6 hours Ago
Metaphor: ReFantazio – starting from a blank slate (Atlus) GameCentral speaks to the director of Persona 5 and Metaphor: ReFantazio about the complexities of making a Japanese game that Western audiences will also enjoy. The chance to speak to game developers about their work and inspirations is always one of our favourite parts of the job, but the truth is a lot of the time you never get a chance to meet them in person. That's always the best way to conduct an interview but failing that a video conferencing call is the second best option.
An email interview though, rarely results in anything very interesting. We were due to speak to Atlus' Katsura Hashino, who has worked on dozens of Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games over the years, about his new game Metaphor: ReFantazio but thanks to some technical problems (thanks for nothing Microsoft Teams!) it never happened. Instead, we submitted our questions by email and while that usually results in rather anodyne, overly-considered, answers these are actually very interesting – particularly the ones about the early stages of the game's development and how you go about creating a whole new IP and fantasy world while still ensuring it remains interesting to both Western and Japanese fans.
GC: Creating a whole new fictional universe and a new gaming IP must be a huge and daunting undertaking. How much planning is involved before you get to practical development? When it starts is it just someone with a pad and pencil noting down ideas or do you have an equivalent of a writing room? KH: When I first asked the team members what kind of RPG they wanted to make, they all said they wanted to make a fantasy RPG, a genre they were familiar with from long ago. When we got into a deeper discussion about why they liked fantasy, no one had a clear answer, even though they had liked it for a long time.
That was very interesting, and I remember being curious about why the world of fantasy unconsciously attracted us. I..
. GameCentral.
