Warriors fan in them. Everyone’s got a day where you just want to and plow through 300 enemies with a special attack. But to get to do that with my own characters and get to watch my characters get to do sick combos across entire swathes of enemies? It was so good. [laughs] At least until Revali uses the ice ability – [imitates Revali] ‘Cool down!’, and I’m all ‘Really? That’s the best you can come up with? You’ve had a hundred years to think about something witty, and you decided to go for the most basic of jokes?’

It was a very distinctive difference, but a very positive, uplifting one. And I would say that anyone who plays Age of Calamity and listens to those characters will be hearing me at my best at those roles.

OR: I think you mentioned in a 2018 interview that Teba was particularly important to you because of the way that you voiced that character.

SC: Yes. So obviously, as you might imagine, voicing a major – I don’t know if you can call Teba a major character, but because he is one of the required people if you’re doing the four major dungeons, he is more important than a lot of the other characters in the game. So, the fact you’re doing it for a first-party launch title on one of their most successful consoles to date, and you think about all the awards the game won – there’s a little bit of pressure behind that. But the reason why Teba is so important to me is because he is a case where – there are often times where we’ll audition for a character, and the client says, ‘I really liked this take – we’re going to tweak this, or if you can give us a little more of this or a little less of this.’ Teba was a case where we’ve been doing recording for Revali and Deku Tree and they were like ‘Hey, we have one other bird, we’re wondering if you can do a voice that is distinct – that is different enough from these other two.’ I said, ‘Show me the scene, I’ll take a look.’ So they described him, they showed me the sample scene, and I immediately went ‘I have an idea, I know what I want to do for him.’

Are either of you, by chance, familiar with Bedfellows? Not the live action film, but the animated series? There’s two characters that I play in that – [imitates Fatigue] ‘One of them is Fatigue – he’s very high pitched and very effeminate, and so gay in terms of being happy the entire time’ and [imitates Sheen] ‘the other is Sheen, and he’s just angry, just always yelling, he’s always upset about something.’ But Sheen’s voice comes from a place of anger. I said, `What if I take the [imitates Sheen] ‘anger and frustration that Sheen has’, and [imitates Teba] ‘I just made it bitterness instead – worry and concern for your family, or something like that?’ Kind of like furrowing your brow or something. And that was the voice approach I took for Teba.

So, it was the fact that I effectively told Nintendo: ‘I got this, trust me.’ I did the performance, the person in charge of approving it or not goes ‘Yep, that works for us.’ Like, how many people can say that they’ve basically told Nintendo ‘Sit tight, I got this,’ show their bravado, and have Nintendo go ‘Yep, no changes, we’re good to go forward?’ That’s crazy! That’s crazy – and [in] a game as well-renowned as that, that’s why he’s so important to me. I’m sure anyone in the voice acting industry dreams of that experience where they’re with a high-profile client and puts forth the notion that they know exactly what they’re doing, and then proves it simultaneously and the client saying, ‘We’re completely happy with that.’

Especially on a project or franchise that hasn’t been officially voiced before. I don’t know what’s going to top that. Like, I’m searching for that, I’m constantly challenging myself, but it’s unreal.

“The general rule of voice acting is that if we’re allowed to talk about it, then we already have been, because the one thing we want to be able to do is discuss the thing that we’ve been sitting and waiting for months or even years.”

OR: You are also voicing a role in Freedom Planet 2, which is scheduled for release on Steam in the next couple of weeks. 

SC: Really? It’s finally coming out?!

OR: It’s streetdated for September 13, 2022. 

SC: I had no idea – it’s been years since I recorded for that, I’m a little scared if I’m going to approve of my own performance by now.

OR: Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like returning to the role of Spade and Dail?

SC: It’s been several years, so I don’t remember much of it. I do know that they had more of a budget – they actually flew me to Texas for a one-day session. It was actually very brief – I think I flew into Texas at like 11 P.M. the previous night, recorded at 10 A.M. the next day, and then flew out at 3 P.M. I wasn’t even there for 24 hours.

It’s hard to say – I think this is the question that I don’t really have a good, thorough answer to. They had a better budget, so they were able to do the recording process to what you would typically expect with us taking turns in a booth. In the first game, we were all doing it on our own home setups. It was very much an ‘indie project’ sort of thing. But when it found its footing – I don’t want to say take it more seriously – but they were able to embrace more of the consistent production processes that you would expect from a project like that.

And after I recorded, it was really just a matter of waiting. So, I’m actually very glad that it is coming out soon, I hope people enjoy it! I know the team behind it is incredibly passionate. I’ve seen their growth through the years, and I am someone that believes that a lot of the content that we fondly remember is created when passionate people come together to work on a single thing together. I’m very hopeful that all of the years will be worth the wait.

OR: Do you have any other projects in the pipeline that you can share with us?

SC: The general rule of voice acting is that if we’re allowed to talk about it, then we already have been, because the one thing we want to be able to do is discuss the thing that we’ve been sitting and waiting for months or even years. I think there’s still a project that I recorded like three years ago that I haven’t heard about. I’m almost convinced that it is dead in the water at this point.

You know, I got to announce recently that I am in the new Star Ocean game that is coming out – Star Ocean: The Divine Force. I voice Gaston Gaucier, which I already told people on Twitter: ‘If you are someone who enjoys me from a more intense performance, this is definitely a role that you’re going to want to pay attention to.’ I’m trying to think of what else is coming out that I’m allowed to talk about…See, this is why I had access to my IMDB. Mostly, what I tell people is stay tuned on my Twitter, stay tuned on my Twitch, because as soon as I am allowed to announce these things, I do and I talk it up all the time.

The last couple of months have been the convention gauntlet, I have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. So that’s basically my answer: ‘Hey, I’m not allowed to talk about anything coming down the pipeline, but there is a lot of stuff coming down the pipeline.’ I’m someone who doesn’t like to rest on his laurels for long, I am always trying to grow, trying to show clients that I am capable of more than they already know me for. And there’s a lot of exciting stuff due to come out – so just stay tuned, and if nothing else I hope I get to pleasantly surprise you. The number of times people are ‘Wait, you’re in this and you’re in this</i”> and you’re in this too?! What aren’t you in that I enjoy?!’ I kind of like that element of surprise, so let’s find out together!

