A month ago, "Honkai: Star Railway" officially released a news that made all the old victims of the second generation tremble: Nasu Mushroom, the soul of TYPE-MOON, who served as the director and script of the "Fate" series, had a "dream conversation" with David, the producer of miHoYo's "Honkai: Star Dome Railway".
This dialogue is not only an exchange between the two game companies, miHoYo and Shizuki, but also a symbol of the fierce collision between Chinese otaku culture and Japanese otaku culture.
Today, the full text of the conversation between the two was officially released, with a content of 17,000 words, which not only includes the secrets of game production that have never been revealed by Mi and Yue, but also shows the unique insights of the two on the phenomenon of otaku culture in China and Japan. Next, let's briefly sort out the main points of this conversation. Since there are a lot of interesting contents, please be sure to read the original article as well.
The subtitle of the conversation is "Methods of Materializing 'Dreams' and 'Desires'". As we know, "embodiment" is a word that is often used in the world of the moon created by the Nasu mushroom, such as the inherent enchantment is the "embodiment" of the magician's mental image world, or the ability possessed by the heroine of "Tsukihime" Elquit is also called "utopian embodiment". And this word just sums up the core topic that the two creators wanted to discuss in the interview: how can we better translate what we really want to express into reality when creating games?
In response to this, they first reviewed the causes that they did not understand each other.
First of all, Nasu Mushroom has been playing miHoYo games since the time of "Honkai Impact 3", and later "Genshin Impact" and "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" have not fallen. At first, he actually played Genshin Impact with a condescending attitude, thinking "what kind of height can this product bred on the soil of otaku culture reach" - and he was soon shocked by miHoYo's ability to truly "embody" the dream story of otaku culture for a long time into a real product.
He lamented that miHoYo's slogan "Tech Otakus Save the World" is really not just a casual talk.
And David not only got various inspirations from the works of Nasu Mushroom in terms of game production, but even his outlook on life was deeply influenced by Shizuki.
As early as 2004, David was already a fan of Saber, until he came into contact with the "Unlimited Blade Works" chapter of "Fate/Stay Night", and was deeply shocked by the values of the character Red Archer. In particular, the character's interpretation of "justice" and "ideals" has become an indispensable element of the theme of "love and justice" in David's future works, and it also runs through "Honkai: Star Dome Railway".
In the early days of the project, David proposed the concept of "creating a story about HERO", which was inspired by the "Heroic Spirit" of the "Fate" series.
(As early as the achievements of "Honkai Impact 3", you can see countless "stalks" of the Fate series)
Notably, the interview also mentions the similarities between Clara Svarro in "Star Iron" and Illya and Berserker in "FSN". In response to this, David frankly admits that there is indeed a partial reference (laughs).
"Love and justice" has always been the theme that David tries to represent in the Honkai Impact series. No matter how deep the darkness of the world has been, no matter how cruel and desperate people have witnessed, it must be love and justice that bring hope to the world in the end. The last lesson is like this, the five Xiao on the cloud is like this, and I believe that Pinocone will be the same. Just as the mechanical justice that Red Archer inherited from Kiritsugu was eventually conceded by Shirou's "immature" justice, this "idealistic" tone runs through David's creative philosophy.
Mushroom also praised the bootstrap design of Star Iron. He believes that, like Fate/Grand Order, Star Rail is a game born on the premise of "long-term operation". From the plot design to the creation of the world, the various designs are well thought out, so that players will not be uneasy about the future development direction of the game, so they can enter the pit with confidence.
Among them, Mushroom focused on the indispensable part of the plot design of long-term operation games, which is the "puzzle" used to retain users. There must be a "question" that makes the player extremely concerned and drives the player to find out. This kind of design that arouses the curiosity and desire of players to explore is a common means of maintaining user retention in the industry.
This is easy to understand. Specific to "FGO", in the first part, players are curious about the identity and motivation of the Magic King, the second part is the purpose of the alien god, and now the music is the Chaldean secret and the recovery of the volt line of the extra class. In "Star Iron" and "Genshin Impact", the most curious thing for players is, of course, "who they really are". Long-term games need to grasp the curiosity and curiosity of players who "want to see the story to the end". To this end, FGO will "determine the operation schedule for the next three years in advance".
