Drakengard: Interview with Takamasa Shiba (Interviews)

Funky Zealot, GamePro

15/04/2004 10:53:37

Drakengard's soon coming to our shores, and we had the opportunity to speak with producer Takamasa Shiba,

Australian Gamepro: What were your goals for Drakengard?

Takamasa Shiba: Our goal was to create an original title, one that the staff team can freely build without outside constraints. We also wanted a smooth game that produced at least 60 frames a second.

AGP: What were the inspirations for this game? It looks like a Beholder from D&D is protecting the large cyclops.

TS: We wanted to give the game a Western European medieval feel, something along the lines of the world of D&D and Middle-Earth from the Lord of the Rings. But we didn't want to limit ourselves with that, so you'll a variety of settings, some with a sort of a Japanimation feel.

AGP: The interior castle scenes remind me a lot of the Lord of the Rings movies.

TS: Yes, we tried to capture the hues and colors from the movies and incorporate it into the game.

AGP: A lot of people make comparisons of Drakengard to Dynasty Warriors and Panzer Dragoon, are there any inspirations from those games?

TS: From Panzer Dragoon, zero. With the aerial action sequences there, there was a lot of inspiration from Ace Combat, since much of the staff developed that game as well. We did however want to capture the type of action in Dynasty Warriors, of how a single hero takes on a horde of enemies.

AGP: How did you design the characters? Compared to main characters from other RPG's, the Drakengard's hero's very dark, especially since he fights only to release and calm his rage.

TS: We set out to make an RPG for adults, and with that we wanted to bring out the darkness of human nature. Unlike other games, where your allies join with you to fight a common cause, your allies join to fulfill their own desires and goals.

AGP: What was the greatest challenge in creating Drakengard?

TS: Without a doubt, I would have to say the low-altitude strafing battles were the most difficult to create. The number of enemies on screen is more than three times of what you would see in a game like Dynasty Warriors. Although you can get away with not having too many enemies on screen in ground battles, in a setting where you're flying overhead it's painfully obvious if the enemies are sparse. There were some people who wanted to get rid of the strafing mode altogether, but we thought it was an integral part of the game and so it had to stay. Also, it was a challenge to take the three different battle modes - the strafing, melee, and aerial combat and combine them into one seamless game.

AGP: What other action games do you like?

TS: Although I'm not too much of an action game fan, some games I liked were Half-Life, Dynasty Warriors, Tenchu, Devil may Cry, Prince of Persia. The Cavia staff are more action game fans than myself. I like Koei strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition and PTO, and RPG's like Valkyrie Profile, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Star Ocean and Final Fantasy Tactics.

AGP: Do you plan on making a Drakengard II?

TS: We do want to make the game, though it'll depend on whether or not the game does well in the U.S. and in Europe.

AGP: What other games are in the works?

TS: We can't say much, other than that we're making three games, one of which is a PC RPG.