Creator's Talk interview on Sony's website (2002)

Interview with Tetsuya Takahashi

Original interview from early 2002. Translated by Bari Bari, zenosaga.com forums  Jan 14, 2003


"Here is the first section of my translation of Sony's "Creator's Talk" interview with Tetsuya Takahashi available here: http://www.scei.co.jp/ps/creators/index02.html

This is a response to the thread "Creator's Talk" on this forum. Sorry it became about a week late! I had planned to have this done by the 7th, but I've been a bit busy.

I have posted the first section: the Intro page for Creator's Talk No. 02 and the first interview page. I plan to have more sections posted at a rate of about 1 per day, with the whole interview posted by the end of the week.

Note: I have translated everything exactly as it appears on the website. Please do not post comments saying something is wrong! This is an interview meant for visitors to Sony's website, not just rabid Xeno freaks."
- Bari Bari (zenosaga.com forums, Jan 14, 2003)




Creators Talk
Creators No. 02 Tetsuya Takahashi
Creating game experiences that outdo films: the "science and ideology" game director.

(Lower Left)
"I want to know everything about that game!"
Famous games broaden, deepen, and connect the world of gaming. What was going through the mind of the person who made that game? What kind of game creators were involved in developing that game?
This is a bi-weekly interview series that closely examines the creators of games that are gathering attention.
(Edited by Hidekuni Shida)

(Lower Right)
Tetsuya Takahashi
Vice President, Monolith Software, Inc.
Director, ''Xenosaga''.
Born November 18th, 1966. Joined Falcom Japan in 1987, and Squaresoft in 1990. Participated in development of "Final Fantasy IV". Supervised all graphics in "Final Fantasy V" and "VI". Released his directorial debut "Xenogears" for the PlayStation in 1998. Appointed Vice President of Monolith Soft Inc. in 1999. Released "Xenosaga" for PlayStation 2 in 2002.



(First Interview Page)
Creating game experiences that outdo films: the "science and ideology" game director.

..."I began to grow up a little and started reading books on philosophy and ideology."

Real-time CG cut scenes that add up to approximately seven and a half hours. A rich tapestry of science-fiction drama, woven by robots, androids, Realiens (artificial humans), and real humans. Xenosaga Episode I: The Will to Power is a stand out effort, even amongst the large number of software titles on the PS2. It portrays a deeply involving story and universe, the kind that can not be experienced in any other medium.
However, this medium, the computer game, has a history of only 30 years. Compared with 100 years for films and 50 for television, the medium is still young and underdeveloped. Nowadays, development teams consisting of more than 100 people being their talent together to create large-scale games, but less than a decade ago it was the norm to make games with 2 or 3 people.
Tetsuya Takahashi has been making games since personal computers were the main platform. A large part of his life story is also a history of the evolution of game development environments. We talked with him about his gaming experiences from the first game he experienced to his encounter with the PlayStation.

(Contents of Xenosaga info box in middle of page)
Xenosaga Episode I: The Will to Power
Role Playing Game
Released February 28, 2002 7,800 yen
Premium Box 12,800 yen

A huge scale space opera that portrays the creation of the cosmos until its demise.
4000 years from the present. Humankind is feeling threatened by attacks from an unknown lifeform, the Gnosis. Humankind develops the combat android KOS-MOS in order to defeat the invisible Gnosis. An engineer, Shion Uzuki, journeys to outer space in order to test KOS-MOS.
A quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: "Our drives are reducible to the will to power. The will to power is the ultimate fact at which we arrive." A plethora of difficult terminology. Characters whose relationships become more and more complicated. The first episode of "Xenosaga". A truly captivating science fiction masterpiece.

(Beginng of interview at bottom of page)
Q. Mr. Takahashi, you have a track record making games for over 15 years. What was the first game you ever played?