In addition to this, the two also talked about some of the troubles of global operations. Since FGO's events are often themed around real-life holidays (Halloween, Valentine's Day, Christmas), which often have different customs and manifestations in different cultures, and the timing and schedule of global operations are inconsistent, they decided to focus on content for the Japanese market. In order to solve this problem, miHoYo has tried to create a series of "original festivals" in the game, so that there is no need to worry about the conflicts caused by real festivals, and the most famous of them is the Lantern Festival in "Genshin Impact". Mushroom believes that this decision is quite correct.
And in terms of character design, David and Mushroom also exchanged some interesting content. David mentioned that as long as it is a role, it is more or less burdened with the mission of "creating revenue", so the balance between "revenue" and "design" has always been a topic that needs to be continuously explored. As for "Star Iron" specifically, he mentioned that when creating some characters, they will lower their commercial expectations and create with a more free feeling, or expand some new XP, such as Qingque, Gui Naifen and Sambo, etc.
Following his example, we may speculate that the 5-star character may be burdened with heavier commercial expectations, while the 4-star character is a stage for the writers and artists to express their free sensibilities.
This reminded Mushroom of a phenomenon mentioned in the interview with Street Fighter II, that is, the "black hole of sexual fetish". That is, there can't be only heartthrob-type characters in a work, and if you don't set up a "sexual fetish black hole", you can't guarantee the diversity of the world, and the "protagonist-type characters" who "lack personality" can also have their own characteristics.
Therefore, seeing this, FGO players must be able to understand how very "special" characters like Xiang Yu, Smoke Mirror, Ivan the Terrible, and Columbus are designed and why they are so popular - all because Shizuki is well versed in this "sexual fetish black hole" theory.
（伊凡雷帝《Fate/Grand Order》）
As we mentioned earlier, Mushroom initially played miHoYo with the idea of "condescending", in order to see "what kind of heights this story based on Japanese otaku culture can reach". At the end of the conversation, Mushroom frankly admitted: "Nowadays, China's otaku culture is at the forefront of popularity."
Mushroom mentions that today's otaku culture in Japan is actually a product of the "Galapagos phenomenon". The "Galapagos phenomenon" is a Japanese business term that refers to the phenomenon of products that have been seeking the "optimal solution" in China and lose their interchangeability with other regions in an isolated market environment, and as a result, their survival is threatened by varieties with high adaptability and viability from foreign countries. Rather than innovating, they are more willing to repeat the "good things" in "otaku culture".
However, Mushroom believes that no matter what style of character in "Star Iron", the core is based on Chinese design, and this design direction is not "a product born based on Japanese otaku culture", but a new Chinese original otaku style, so that he can feel fresh and shocked. He feels that Chinese are not only good at making works that "adhere to traditional culture" (such as martial arts-style works), but also have styles like Mihayou that are willing to try "improvement, innovation, and combination of traditional culture", which is lacking in today's Japanese otaku culture.
But David is worried that this design policy of "you can see at a glance that it is a miHoYo character" will not make the freshness of the character weakened by the fixed design style. (FGO, on the other hand, uses a large number of artists to create different characters, and players have little to no idea what the new characters will look like.) ）
Regarding the manifestation of cultural differences between the two countries, David believes that it is necessary to separate the "mass-oriented" products from the "core home-oriented" products. If it's just a mass-oriented product, the differences between countries are indeed shrinking – but not necessarily in the core home. For example, "landmines" are still a popular fashion culture in Japan, but they are still a niche attribute in China. Similarly, the popular character Jingliu in "Star Rail" is also a character who is stuffed with Chinese aesthetics from beginning to end, but this "Chinese aesthetics" is still difficult to popularize in North America, Europe and other cultural circles. Therefore, otaku cultural products actually have a lot of "cultural barriers".
However, thanks to these still existing otaku cultural barriers, otaku works between different cultures can continue to bring different aesthetic impacts to players in different circles as they do today. Only in communication and collision can the spark of creativity burst out like a spark.
In any case, this conversation between Nasu Mushroom and David is indeed like a microcosm of the contrasting development of Chinese and Japanese otaku culture in the past ten years. China's otaku culture has made a fortune from the introduction of pure Japanese comics to now barely becoming a school of its own, while Japan's otaku culture is seeking new breakthroughs in the accumulation of a deep foundation.
Of course, in fact, at the beginning of the conversation, there is another more intriguing thing - David mentioned that in fact, he visited Xingyue with Big Viagra (the owner of miHoYo) a long time ago, and it was not the first time they talked to Mushroom. Combined with this conversation, I doubt that next, Xingyue and Mihoyou will have some ...... Unspeakable moves?