OR: To people who want to get into voice acting, but may not know where to start – do you have any advice?

SC: There’s three sites in particular that I give to people. The first one is very obvious: You ask yourself ‘What do I want to be?’ The answer is: iwanttobeavoiceactor.com. That’s the first site – it’s written by Dee Bradley Baker, it has so much information regarding the industry – I should probably go back and see what new stuff he’s posted. I tell everyone: ‘If you’re just starting out, you should not even be saying words into a microphone until you’ve read that website front to back.’ It’s about giving yourself as much info and starting knowledge as possible, so that you are asking pointed questions that will help you find the next step of what to take, rather than just throwing a bunch of questions out there that are already available online in triplicate.

The second one I usually recommend is either Voice Acting Mastery or Voice-Over Voice Actor. Just warmup sites, interviews – it’s about figuring out or listening to interviews of other actors and how they found their way into the industry. Everyone’s path is going to be a little different. Some will have a big breakthrough, some will get referred into the industry, some will start from the bottom doing walla or bit roles. Some people will come from a live-action background. Some people come from an anime background. So, finding a story that meshes with you or that you identify with may help you figure out ‘Okay, here’s how I’m likely to be to get my foot in the door.’

And the third one is voiceactingclub.com. Back in the heyday, like the early 2000s, 2010s, there were three different voice acting communities and I think two of them are still around. But Voice Acting Club, to my knowledge, is the one where the people who were the aspiring voice actors of 10 to 15 years ago are now the moderators and admins of the site doing the same thing for today’s amateur voice actors. So, you’ve already got that ‘passing of the torch,’ even though we’re still actively working – we’re now able to share our experiences and knowledge with those who may not know anything and are trying to be as prepared as possible.

It’s also because Voice Acting Club specifically eschews fandubs. Try not to focus on them, because they don’t want people’s portfolios to be clogged up with them. So having a bigger focus on independent animations, on original projects, is a much better avenue for making early connections with future studios, future clients, future peers and colleagues. I strongly recommend all of those sites that I mentioned, because I figure- what I tell people is that whether a good or bad habit, practicing that habit will make it a firm one. So, it’s important to make sure that the habits you’re cementing are good ones rather than bad ones, and knowledge and preparation are your biggest allies when it comes to cementing good habits right off the bat.

“‘Mikey, listen – you don’t have to bow your head. Just have a heart that cares for others.’

I love that quote because […] you don’t have to bow your head, just have a heart that cares for others. It means that you don’t have to be subservient to other people, you just have to recognize when it’s not your time in that moment, understanding when it’s someone else’s turn to be in spotlight.”

Senpai Project: Favorite movie?

SC: The Pagemaster, which is not even a movie – it’s like a 47-minute library advertisement. At this point, I just have to say The Pagemaster – because when I took a film video interpretation class in my first year in college, everyone got asked what their favorite film was, and they were like ‘The Great Escape, Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove,’ and I’m just here saying ‘The Pagemaster’ and I could just hear the snickers behind me because I was sitting in the front row. So you know what? I’m tripling down! The Pagemaster’s a good film, and if you hated it, it is because you hate books and you’re [an] uneducated man-child or woman-child or non-binary-child. I don’t judge.

SP: I don’t hate it, but I was forced to watch it in class.

SC: It’s good, isn’t it? It has Tim Curry, and Tim Curry is amazing! How can you rag on a movie that has Wanda Sikes and Tim Curry?

SP: Favorite series of like a book, or a series-

SC: Mega Man Battle Network – Oooo. Mega Man Battle Network or Etrian Odyssey. Mega Man Battle Network was – it was a gem of its kind. Just the way that they – I remember reading an interview where they were like ‘we didn’t really have anything to base off of, so we kind of had to mish-mash a couple different genres together,’ and it came out so well. It’s such a well-designed game, it’s so aesthetically interesting. But Etrian Odyssey was a game that I got introduced to during a failed My Little Pony convention – no, like, the organizers ran off with the money and it got shut down in the middle of day two. Like, that bad.

But it’s what introduced me to the world of first-person dungeon crawlers, and I was instantly hooked. Almost spoiled – but Etrian Odyssey revitalized interest in wizardry style games in the West, and it’s like the leader of its kind, but it stopped with the 3DS. A new game hasn’t come out since. So, I love Battle Network for its aesthetics, but is the perfect mix of strategy with your team composition but just unfair enough that it’s not unreasonable. We all know about RPG tropes where status ailments work on enemies that don’t need it, but they don’t work on the bosses that you could use it for. Etrian Odyssey has status ailments and body part binds that have side effects. They not only apply to bosses – every boss is weak to at least one of them – they are pretty much mandatory if you want to have a fighting chance. And so, it’s just so genuinely difficult in a fun way, that it’s unforgettable for me. So I would say – between the two – I would actually have to lean to Etrian [Odyssey] because there has been nothing like it since.

SP: I definitely will have to try it out. I have played Battle Network, it is great.

SC: Battle Network – I love it. I love the way that you put your folder together. I used to make a big deal out of how fast I could beat the boss time trials. The postgame in Battle Network 3 was one of the most exciting that I’ve ever done. There is so much to do.

Sean Chiplock voiced both Sheen and Fatigue (as both seen in the above episode of The Bedfellows).

SP: Favorite quote that you stand by – that you love.

SC: I stole it from Draken in Tokyo Revengers. I have to do it in his voice – him and Mikey are in the hospital. They’re not in the hospital, they’re visiting because of someone who got collateral injured because of a fight that their gang was in. And the girl’s parents are there as well, and they try to apologize. And the parents are like ‘We don’t want anything to do with you, don’t talk to us, don’t interact with us.’ And Mikey, Draken’s partner, is about to chew them out – ‘Hey, we’re trying to apologize, won’t you listen to us for a damn second?’ And Draken talks him down – [imitates Draken] ‘Mikey, listen – you don’t have to bow your head. Just have a heart that cares for others.’