A. I think the first would have to be Nintendo's TV Game 6 [a Nintendo video game system released in 1977 that had its games built-in. Its games could be played on a TV. -Bari Bari]. I played a tennis game on the TV. Also, arcades. I'm originally from Shizuoka, and we used to get a few people together and go to the arcades along Route 1; one guy would be the lookout, and the rest would play, trying not to be spotted. Those were the days when you would get caught by a truant officer if you went to an arcade. After a while, the neighborhood toy store put some game machines out in front of the store, and there was no truant officer there, so I used to play games there almost every day, from "Space Invaders" to "Galaxian".

Q. By the way, what kind of a child were you?

A. It seems my relatives called me a strange child. Basically, I never listened to what anyone said. (Laughs) My parents must have had a pretty tough time.

Q. You often quote books in your games, and you seem like quite a well-read person. Have you always liked to read?

A. Well, I was a pretty small kid, so I was better at study than sports. Chemistry and physics were my favorites, but I was awful at math. As for art, it usually depended on the teacher. Sometimes I would get good grades, sometimes bad. As far as books go, I used to read a lot of manga and those science fiction novels with the blue spines from Hayakawa Publishing [publishers of Japanese translations of Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov. -B.B.]. Oh, and Futaro Yamada [prominent author of romantic, detective, horror, and ninja novels. His bizarre ninja novel series, "Ninpocho" garnered him many fans. -B.B.]. Also, I'm sure everyone experiences this, but when I got in to college, I began to grow up and started reading books on philosophy and ideology.

Q. You were originally a designer working on characters, maps, and backgrounds, right? When did you first feel that you wanted to make games?

A. My fondest memories were when "Xanadu" [action RPG released in 1987 by Falcom Japan; well-known for its superb graphics and innovative game system, including the negative stat 'karma' that increased when the player killed friendly creatures -B.B.] was released. When I played it on the PC-8801 [famous NEC personal computer; survived in various iterations until 1988 -B.B.], I became interested in the game industry. Falcom Japan happened to be hiring part-time employees at the time, so I came to Tokyo and started working there. I was living alone and supporting myself.

Q. At the time, Falcom was at the top of the computer game market. The grandfather of game music, Yuzo Koshiro, was working there too, if I remember correctly.

A. Mr. Koshiro left the company right before I joined. I entered right when "Y's II" came out, and I started working as a designer. I only knew BASIC at the time, so I helped out, learning as I worked.

Q. What was the first game you participated in?

A. The first was the fonts for "Sorcerian" [released by Falcom in 1987; it was revolutionary because its characters aged and were able to pass on their attributes to their offspring. Multiple add-on campaigns were released that made use of developed characters. -B.B.]. We had to make our own fonts for our games in those days. If we used the standard system font, things would look all blocky, so we had to rewrite everything.

Q. "Sorcerian" was quite a large-scale RPG, with adventures that cross multiple generations and consecutive scenarios. How many members were on the team that made it?

A. At the time it was 4 to 5 people. I think it took about 10 months to make.

Q. How about ''Xenosaga'' the game you just finished?

A. Within our company, about 70 to 80 people. At the highest point, it was around 100 people, 20 times but we had back then. Development time, if I count back to when the company was founded, was around 2 years.

Interviewer: What a difference in scope. It's hard to believe that things have changed this much in just 15 years.



(The rest was translated by Gwendal on April 26, 2012.)

(Second Interview Page)
[He is] the type to change his environment to make it easier to do his job

Magazine: From Falcom Japan to Square. From a leading PC game maker to a leading home [console] game maker. At that time, Square was riding the success of "Final Fantasy III". It was a time when the introduction of the Super Famicom demanded a new dynamism.
After joining Square, as a designer, Takahashi advocated strengthening the graphical presentation of the "Final Fantasy" series. Thus, he laid the foundations for present-day Square as a kingdom of graphics.

Takahashi: The designers were at the core of Falcom Japan as a company. Also, there were a lot of opportunities to learn. But with our first computer, the PC8801, we could only use oblong dots and 8 colors for character designs. So we were pretty frustrated by that. At that time we ported "Ys III" to the X68000 and used sprites. It had a large memory capacity and allowed us to use a lot of colors. Because of that I became interested in doing sprite work. At just the same time, Falcom Japan itself moved away from taking shortcuts on their games and released unusual games such as "Brandish" and "Lord Monarch". I thought I'd like to try making games on home consoles if given the chance, so I left Falcom.

