Interview with Xenogears staff (1998)

Interview from 1998, likely from an issue between February and March of 1998 in Dengeki Playstation (a magazine that published every other week). Translated by Gwendal (GameFAQs forum, Feb 18, 2012) and Lugalbanda (Jun 23, 2018).


"I'm not 100% fluent by any means, so I apologise in advance if I mess up anything, but I should be able to at least give a rough idea of what it's saying. Unfortunately, there were a few things I just couldn't make sense of no matter how much I tried to look it up. I could do the sidebar thing later if you guys want, but there's really nothing there that would be of interest to hardcore fans of the game. The first part just gives a basic explanation of what a Gear is, and the second pretty much just says there's jumping in the game, without that making it an action-RPG."
- Gwendal (2012)

"The first page of this interview has been translated by Gwendal, and all credit goes to him. He was not able to translate some parts of the interview, and anything that I’ve added/modified to the first page will be indicated by green text. The second and third pages of the interview were lost until I had retrieved them recently, and thus all translations are by me."
- Lugalbanda (2018)


[Page 1, translated by Gwendal]


"The men who made Xenogears"

Interview with Xenogears staff

Xenogears, a sci-fi epic with an especially strange/wonderful "taste" compared to Square's earlier works. How did such an unusual game come to be? To find the answers to that, we went directly to Square. From the hands of the staff, we reveal the secrets behind the game's birth.


People and robots existing side by side


Interviewer: So, first of all, please tell us about what parts of the game you worked on and what games you've worked on in the past.

Tetsuya Takahashi: I handled everything to do with direction. Earlier, I helped out with the graphics for FFIV-VI. This time, I left that role to work on writing the scenario.

Hiroshi Uchiyama: I was in charge of modelling for the Gears. I modelled around 190 Gears all by myself. Earlier, I worked on Chrono Trigger.

Yasuyuki Honne: I supervised background art, and I did some of it myself. My main work was texture mapping. Earlier, I helped out with art for Chrono Trigger.

Yoshinori Ogura: I did sub-mechanics design (not really sure what he's referring to here, but I think it has to do with game mechanics rather than mecha?). Earlier, I did games like Chrono Trigger, Live-a-Live and Hanjuku Hero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanjuku_Hero).

Kunihiko Tanaka: I was in charge of characters. I'm doing a comic series for "RPG Magazine", so I'm having a little break from that right now. (Laughs)

Junya Ishigaki: I designed the main characters' Gears. I don't really know how many I designed, but...

Hiromichi Tanaka: This time I saw everything as producer (that's the literal translation, not 100% sure how to interpret it). I also supervised the battles (battle design?).

Interviewer: Please tell us some details about how "Xenogears" got started. If I remember correctly, I heard that was around the same time as FFVII [got started].

Takahashi: In the beginning, when the base plot itself was first in production as a "FF" or something like that, I sent a proposal [to the higher-ups] saying "How about this?". Then they told me, "Well, if there's something you want to make, why don't you give it a try?" So that was how it all got started in the first place.

Interviewer: So the Gears were in existence from that time?

Takahashi: Yes. But there wasn't a name yet, and at the stage of that first proposal I presented, we had summon beasts [the standard term used in all the Japanese FF games] instead of robots. That's where we had started. When it was decided that this would be its own game, we decided to replace all of that with mechas.

Interviewer: Did you have some kind of fixation on robots?

Takahashi: Mmm. I mean, I just wanted to make something like that. That's all. (Laughs)

Interviewer: What was the origin of the title "Xenogears"?

Takahashi: From the beginning, we decided on the word "Xeno" between the staff. In itself, that means/has the implication of "Something strange or alien", but what kind of title could we draw from that? So I made a few alternatives for things we could put after "Xeno". After that, we finally decided on "Xenogears".


"Xeno"'s distinctive method of presentation


Interviewer: This time, you incorporated animation into various parts of the game. Could you please tell us about your reasons for doing that?

