Interview: What's Next From Tecmo?

Three creators. Three games. No mercy. Kikizo takes a flying tour of Tecmo's top developers to check out Again for DS, Undead Knights for PSP and Quantum Theory for PS3.

Page: 1  2  3  4  5 

Page 4

	Keisuke Kikuchi, Tecmo producer for Quantum Theory on PlayStation 3

Kikuchi: This is also a brand new IP for Tecmo - actually it's the first shooter game Tecmo has developed. So it's not just a challenge as a new IP, but as a new genre.

Kikizo: We're a bit stumped by the name, truth be told.

Kikuchi: From the trailer, quite a few people have commented that they can't make the connection yet! It's very connected to the storyline. The majority of the gameplay will take place in the Living Tower...

Kikizo: The one they're charging towards at the beginning of the trailer?

Kikuchi: Yes. We can't go into much depth on the storyline at the moment, but there's this Tower that was built after the world was completely destroyed. The main character's purpose is to destroy it, and both characters will start from the bottom moving up. The female character has her own reasons - unravelling a mystery - for getting to the top.

At the beginning of the game these two characters don't know of each other's existence, but at a certain point they meet, and they realise they need to collaborate to destroy parts of the Tower - that's where combination attacks come into play. But in other areas there will be times when they battle each other too. They don't always get along.

The background for these characters assaulting the Tower will be displayed in flashbacks, and the flashbacks will be a combination of playable areas and event sequences. So some of the portions you play will not take place in the Living Tower, but before it was created.

I'm just going to go through some of the big features for the game, and why Tecmo is entering the shooter genre, which we're not necessarily known for. With some of our other franchises we feel we've mastered the action and fighting genres, and given that the third-person shooter genre is very popular in the overseas market, especially in the States, we thought we could bring a different angle to it. Purely from the visual presentation you might say that this is something that could be a fantasy adventure or an RPG - the art direction, the environment and the use of colour in this game is quite different from your typical shooter, a more military experience...

And the second big twist is that the landscape is constantly changing as you play. So this is not going to be the same exact place before and after... and while most of it is not controlled by you, some of the changes can be triggered by your actions, such as destroying part of a wall - something will be growing out of that next time you return. And not only is the landscape changing, but the cover points that your enemies use may also increase in number if you go back to a place after you've accomplished your mission.

So it adds a whole lot of strategy to the gameplay, and that's something that we haven't really seen done in concert with art direction. It's not just your typical Japanese publisher trying to put out a shooter game - we're trying to bring something very unique and different to the genre.

Page: 1  2  3  4  5 

NEXT PAGE >>