Q. You left without even having your next job lined up. Were you worried about that?

A. I read a job listings magazine and looked for a part-time job. Right then Square was recruiting for part-time jobs. That was when "Final Fantasy III" had been released on the Famicom. I thought I'd give it a try, so I applied. My first job was on "Final Fantasy IV".

Q. It was a new environment [for you] at Shintenchi. The Famicom could use 53 colors and show 4 of them at the same time. And the Super Famicom could use even more colors. How was [it to work with] home consoles?

A. I thought I could design more things, but that turned out not to be the case. That is to say, Square was a company based around planners. Today [I think it] looks more like a kingdom of graphics. I had a strong impression I'd joined an organization that was the polar opposite of Falcom Japan. Even though we were using the Super Famicom, memory used by the program was given priority over memory used for the image. So at best we could only display 8 colors at the same time. "This isn't very good!", I thought. [I'm slightly unsure exactly what he thought, but it should be something like that.]

Q. But "Final Fantasy IV" was praised for its graphics, wasn't it?

A. I advocated strongly for that. When we wanted to make the graphics better, the designers advanced that opinon about the contents of the game, and the programmers and planners changed its specifications. The director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, helpfully approved of us working that way.

Q. So it was advocated by a first-time designer, then?

A. This might be one of my good sides, or maybe it's annoying from other peoples' point of view, but I'm the type who changes my environment to make it easier to do my job. So when I joined Square, I constantly let them know my opinions so I could work more easily.

Q. Nowadays Final Fantasy [games] are made on a scale involving around 200 people, but roughly how many were involved in making them back then?

A. I think it was around 30 people. 5 of those were designers, including me. At that time, we designers drew the maps. In the beginning, the planners drew the maps, but as the graphics became more complicated, you couldn't design the maps without any artistic ability anymore. So we made the maps while thinking about where to place traps and treasure chests.

Q. So that was Takahashi-san's first game design [experience]. Was that when you started thinking about making "Xenogears"?

A. That's right. The impetus was that I was growing frustrated with "Final Fantasy". When it came to making a role-playing game, I had the planning ability, and I wanted to try my hand at presenting a world, character modelling and things like that. So I went from a designer to a planner and made "Xenogears".

Q. "Xenogears" had the subtitle "Episode 5", so it took the shape of a small fragment of a much bigger tale. How much did you have planned out inside your head?

A. There's not that much left in the form of [actual] documents, but I've come up with a lot.

Q. Why did you set the game in space? Were you uninterested in fantasy worlds?

A. With "Xenogears", in the very beginning we started from the point of making a sequel to "Chrono Trigger". But as various arguments with the publisher piled up, some practical difficulties came up... Thanks to Sakaguchi-san's great efforts on our behalf, we were allowed to make it an original title. So when we started development, we had parts that wouldn't fit in a fantasy world, and I was worried about the motivation of the staff. To an extent, we made "Xenogears" as a cross [between sci-fi and fantasy, I guess]

Interviewer: That might have been a grim environment, but we could also feel you were fixated on the visual [side of things], with Xenogears using animation taking advantage of the Playstation's capabilities.

A. Actually, we wanted to make the game in full 3D. But with the capabilities of the Playstation at the time, that wasn't possible. So we decided to make the maps 3D and the characters 2D. Soon they were making "Final Fantasy VII" right next door to us, and they had a quite different budgetary scale. So I couldn't help asking for [money for] that animation.

Interviewer: "Xenogears" recieved wildly enthusastic support from the users. They've made a lot of Internet sites about it.

A. I'm glad to hear that. It was a rather drastic game [he uses the exact English word], and it got mixed reactions within Square, but it turns out it was received well once we actually gave it a chance [and released it]. I had confidence in myself when I released it, so I'm glad [it turned out that way].


(The original interview was also found at: http://web.archive.org/web/20050311192422/http://www.playstation.jp/psstyle/talk/index02.html)