And I love that quote because – repeating it in [my] normal [voice] – you don’t have to bow your head, just have a heart that cares for others. It means that you don’t have to be subservient to other people, you just have to recognize when it’s not your time in that moment, understanding when it’s someone else’s turn to be in spotlight. I think of an example, we’re at this big event, maybe a big line of people for a guest next to me or they’re interested in talking with them – not interrupting that, not getting in the way. Not ruining their moment. But that doesn’t mean I have to ignore who I am or pretend to be someone I’m not. It’s about being respectful that everyone has their own life that they’re living, everyone has their own moments to shine. And it’s important to recognize when it’s not your time at that specific moment.

So, I just think that’s really meaningful, because it’s that careful balance of being yourself without intruding on other people’s lives at the same time.

SP: Favorite junk food?

SC: I’ve actually cut out a lot of junk food, just because of age and because – my diet has changed over time, and I really enjoy having a lighter body and I don’t want to start gaining weight because of eating a lot of junk food. Different foods are good at different times. There’s times where I’m craving Goldfish, there’s times where I’m craving cherry pie layer bars, because their tartness is really nice. I’m trying to see what qualifies as junk food!

I used to enjoy Sour Punch Straws, but they now choke me because they are so sticky and dry at the same time. I need a moment to think about this, that’s the best question, that’s a good last question because it’s one that I haven’t immediately had an answer for!

Favorite junk food that I really enjoy…this is hard. This is really difficult, ‘cause I’ve been really addicted to- have you heard of those Go Go apple juice packages that you squeeze? I’m addicted like hell to those right now, they are so good. But they’re healthy – I don’t qualify those as junk food.

Alright, it’s a mix. My thing – you know the Ferraro Rocher chocolate balls? I don’t eat them by themselves. I will make a bowl of oatmeal, and after I pour in the milk, I will put two to three of them, usually the sea salt chocolate, in the bowl and then in the microwave and then microwave it, so when it’s done, the balls are starting to melt and fuse into the milk. And then I mix it together, and because of the thickness of the chocolate, it helps bind the oatmeal together. So you get this nice – chunky doesn’t sound like a good word – but you get this nice, thick oatmeal that has hints of sea salt and a chocolate flavoring to it. And it’s so good. It turns a breakfast into a dessert, as far as I am concerned.

That’s the answer – wait – have you guys been to San Jose? Next time you go to San Jose – have you guys been to the Signia by Hilton San Jose, on Market Street? They have the best raspberry cheesecake that I have ever had. I’m a big fan of cheesecake, I didn’t know hotel food could be that good. It was phenomenal. It was so good, the following day, I brought a colleague back, swearing up and down how good it was. She had one bite of it, and then posted on Twitter: ‘He wasn’t lying.’ I converted her instantly.

So a very good cheesecake? Instantly on my list of faves.

OR/SP: Thank you so much.

You can buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

I want to thank Sean Chiplock for agreeing to sitting down to speak with me and Senpai Project at Dragon Con 2022.

Have you seen The Bedfellows or eaten an amazing cheesecake in San Jose? Tell us all about your experiences with either or both below!

The post Dragon Con INTERVIEW: Sean Chiplock (Part Two) appeared first on oprainfall.

Dragon Con, with all of its many themed tracks that range from puppetry to urban fantasy and filk, has something for everyone to enjoy. At this year’s Dragon Con convention (which had 65,000 attendees), I sat down with voice actor and streamer Sean Chiplock. Known for a variety of roles in video games such as Genshin Impact and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to anime titles such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind and Re:Zero, Sean Chiplock has established himself as a premiere talent within the voice acting industry.

In Part One of a two-part interview, I (along with Senpai Project), talk with Sean Chiplock about working with Nintendo, his favorite place to be in the world, about bringing Pirate Cat Captain Nattanya in La Pucella Ragnarok, and more.

You can follow Sean Chiplock on Twitter to discover all of his upcoming projects and join his streaming community on Twitch.

You can find out more about Dragon Con on their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on Discord. 

You can buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with Operation Rainfall. On Twitter, you said that you’ve “never been to an event of this size as a hosted professional before now,” so I have to ask: while we are only in day two of Dragon Con, what do you think of the event so far and have you been able to see anything yet?

Sean Chiplock: Wait, this is day two? They don’t call the Thursday before ‘day zero’? Oh, my goodness, so was there actual paneling and programming?

OR: Yes. 

SC: Oh, I had no idea! I was used to events like Anime Expo where Thursday was like ‘day zero’ and the Friday, Saturday, Sunday are the event – they had eventually expanded to five days. So now it’s even bigger than I expected it would be. Well, to be perfectly honest, this is the first time that I’ve been to an event of this size. And I’m having that small-fish-in-big-ocean kind of feeling. Cons have certain themes, and I am definitely getting that ‘live action – I wouldn’t say medieval Ren faire,’ but kind of like a sci-fi element of this kind of con. You see a lot of people who are in stuff like Walking Dead, Space Ghost. And someone who has a pretty heavy background in video games and anime, I’m still trying to suss out how well I fit in with that atmosphere. So most of this weekend, I’m probably going to be doing interviews or my panels or sitting at my table – for two major reasons.

One is for my wife’s amazing candles that she handmakes from scratch. She is actually doing a Dungeons & Dragons themed line. Check out her website, go to Batwix Candles on Etsy. Anyway, I love supporting her because she never gets the chance to come with me to these events. But also, just to get a sense of how many people are going to show up and because when I come to these conventions as a guest, I’m being paid to be here. They are putting me up, they are paying me for my food. So, I wouldn’t call it ‘obligation,’ but I have a genuine personal interest in creating memorable experiences for other people. I can’t really do that if I’m off galivanting and doing my own thing versus being at my table where people can see me, some of whom may not have the opportunity otherwise. It sounds very lazy – that I’m not going to leave my table outside of dealer den hours – but it is because I want to show how much I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

OR: You said in a January 2018 interview with Cat With A Monocle that the people who hired you at Nintendo for [The Legend of Zelda:] Breath of the Wild “were really big on finding/recruiting individuals who were truly invested in the work” and that “Nintendo clearly has a company vision that focuses heavily on teamwork being the core foundation to a great project.” Could you elaborate a bit more about this and the booking process for Revali, Teba, and Deku Tree?

