The hardest thing to develop is grass
Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream interviewed several of the core developers of Zelda's Apocalypse, including artistic director Yu Daisei, producer Yosuke Hayaya, director Ryuta Matsushita, and development producer Masaki Kozawa.
During the interview, several developers said that one of the biggest challenges the team faced was "grass", which was very time-consuming and involved hundreds of people from various departments of Glorious Tkumo.
Q: Is The Plain of Hiraru faithfully restored in the game?
Panasonic: The original plan was to do something different, but in the end it was faithfully restored, bringing the atmosphere of the world of Breath of the Wild into the battlefield. That being said, we have made changes in some places where it is inevitable.
Q: It's really impressive, even the grass is the same.
Big Star: Yeah... It took a long time for that thing (laughs)
Big Star: The production of the meadow took about half the development time, and it was really difficult to recreate the Hellaru Plain
Gu Ze: We had to recreate the scene in a way that would shock the player
Big Star: That's where the game started, and that's why we really wanted to focus on that
Gu Ze: We asked how the Nintendo Zelda team made the grass in "Breath of the Wild", and although we learned about the production method and details, there is still uncertainty about whether we can restore it. There's a lot of grass in the game, so we also considered if there were other ways to do it
Big Star: We tried a series of different ways to make the grass one of the highlights of the game
Panasonic: The whole company was dragged into the grass
Star: How many people? [Laughs]
Panasonic: It's no exaggeration to say that we've been talking to developers, CG departments, backgrounds, and technical support
Minor season PS
In fact, the design of this "grass" in "Breath of the Wilderness", Nintendo applied for a patent, did not expect it!
SE also wants to engage in metaversity?
SE President Yosuke Matsuda released a New Year's message discussing the company's next steps, with "metaversity" and NFT (non-homogeneous tokens) being the main topics. Matsuda said some companies' early efforts at NFTs were somewhat "overheated" and too speculative, but he believes companies will eventually find the right solution. At the same time, SE hopes to use artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and NFTs to create gaming experiences that allow players not only to "have fun" but also to "contribute to the game."
"Blockchain gaming has entered the growth phase from the infancy stage, which is built on the premise of the token economy, so it has the potential to achieve self-sustaining game growth. The drivers that best contribute to this self-growth are diversity, including how people engage in game interactions and their motivations to do so. The development of the token economy is likely to further fuel this diversification trend. The concept of 'playing and earning' that I see makes people so excited is a good example.
I realize that some of the majority of players who 'play for fun' are understandably conservative about these new trends. However, I believe there are a certain number of people whose motivation is 'to contribute', and by that I mean players to help make the game more exciting (referring to user-created content, like mods). Traditional games do not provide a clear incentive for such 'contributing' players, whose motivations are driven entirely by goodwill and volunteerism. This fact is not unrelated to the limitations of existing UGC (User-Generated Content). UGC emerged solely because of the player's desire for self-expression, not because there was some sort of clear reward. ”
In addition, Matsuda said that SE had already designated artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain games as key investment projects in May last year, and SE believed that the "meta-universe" would transition to a real business practice stage in 2022, and Matsuda hoped that this matter would have a substantial impact on SE's business.
Matsuda mentions a lot of concepts in his original words, which may be more chaotic, and here is a brief explanation. Matsuda's idea is that the emergence of blockchain games and NFTs can allow "contributing" players such as mod authors and fan creators to no longer simply generate electricity with love, but to obtain actual benefits. Using actual rewards to motivate "contributing" players to create more content will also make the game more exciting, so that "entertaining" players can also play happier, and the result is a win-win situation.
As for the metaverse, the personal feeling is still too far away, today's metaverse is mainly a concept hyped out of capital, the purpose is to use the "play to earn" such a gimmick to attract players to pay money, want to truly realize the metacosm is obviously unable to keep up with the level of technology (such as posterior intubation, full-body haptic devices, etc.). There is still a lot of way to go before creating a metaverse world like Ready Player One, and even if you are here, you may not see it in your lifetime
Sonic Frontier was originally scheduled to be released in 2021
At the previous TGA, Sega announced that the latest game in the series, "Sonic Frontier", will land on the PS/Xbox/NS/PC platform during the 2022 holiday, but according to the investor Q&A session in Sega's earnings report, the original plan was to be released in 2021, but it was delayed by one year to improve the quality of the game.
About the release time
"We originally planned to release the game in 2021 for Sonic's 30th anniversary, but decided to postpone the release by a year to further improve the quality. And not only this game, during the development phase we have been analyzing to improve the quality of the game before it is released, such as introducing game tests based on external evaluations. We have a feeling that Sonic Frontier is going to be a good game and have high hopes for it."
About pricing strategies
"We are at a stage where we need to rethink our pricing strategy. For example, for Sonic's new work, because we focused on quality and spent a certain amount of money on development, we thought it was most important to maintain the price by maintaining the value of the IP at a high level, rather than simply reducing the price early to increase sales. ”
ACG does not divide the family
Studio Ghibli officially announced that Hayao Miyazaki's new feature-length animation is in production. In addition, the "Toshio Suzuki and Ghibli Exhibition" will be held at the Kyoto Bunka Museum on April 23, and the "Ghibli Paradise" will open in Aichi Prefecture in autumn.
Two Pokémon Al Zeus CM
Japanese television aired a new TVCM for Pokémon Legend: Al Zeus last night, and Nintendo in Israel also released a live-action CM, which will land on switch on January 28 and support Chinese.
Note: There is no official source for this video in Japan, the video below was recorded and released by YouTube user Pokekalos TV.
Japan COMMERCIAL
Israel CM
Screenshot of Haunted Chocolatier
ConcernedApe, author of "Stardew Cereal Language", has released two new screenshots of the new work "Haunted Chocolatier", which will land on PC, and the author intends to launch other platform versions, and the release date is undecided.
According to the author's previous release, this game is similar to Stardew Grain Language in some ways, but the core gameplay and theme are very different, more like an action RPG. Players will play as a chocolatier who lives in a haunted castle, collecting ingredients, making chocolates and running a chocolate shop.