Takahashi: Well, it's like before [with the robots], I just like it personally. That's one reason. That, and it's hard to turn Tanaka-kun's art into CG (laughs). [I'm not 100% sure about this sentence, but it should be something like that] Anime was the most natural way we could present it.

Interviewer: There aren't too many 3D cutscenes [in the game], are there?

Hiromichi Tanaka: If you've played the game, you'll know this, but Xenogears has a lot of cutscenes that aren't pre-rendered. It's something like real-time 3D anime that's being calculated on top of [or possibly in addition to?] the actual game screen. That was the biggest reason we didn't use CG movies this time. "Xenogears" uses 3D maps, and if it had been 2D we wouldn't have been able to move the camera freely, effects would have to been processed in 3D anyway, and so for those reasons "Xenogears"' engine itself was suited to have cutscenes that played in real-time, as opposed to it being pre-rendered.


[Page 2, translated by Lugalbanda]


CHARACTERS WITH A RICH HISTORY

How the character came to be


Interviewer: How did the characters of Xenogears come to be?

Takahashi: We came up with the characters almost simultaneously with the story. At the very beginning, I was thinking about how I wanted to shape the world of the game. After we decided on the Xeno prefix, it became what you know today.

Interviewer: So you expanded the story from there.

Takahashi: Yes. I had everything already figured out for the main characters. Fei, Elly, Citan, and Bart were there from the beginning. The others got added to diversify the cast.

Interviewer: Are there characters you are particularly fond of?

Takahashi: Well, all of the main characters. However, Ramsus is the character that reflects me the most. I think him and I are very similar.

Interviewer: What are the design concepts for the characters?

Kunihiko: I wanted to do something completely different from what I’ve been used to doing. I told Takahashi-san what I wanted to do, and he kindly told me that I’m free to do whatever I pleased, so that’s exactly what I did. Now I can’t stop(drawing in that style). (laughs)

Interviewer: It’s quite different from your usual art style.

Kunihiko: Yes. I think my past art can be described as very comical and very anime, but this time I wanted to try something more serious, like a Gekiga (an art style found in manga that was targeted at a more mature audience). I had no idea how to go about it, but I studied hard. I’ve open the door to a new world now.

Interviewer: So, you had very few restrictions on what you could do.

Kunihiko: In Xenogears, there are a few characters that the normal me wouldn’t design, Like Billy, Sigurd, and Bart. But, as I was drawing, I decided I’ll just tack on things that appeal to me within the parameters that were already set. (Note: In light of the Xenogears pamphlet interview, I believe he is talking about the fact that these characters were not originally designed by him.)

Takahashi: This is my fault, but we focused too much on having male characters that we ended up hardly having any girls. By the time we realized it, the only girls besides Elly were an animal, a child, and an artificial human. (laughs) There was still room left for some girl power, I think.

Interviewer: And the lore surrounding the characters?

Takahashi: Hardly changed. The only one that went through a massive change was Citan. At first, Citan’s occupation was, “strategist”, and we had this crazy idea of making him a character that would use sophistry to defeat enemies on the battlefield. We couldn’t pull it off with the system we were working with, so we settled on what you see in the game.


About the Gear Designs


Interviewer: How about the mecha designs?

Ishigaki: A game with mechas that weren’t squares [was the goal]. (laughs)

Interviewer: As in, resembling humans?

Ishigaki: No, it’s just that I’ve always wondered why [games] have such angular robots. I found out the hard way that you can’t make round things with polygons. (laughs) I had none of that type of knowledge, so I think I designed a lot of mechas that are tough to implement.

Interviewer: Which Gear did you have the most trouble modeling?

Uchiyama: Uhh, X _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Xenogears].( tremendous laughter)

Ishigaki: I was worried about how things were gonna turn out once I was done designing that one. But it worked out well.

Uchiyama: And it can actually transform. It’s a very small detail, but... I don’t think anyone else could make anything better with current technology.


[Page 3, translated by Lugalbanda]


The map, the combat, everything is new


Interviewer: Please tell us why the combat system became a command-input system, like a fighting game.