SC: So, there is a story behind this. The only character I was originally cast as in Breath of the Wild was the Great Deku Tree. Which I find very funny, because out of the three characters I ended up playing, I would consider the Great Deku Tree to be – it’s weird to say this word – but the weakest performance overall. Not by much, but just the fact that you’ve got just a natural higher pitch to my voice, and [imitates Great Deku Tree] ‘I’m bringing it all the way down.’

In the middle of production, they were trying to test out some voices. And they were like ‘Hey, I’ve got this other character named Revali, would you like to do a sample read for him?’ And I was ‘Of course, I am always down for a challenge.’ So they show me the work in progress cutscene, and I see this beautiful bird-man in all his feathery glory, and I start squeeing like a schoolgirl. Unashamedly, I am standing in front of it, literally balled hands to my face going “Eeeeeeee, eeeeee, eeeeee!” I was so happy. What I didn’t know was that on the other side of the glass, the person directing me, who’s not affiliated with Nintendo, is on a live Skype call with at least two to three higher-ups from Nintendo who were listening in. So these – I’m going to mentally imagine they were in suits and nice ties, even though they were probably in casual Friday gear – these folks from the ‘Big N’ are listening in to this 25, 20-something year-old man just losing his mind over how gorgeous a bird-man looks. But I like to think that it played into their casting decision, the voice fit and I could tell that I have to imagine they might have listened to that and been like ‘We really like this person, he’s invested and engaged that they care about the product more than just the potential paycheck that it’s worth.’

And Nintendo has always struck me as a company that is very team-oriented. I would have to go back to remember specific articles, but I remember them specifically saying that they don’t really take well to team members who try to take lone-wolf credit like ‘I’m the reason this project did well, it’s because of me that it got the notoriety it had.’ And that’s kind of the same reason I didn’t try to pitch myself as the best Champion or anything – it’s everyone coming together to create a great product as a team. But yeah, that’s pretty much where it falls in regards to that. So, I’m very glad that my passionate outbursts helped me potentially book the role. But more so, I’m glad that Nintendo entrusted me with several voiced characters in a franchise that is historically known for not being voiced. Most people ask, ‘How did it feel to be in a Legend of Zelda game, how exciting was it?!’ For the first six months after the game came out, I was holding my breath: ‘Do people like it? Do people hate it? Do they think it’s the worst thing since the CD-i games that won’t be named?’ Good experience overall.

“The crazier, more animated, more exaggerated the character is, the more I thrive in that kind of role, whereas nuanced, down-to-earth, realistic characters have been a struggle point for me for a long time. I’m continuously getting better, since I recognize it as a weakness.”

Senpai Project: Hello, my name is Javier, and I am from the Senpai Project. These are the top 20 questions that were picked-

SC: Ooooh, lightning round!

SP: Yeah, lightning round. One-hundred questions, and out of the 50,000 followers we have – they picked these top 20. So, I’m going to just give you 10, and then go back to asking more questions [by Operation Rainfall]. The question is: ‘Favorite food’?

SC: Japanese curry. There was a place called ‘Curry House’ that got forcibly shutdown in February 2019, and no other curry place has made curry like they did, and I have been searching ever since.

SP: Favorite fruit?

SC: Ooooooh. I don’t have starfruit [often] enough for it to count, but I would say raspberries. Because if you get really good raspberries that are in season that are just the right amount of tart, they are unlike anything else.

SP: Favorite color?

SC: I used to be a ‘green’ kid. I used to be a ‘forest green,’ I have The Legend of Zelda shirt with the green and the Triforce. But now I’m very much a ‘blue.’ When I check my wardrobe, at least half my shirts are blue.

SP: Favorite place in the USA?

SC: Favorite place in the USA…There was this place called Great Wolf Lodge – I’m sure you guys have heard of it. It’s kind of a combined waterpark [and] hotel. They have one in Anaheim, even though it doesn’t really work because it is a rustic-cabin themed place. But we went to one in Michigan, and you stepped out on the balcony – you could look over this big lake with this line of trees on the side. It was probably the most magical experience I’ve ever had at a hotel or resort-type place.

Probably also the Kalahari in the Wisconsin Dells, because I was there for [Daisho Con], and I got responsibly destroyed on their mixed drinks.

SP: They actually got bought out by ColossalCon.

SC: I heard!

SP: Favorite social media that you like to use?

SC: I mean, I almost reject a lot of social media, because I see it as a necessity for my career, but I try not to tie myself too much to the expectations of others, because they aren’t the ones casting me in projects. I want to say I enjoy Twitter, because I use it more often than anything else. But it is hard to say that I have a favorite, because it is a way to keep people up to date.

If anything, I would say Twitch, because at least with Twitch, I get to interact with my community live, we get to comment on the things that I’m playing. With Twitter or Instagram, it feels like you’re just throwing stuff in the void so that people will comment on that. That disconnect – I’m not really a big fan of.

OR: Do you find it more difficult to voice more emotive characters like Rean Schwarzer from The Legend of Heroes franchise or more subdued and stoic characters like Diluc from Genshin Impact? How do you approach these wildly diverse roles?

SC: Stoic is the harder one. I was always the energetic kid growing up. I had blatant ADHD – I would say it went into remission, but it never went fully away. I’m very expressive. I use gestures a lot. The crazier, more animated, more exaggerated the character is, the more I thrive in that kind of role, whereas nuanced, down-to-earth, realistic characters have been a struggle point for me for a long time. I’m continuously getting better, since I recognize it as a weakness. I would say within the last year alone, I have made great strides in playing more stoic, subdued, calm characters that don’t raise their voice a lot.

Rean actually [is] a big part of that, because he has grown through the four games, he’s changed – almost become more despondent or, like, glazed over what he has been subjected to and what he’s had to deal with. But I like that it always presents a new challenge for me. I don’t know if either of you are familiar with [Aegis Rim:] Thirteen Sentinels – I’ve been streaming that on my Twitch recently. We’re about halfway, 60 percent of the way through it. Just listening to all my colleagues doing all these personal performances that are not hype-anime was kind of a turning point for me.

There’s actually a very brief but very funny story where I was in the middle of stream like ‘I need to start studying this, I need to listen – repeat some of these lines just to ingrain what it is like doing a softer performance.’ The next week, I had an audition that asked for [a] grounded, theatrical performance, and I borrowed from what I just had been hearing on the streams, and I booked a role on it. So, it was cool to be able to take from my colleagues and learn, and then immediately adapt it into something that booked me new work.

OR: Let’s talk about that a little further. You have a new project that was just released two days ago, La Pucella Ragnarok, on Steam where you voice various monsters, a Dark Lord member, Barsom, and Pirate Cat Captain Nattanya. 

SC: I have to try to remember what his voice was! I’m grateful that I work often enough that sometimes, the projects mesh together. [imitates Nattanya] ‘But I want to assume he does a little bit of a pirate voice, while also doing the nyaaaa!’ Something like that.

OR: Can you tell us a little bit about this game, and what it was like working voicing a role that was previously done by none other than Cam Clarke on the PlayStation 2’s La Purcelle: Tactics?

SC: So, I’ll be upfront: I don’t know much about the game itself. Like, I know that it’s within the same vein as DisGaea – the same graphical style. I know it’s also technically the first Western localization and release of a remake of a game that came out in Japan. So, I’ve done my background research. That’s about as much as I know about the game.

I didn’t know that he was originally voiced by Cam Clarke, but that’s what makes it so funny. Because Cam has always been kind of like this peripheral idol of mine. It’s weird to say idol – I would say inspiration of mine. Because I grew up on Tales of Symphonia, that was my first Tales game. I remember him distinctly as Kratos [Aurion] in that. Back during the AIM days, I used to role play Tales of Symphonia characters and I roleplayed with a guy who roleplayed as Kratos. Like, that was showing my age right there – talk about roleplaying on AIM chat.

So, when I heard him as Instructor Neithardt in Trails of Cold Steel I, it was one of the first people to speak in the game, and I’m like ‘Oh my God, Cam Clarke is speaking to me! And I’m voicing the protagonist, I’m voicing the main character!’ So now it just feels like we’re slowly getting closer to that point of singularity where we converge and diverge again, but I’m going to have like swapped bodies with him. Maybe Cam Clarke is just an immortal spirit looking for a new vessel to take over so he can achieve immortality, and I’m the unwitting victim. So Cam, my body is ready! Please give me your skill! [laughs]

SP: Favorite place in the world?

SC: This sounds super kawaii-desu-ne-weeaboo, but going to Japan for Comiket was crazy. I visited in 2016, thanks to a friend who goes there for shopping and reselling, and we decided to time it for Comiket. Just all the experiences – the food festivals, the fact that you could walk down Akihabara and there would be some sort of food stalls. Like fresh teriyaki that you could get – it was incredible. Comiket itself was crazy. It was like Anime Expo, but way more organized. There’s a story I love telling people about how at one point, I was moving down an aisle, just completely shoulder-to-shoulder crowded. And I go to move forward, and I feel my upper body start to move back. And the force of the people moving in the opposite direction was so strong, that it was deliberately shoving you back, even though you were trying to go in the opposite direction. It was dangerous in that heat too. The fox village, everything that I got to do there was so fun. I would definitely want to brush up on my Japanese before I went back.

Oh! Probably the deer village in Nara. I’m a huge sucker for animals, I love zoos, I love cats, I love dogs. I love interacting with animals in general. So, the fact that you could just buy biscuits for the equivalent of two dollars in the United States and have an entire horde of deer show up and start doing their bowing actions to you is unlike anything else. It’s cool to watch on video, it is unreal to see and experience in person.

That was not a lightning round answer!

SP: Favorite anime?

SC: Favorite anime…For comedy, would probably Daily Lives of High School Boys or Komi Can’t Communicate. I really love the visual use of timing on that – it is fantastic. For action, I’m a big fan of both versions of Fullmetal Alchemist. I feel like they have their own merits for different reasons. And I swear this isn’t because I voice the main character, but Re:Zero for, at the time it was released, was on a whole other level. Just the way it deconstructed the trope, the quality of performances – in both sub and in dub – the overall visual animation. Anime is thriving right now, but at least back then, Re:Zero was a very special project for me.

SP: First game you ever played?

SC: First game I ever played was Mega Man 6, that I remember, on the NES. It was that or RBI Baseball, but who talks about a baseball game as being their first one? Sorry to the baseball fans out there! It was definitely Mega Man 6 on the NES – and on the Game Boy, it would have been probably – the earliest I can remember – is either Pokémon Blue version or The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Link’s Awakening was the big one that I played over and over and over again. Most people will say A Link to the Past on SNES, but I never actually played that. The first time I did that was when they did A Link Between Worlds, which was basically the spiritual successor.

But Link’s Awakening – I would sing the music to myself. I would play it on the car rides with the streetlamps only showing up every three seconds or something like that. That was the classic.

“I also enjoy [streaming] because, even as a professional, I have always wanted to kind of break down that professional/amateur barrier. Like ‘Guys, even though you hear me all the time, I’m not above you in any way. I’m not special, I’m just another human being who happens to have a public career.’”

SP: Favorite boardgame?

SC: Mancala, because my brother and I never played it correctly. Never, ever, ever. I could describe all the different ways we played it, and I guarantee you [that] none of them were the correct way.

SP: Favorite spot in the house or apartment?

SC: Normally, I wouldn’t have an answer for this. My wife and I got our first home in February. It’s not fancy, but it is a house in California of all places. But thank my career for that, because it took every single job I’ve ever done to afford it. We really liked this L couch that the family living there before us had, and of course, they took it because it was a really good couch.

So, one of the first things we did was go out to Living Spaces and get a Sierra couch of our own. It’s a three-part couch – one side, two-sided, and the chaise. I knew it was a good purchase because my wife is usually the one who gets upset at me for falling asleep on the couch instead of the bed, but in the time that we’ve owned it – she herself has fallen asleep on the couch at least a double-digit number of times. And one of the sides is located directly underneath one of the A/C vents. So, when you’re lying there, and the A/C kicks on, and you feel the cold air blow straight down on you – which is also something we didn’t have for the 10 years I lived in the apartment: A/C. I lay under there and I’m like ‘Nope, I’m done, I’m not moving. I’m stuck here. It’s like a cat on my lap.’ So that’s my favorite spot in the house – [on] that couch, it is so comfortable.