Hiromichi: I didn’t want to do the whole “choose commands from a menu” thing. I also wanted to build on the great feeling you get punching things, but I couldn’t have commands like a fighting game, because some people wouldn’t be able to play it. I spent around six months to a year just coming up with the concept. I couldn’t come up with a solution that I felt confident in, but I eventually ended up with what you see today.

Interviewer: How did the Attack Level mechanic of Gear battles come about?

Hiromichi: At first, there wasn’t going to be much of a difference in terms of commands between on-ground combat and Gear combat. But I couldn’t make all gear movement the same because of the different designs, so I went for something between regular battle commands and the Combo mechanic in on-ground combat.

Interviewer: And how about Battling? (the minigame, not general combat)

Takahashi: We wanted to do a minigame that was completely different from the main game. But it wouldn’t have worked if we just used the same combat system, so we had to form a separate programming team, and we treated it like it was its own separate game.

Hiromichi: Yes, we put a lot of stuff in it to make it look like a standalone game. I think that took us about six months.

Takahashi: It was a year.

Interviewer: Why did you choose a 3D map?

Takahashi: One reason is that everything feels more alive. If you’ve walked around on the map, you know how easy it is to get lost. (laughs) but I wanted to have that sense of realism. I wanted to keep that feeling of the first time you walk into a town you’ve never been to.

Interviewer: How easy was it to make all the maps?

Takahashi: Hard for everything.

Honne: I did everything from the concept art to the textures, start to finish. I would also have to do the animations for the characters to make them work in 2D. I ended up drawing about 80… roughly 90.

Interviewer: All by yourself?

Takahashi: We started out with two.

Honne: No, it was just me at first. (laughs) Even if it’s somewhere the player will just breeze past or places where it’s physically impossible to enter, I put proper textures. 

Takahashi:  We initially had a Sentō (Note: public bath house). We had a changing room. We were going to have an event sequence that took place in the bath.

Honne: But it was hard to make the objects. and I needed to make nude sprites for everyone. I was begged not to do it, so we ended up sadly cutting it. (laughs)

Interviewer: Tell us about Hyper Mode.

Takahashi: The _ _ [Id] System is the easiest to activate, but all other Gears take into account how much damage they’ve dealt, and how much they’ve taken. When you’re using moves, there should be some little green text on the screen, and the percentage on that screen should give you an idea of how to raise it.

Interviewer: Can you tell us any tips to beat the game?

Takahashi: If you can’t win, use your booster. You’ll be doubling your speed, so that’s pretty much like doubling your attack stat.

Hiromichi: By the way, have you done disc 2? The way the game (presumably the combat) progresses is quite different from the RPG you saw in disc 1. You return to the normal style at the very end, but there’s a lot of puzzles to solve leading up to it. It’s done very well, so I hope you enjoy it.

Interviewer: Thank you all for spending your precious time with us.

"The “close up” section has some rather uninteresting summaries on the first page, but the second and third pages actually have information about stuff that didn’t make it into the game. I have translated that below."
- Lugalbanda


CLOSE UP
 
PAGE 2

3 Ramsus Event

Speaking of Ramsus, the nightmare sequence before the Aveh invasion. There were probably a lot of people shocked at the bed scene, but apparently, they were initially going to have him entirely naked as he walked towards the door. But because of the how the map was, it would mean he was about to walk down the hallway buck naked. That wouldn’t have been good, so they rushed to give him a pair of underwear. There were probably a lot of people who wanted to see that!


PAGE 3

7 Ideas that had to be cut

There are medical rooms, such as the one in Yggdrasil, that have a scale to see your character’s weight. Initially, there were apparently maps that had water, and you could only swim in it if you were under a certain weight. But the mechanic got cut, so the weight stat became meaningless. For Margie, who was supposed to be a party member, they had an idea where she would pull a bunch of weapons out of her hat. She was sadly demoted to NPC status, and that dream ended. I think we all wanted to see Margie fight.


(This interview can also be found translated on Lugalbanda's website at https://xenomira.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/the-men-who-made-xenogears-interview-with-xenogears-staff/)

[See the first page of the original Japanese interview here.]