OR: You brought to life Guido Mista on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. What was it like working with Crunchyroll on a simulcast production, and can you quickly take us through what the weekly production schedule [and what it] was like, knowing that the show was going to air one hour after the Japanese broadcast?

SC: I think I was vaguely familiar with the fact that it was going to air one hour after the Japanese broadcast, and I was already familiar with the concept of simuldub because I know that Funimation started it but it got popularized when people were like ‘Oh, Funimation has got the lead on us by doing this!’ But on my end, the only thing that really resulted in was having to set aside one day each week to record that episode or the next couple of episodes. I think in most cases, it was one episode because they would only get that script one week in advance.

By then, I found it kind of funny – Crunchyroll had already worked with me previously via Re:Zero. But after Re:Zero, I thought it was going to be the kickstart of me voicing a lot of major anime roles. And then there was this dead period for a couple of years until JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure happened. So Crunchyroll had already worked with me by then, I like to think that they trusted my work ethic and my work quality. But outside of that, it was pretty par for the course. They would provide the scripts to the dubbing studio, which was Bang Zoom! [Entertainment], and then Bang Zoom! would set up the recording session with me, and then we’d knock it out.

Probably, the only major difference was the fact that while we started in-studio, the pandemic happened before [the show] was over. So, the entire second half of that show, to the best of my knowledge, was done remotely. But even then, a lot of voice acting is pretty translatable or – I’m trying to think – is lateral. You can move it laterally – if you’ve got the right equipment, if you’ve got the right space, you can practically do it wherever. It seems boring, but I kind of like how consistent the recording process is for stuff. I don’t go to Nintendo’s HQ and record for Nintendo. I don’t go to SEGA’s HQ if I record for SEGA. We go to a lot of the same studios, and it’s a lot of the same process. But that’s part of what lets them do so many projects in a given year, because the process is streamlined.

OR: Let’s expand a bit upon this – you mentioned the pandemic. You really started Twitch streaming during the pandemic. 

SC: I was a pandemic baby when it came to Twitch streaming!

OR: Can you tell us a little bit about how your experience with Twitch has evolved since you started streaming?

SC: Just to give people listening a quick lowdown: I have always been vaguely interested in streaming, but the two main excuses I gave myself were ‘I don’t have the time, and I don’t have the space.’

Well, the pandemic gave me the time, so I decided to figure out if I had the space. And it kind of just worked out. I’d like to think it gave people something to look forward to in a time when a lot of us weren’t sure what the future was going to hold.

I have had half-joking, but half-very seriously let my community know that it’s not fun anymore, it’s just a job. But I mean that jokingly. It is fun, with how busy my career has gotten, there have been many times where I’m like ‘I literally would not have time for these games if I wasn’t forcing myself to have that time via stream.’ But I definitely saw that, at some point, it went from being a way for me to get rid of boredom by broadcasting what I was doing and letting other people comment on it, to develop a sort of community. It’s true what they say: You just end up growing this personalized community of people, of inside jokes, of people whose lives you’ve impacted. And then it becomes almost like Stockholm Syndrome, where you can’t pull yourself away because you want to stay involved in these people’s lives. You want to continue to share your experiences. The folx that stick around really enjoy [my] content, and so [I] feel this sense of obligation of providing for them.

I also enjoy it because, even as a professional, I have always wanted to kind of break down that professional/amateur barrier. Like ‘Guys, even though you hear me all the time, I’m not above you in any way. I’m not special, I’m just another human being who happens to have a public career.’ And for me, the streaming is a great way to talk about my experiences – I’m recording the projects, I’m playing a game I also voiced in – it’s a way for people to see the process of practicing as a voice actor. I’ll often mock dub all of the lines if they’re not voiced. It results in the most ridiculous stuff!

A lot of games these days have audio playback, where you can go into the log and playback lines. Which has resulted in me immediately looking for any case where a line starts with ‘but.’ And if there is a long enough pause after that – you can go to the VODs to find this – I will go into the audio log and I will transpose lines so that I can replace a word with ‘but’ and play it back. So there was like a line in 13 Sentinels where it’s like ‘The only thing inside BJ’s suit is his body’ or something like that. And of course, I timed the line – ‘The only thing inside of BJ’s suit is his butt!’ [laughs] And I’m waiting for someone to do a supercut – or a ‘superbutt’ in this case. It’s just the perfect mix of ‘I’m a professional’ and also ‘I’m here to have some fun’. So that’s what the streams are all about: ‘Here, enjoy some games that you may or may not be interested in,’ ‘enjoy the finished project of stuff that I’ve voiced in, even if you don’t want to spend money in it,’ and ‘Hey, let’s memelord along the way as well.’

You can check out Part Two of my interview with Sean Chiplock here!

What do you think of Sean Chiplock’s voice acting roles? Are there any that have surprised you so far? Let us know in the comments below!

You can buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

The post Dragon Con INTERVIEW: Sean Chiplock (Part One) appeared first on oprainfall.

Dragon Con, with all of its many themed tracks that range from puppetry to urban fantasy and filk, has something for everyone to enjoy. At this year’s Dragon Con convention (which had 65,000 attendees), I sat down with Samantha Inoue-Harte and Brian Holder to talk about everything animation and anime-related, voice acting and voice casting-related, about running a small POC-owned business, and more.

You can see everything that Samantha Inoue-Harte has been involved with on IMDB.

You can also follow Brian Holder on Twitter. You can also follow his company, LazuArts Entertainment, at their official website, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram.

My guests recommend that you check out joining the International Entertainment Partnership, a 501(c)(6) organization that focuses on the entertainment industry around the world, for free. They also recommend that you check out both Lion Forge Animation and Frost Giant Studios when you get a chance.

You can find out more about Dragon Con on their official website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Pinterest, and on Discord. 

You can buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

This interview was edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with Operation Rainfall, good afternoon. Could y’all please introduce yourselves?

Samantha Inoue-Harte: Yes! My name is Samantha Inoue-Harte. I’ve been working in the anime/animation industry since 1997. Started off as an animator, worked at Little Wolf Entertainment, did some work at Powerhouse Animation Studios for about six years. [I] started my own animation studio, Seiko Animation, back in 2005. Started working with different Japanese anime studios as partners on several productions and started development, writing, pitch productions. [I] worked in animation on the Japanese side of things, and then I started doing voice acted in the late ’90s – I don’t exactly remember what year it was, it was either ‘98 or ‘99. I did about eight years for ADV Films, also known as AD Vision Films. I did a lot of casting for them, handled scheduling for walla, did voice acting for them, did a lot of translation on the spot.

I did a lot of work for voice training for the voice actors on how to pronounce the different Japanese words in a way so that ‘Sakura’ doesn’t sound like ‘Sakuuuurah,’ or ‘Naruto’ like ‘NarUtoh.’ I tried to help the voice actors sound authentic in that sense. And yeah, now, I’m a producer, I do anime production – I do consulting. I’ve consulted for Disney, did some consulting for Nickelodeon, helped out different studios on getting projects done and getting different anime studios to work on their projects for American audiences, things of that nature. So I’m all over the place. I’m like that kid Mickey from Kix cereal commercial – ‘Get Mickey, he’ll eat anything!’ It’s like, I’m that character, where they’re like: ‘Get her, she’ll do anything!’ So yeah. [laughs]

Brian Holder: Hello everyone, my name is Brian Holder. I am an actor, a voice actor, casting director, and business owner. My background for acting came in 2013-2014 when I started applying to voiceover gigs on Newgrounds and small indie websites that were doing video games. I made a couple of them that I’m too embarrassed to mention, because that was some of my early work. [laughs] And some mobile games that were interesting, but fun. And that’s how I got my foot in the door as far as acting. I went into anime recently and [I] started doing voiceover work for background characters and small bit parts for characters for anime [like] One Piece, [The] Heike Story. I’ve done some for a couple isekai animes that have come out recently, as well as doing some voiceover work for some Korean anime that I have casted [for] too.

I’ve done live-action work for popular TV shows like CW’s Texas Walker Ranger, [The] Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I am going to be in a couple of feature films further down the line. For my voiceover work in video games, I have done voices for Pirate 101, I’ve done voices for Wizard 101 for KingsIsle Entertainment, as well as doing some voiceover work for DC Online and DC Universe – which one of the main characters will be revealed in the near future.

And also, I own my own business with my own partner Nicholas Markgraf. We own LazuArts Entertainment. We are one of the first black-owned and POC-owned dubbing studios in the United States. We focus on casting and building a wider range to POCs as well as bringing more POCs into the anime and video game industry and entertainment industry where, in other cases, they are usually snubbed out. I, and my partner too, want to bring that to the table to get POCs into the anime industry as well as cast a more diverse background for our future projects.

“I love teaching. I love being able to help people create projects from start to finish. When they get to be accomplished and work in the studio, I admit- it brings a tear to my eyes sometimes, because I’m like ‘That’s my baby!’”

OR: From 1995 to 2008, you taught animation in Texas, and you started up your own animation studio in Cedar Park.

SH: Wow, you did a deep dive!

OR: Do you miss teaching, and what were the biggest changes to how you taught animation during that time period?

SH: Wow, okay. I’ve been teaching animation for a long time – and voice acting for a long time. I’m actually really surprised; I think you’re one of the first people to ask about that. So, there was a school that I taught out in Cedar Park that was mainly targeted for young children and homeschooled families, because animation is one of those industries where as long as you have the art skills – we’ve seen young animators starting in the industry as interns as young as 15. Actually – it’s kind of interesting how a lot of my students from 1995, even on the college level – there’s students of mine at different animation studios like Rooster Teeth Productions. One of the kids I used to teach over at ACC was Sam Deats, and he is one of the directors of Castlevania over at PowerHouse.

One of the differences in how I’ve taught, when it comes to teach younger children ages 10-15 – they are more accepting of information. So, they are kind of like sponges. It’s like you just sit there and say ‘Okay, to create a new keyframe, you hit F5.’ And they take you at your word, and they do it. When you’re teaching at a college, and you’re like ‘Okay, in order to create a new keyframe, you’re gonna hit F5 on your computer,’ and they’ll sit there and be ‘Well, ya know, actually, there’s another hotkey that you can hit and here’s the alternative.’ It’s like, ‘I don’t care, do this. This is the way we do it in the studio, and you’re actually making it harder.’ And you end up having to argue sometimes with adults. With adults, I have to dumb it down a little because then I have to break it down into the 12 principles of animation and then we’ll use Richard Williams’ The Animators’ Survival Handbook as the core book that we would use, or the Preston Blair Animation book. We’ll take each of those exercises and incorporate those into homework assignments.

When teaching adults, it’s a little more of an ‘I have to showcase my skill, because there’s always going to be somebody who is going to challenge me.’ Like, I’m a girl, it’s a male-dominated industry – I started working in animation where I was one of three women in Texas doing animation. And so, having a woman walk into the office and say ‘Okay, we’re going to be doing pillowcase animation, squash-and-stretch.’ And there’s always that one dude in the class who will sit there and challenge me on the spot. That’s something where I have to sit there and showcase my animation skills and shut them down. I don’t have to do that with kids. With kids, they will just be like ‘Oh, what are we doing today?’ ‘Oh, we’re going to do this – here is step-by-step.’ And they’ll be like ‘Okay!’ and then they’ll do it. And they blossom and have these amazing animations, and you’re just like ‘Wow, that is great!’ Whereas, with adults, a lot of times, we’ll have the situation where I’ll be like ‘For this animation, we’ll have 15 frames’ and they’ll do three. And I’ll be ‘Hey, man, that’s not quite a full animation. This assignment is that you have to do 15 drawings.’ And I have to challenge them to do work.

So, I do find that a lot of my younger students have progressed and started working in the animation studios, and I’ve got some students that worked on The Dragon Prince, which is an Emmy Award-winning animation for Netflix. I have several animation students who’ve worked with Aspyr on multiple video games. I’ve got a couple of students who’ve worked over at BioWare. And they’re all from the younger group. But as far as the adult groups, a lot of them – life would get in the way, and animation would become more of a hobby in that sense. There is a huge difference in mindsets. I guess what you can say is that having to change my teaching style based on the mindset of who that it is that you’re dealing with is what I have to do when educating.

OR: Do you miss teaching regularly?

SH: I do! I love teaching. I love being able to help people create projects from start to finish. When they get to be accomplished and work in the studio, I admit – it brings a tear to my eyes sometimes, because I’m like ‘That’s my baby!’ And I do have this mindset where it’s like ‘If I’ve taught you animation at some point, you’re always going to be the little person that started off.’ ‘How do I flip this paper?’ It’s like, to do flipping animation – I’m doing the physical action right now, this is flipping, and this is rolling – I don’t have kids, I have cats, but to me, it’s like having these students actually work in the studios.

I walk into the studios and I’m like ‘Oh, dude, you’re here!’ It happened to me on the set of Alita Battle Angel. One of my students was working on Alita Battle Angel, and he called me up ‘Hey! I’m going to be on set, I’m going to be doing this!’ And I was like ‘Oh my God, you’re my baby!’ So I went over to his computer, and I was looking over his stuff, and I was like ‘Okay, you need to add more frames here.’ And he was like ‘Okay, yes, ma’am.’ And he started adding more frames. I do kind of get that mother hen sort of thing on me, and I miss it a lot.

“What LazuArts likes to do – we actually present, or I like to present, the top five candidates to the client so they can have a say in the pick for the lead of a certain project.”

OR: You also started liaison work for Funimation and animation studios in Japan when Funimation began creating original programming in 2008. Can you talk a little bit about what this work entails, and your experiences with that?

SH: You’re one of the few people I know that’s heard of that! So me and my business partner, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, and our lawyer at the time, we approached Gen Fukunaga and Adam Zehner at Funimation – Fukunaga is the president of Funimation. We were like ‘Hey, you guys want to start original animation production – that’s what we do. We work together with the Japanese animation studios, primarily Gonzo, and a lot of the folks at Production IG and Bones and all that. If you want help making those connections, let’s work together.’

Unfortunately, there are times when you have clients or partners who are very money-conscious. We had multiple projects that were either public domain or pre-existing IP – I cannot discuss the IP, they are very, very well known. We had been working on one Sci-fi project in particular and had been working with the original creator. It’s part of the big, top Sci-fi IP out there and we were working with several Hollywood people on that. And we had scripts, we had the model designs for the ships, Gonzo was all on board to get it done, and Gen Fukunaga actually announced it at the studio. Everyone at Funimation knew about it, and I was like ‘Well, you can’t really announce anything until you sign the contract.’ Unfortunately, they didn’t sign the contract on that project, and they didn’t sign contracts on a lot of other projects. So unfortunately, the creator was like ‘It’s taking too long, I’m getting a better offer somewhere else’. So that project unfortunately went away. I could say more, but that might give away what title it is.

Instead, what Funimation opted to do – they wanted to go the route of working with a video game studio on their IP, and creating anime movies. So, they wanted to ride on the coattails of a video game. And I was ‘Well, if you’re going to ride on the coattails of a video game, and that video game fails, what’s going to happen with that animated movie?’ So, we locked horns too much, and we walked away, and I just went on my own and started to do production on my own instead.

OR: You went and built your own dubbing studio in 2021 during the pandemic, and you also cast the roles for it. How do you balance being the co-owner of the studio and casting the roles that your studio records? Do you ever feel like you have to sacrifice more of one position to fulfill the other?

BH: Fortunately – and I’ve had a lot of people say ‘They don’t like casting’ – I’m one of those few people who love it, and I try to organize it using Excel and Outlook to essentially filter out actors and also have a short list of ‘go to’ reliable actors. But at the same time, for one of our first films that I casted, SEOBOK: [PROJECT CLONE] – which was a Korean live-action film – needed an English dub, we had a pretty diverse cast of people. I remember we had close to 700-plus auditions for that film. It was our first project ever, and I had to go through 700-plus different auditions. But at the same time, [I was] working as the co-owner and emailing back and forth with the client as far as getting the pricing right for the project and paying the actors appropriately, and finding more work for the studio [with] future projects. And at the same time, for myself, also auditioning and acting and running a full-time job too.

You have to schedule everything. So, for me, scheduling is very important – especially for casting. Typically, after the workday and going to the gym and eating dinner, I sit down behind my computer and all I do is listen to auditions on and on and on and on and on until like three or four in the morning. [I] start filtering out ‘Okay, these are the top out of 700-plus people, this is the top 100’ and start narrowing it down lower and lower and lower until we get to the top five for each role. What LazuArts likes to do – we actually present, or I like to present, the top five candidates to the client so they can have a say in the pick for the lead of a certain project. This gives the client ‘Oh, we don’t want to just leave it all in your hands, we want to know who the lead is going to be for the thing that we are paying you to dub.’

Brian Holder casted roles for SEOBOK: PROJECT CLONE as part of LazuArts Entertainment.

OR: I hope you both have been enjoying Dragon Con this year – I know this isn’t your first time coming to Dragon Con. Are you both loving it?

BH: Yeah, I am really enjoying it. My favorite thing about it is really hanging out with the fans and the staff and just people that I’ve met before last year. Hanging out, having dinner [or] lunch with them, and just talking to them.

SH: Dragon Con is kind of like family to me. All the staff are always so sweet, and what I like about Dragon Con is that even though the convention ends on Monday, I still chat with everyone. Mainly through messenger, but it’s like we’ll be geeking out about Alita: Battle Angel stuff or chatting about this and that or the other. It’s kind of like Dragon Con doesn’t end for me at the end of the con, and so I don’t have to worry about con depression.

OR: Thank you very much, both of you.

You can also buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

Have you checked out any of LazuArts Entertainment’s or Saiko Animation’s works before? Did you attend this year’s Dragon Con event?

Let us know in the comments below!

You can read my Dragon Con interview with Nolan North here.

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