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Anime Expo 2024: Falcom President Toshihiro Kondo Talks With Anime Herald
🕑 Added 2024-07-19 02:59:44 +0000 UTCNote: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this will debut on the main Anime Herald site on July 20. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Date: 7/5/2024
Location: Anime Expo 2024
Interviewer: Seth Burn
Editor: Samantha Ferreira
Anime Herald: What was the idea for Ys X: Nordics? What did you want players to feel or experience?
Toshihiro Kondo: For the Ys series, I want every different game to be a different experience. For some recent examples, Ys VIII (Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana) was a dual protagonist system: Adol, Dana . The story is greatly related to both. In the case of Ys IX (Ys IX: Monstrum Nox), the characters can transform into Monstrum, and these Monstrum all have special abilities. For Ys X (Ys X: Nordics), the combat focuses on Adol and Karja, and their combat together.
To talk about it on the developmental side, from Ys VII through Ys IX, it was the party system. One thing we felt when we were developing those games, “What if the player wasn’t actually using the other three or four other characters that you get over the course of the game? What if they were sticking to the initial three characters? All of those development resources that went into developing all of these other different characters that the player could potentially play as?” If that’s being ignored, then that’s a shame.
What if we instead took our limited resources, rather than develop all of these characters a player may or may not use, let’s put all of that energy into developing these characters. All of the animations. All of the skills. All of the motions. All of these little intricate things we can do by focusing that effort on just these two characters, rather than a party.
Ys X: Nordics
Anime Herald: That’s what happens when you have an accountant in charge of the game. (Laughs)
Toshihiro Kondo: (Laughs) It’s a really logical way of thinking, right?
Anime Herald: Yes. But what you’ve described to me is the mechanics of the game. Not necessarily how you want a player to feel when playing the game. Is that something you want to leave up to the players, or do you have a feeling in mind? Let me give an example. Hidetaka Miyazaki and FromSoft (Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne), want you to experience fear, terror, and the triumph of victory if you overcome an obstacle. This seems to be more about exploration and storytelling. What are you looking for from the Ys series?
Toshihiro Kondo: Exploration and adventuring are part and parcel to the series from the beginning. That’s part of everything. But one thing that has been in the series’ DNA from the beginning is that someone who is brand new can pick it up and have a fun experience, and by the same token, someone who has played tons of these games and is really good can have a satisfying experience as well. One thing we focused on for Ys X is to make it so that players of any skill level can jump in and have a good time and have that satisfying gameplay experience.
Anime Herald: In the most recent Trails game (Trails Through Daybreak), you had a lot of control over the difficulty. Will that be the same with Ys X?
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes. I would probably put the higher levels of difficulty in Ys above the higher level of difficulty in the Trails series. We have plenty of players who want that higher level of difficulty and challenge. The different levels of difficulty have been prepared for players to enjoy. If you want to focus on an easy experience with the story, knock yourself out. If you want a challenge, put it on nightmare.
Anime Herald: Will there be hidden bosses/postgame content?
Toshihiro Kondo: There are secret bosses. As you explore the world via the boat, there are areas you can go to. There’s one particular place with a boss like that. You mentioned Mr. Miyazaki and the Souls series. The level of the difficulty of this boss is like that. I’m pretty sure that a beginner, regardless of the difficulty level, will not be able to beat this boss.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
Anime Herald: You’ve played the Final Fantasy series and the Dragon Quest series. In those games, at some point you get a vehicle. You can travel around the world and go to areas where the enemies are well above your power level. Danger. That’s one of the things I loved about those games. I don’t think there’s much of that in the Trails series, but it looks like in the Ys series you’ll have freedom of movement and go to areas well above you. That’s something I love. Do you share that feeling as well?
Toshihiro Kondo: This isn’t what I would call a “full open world.” Within the areas that you visit sequentially, there are places within those that you can go to that you’ll have more difficult enemies.
It’s pretty much exactly as you talked about. One of the things we discussed when we were beginning to develop the game was that feeling in older RPGs of exploration. Getting a ship. Getting an airship. Moving around the world. A specific thing I remember from my childhood is playing Dragon Quest II. I remember being so happy when I got the ship. I remember seeing a little island in the game. Even though you had to go through a lot of difficult fights, reaching that island gave such a sense of triumph. Like I had done something cool.
Anime Herald: I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Toshihiro Kondo: I wanted to revive that in Ys X. I feel like a lot of JRPGs right now are very linear experiences. You don’t have a lot of chances to go off the beaten path that the developers have provided for you. This game is an attempt to bring back that older style of the fun and the joy of exploration.
Anime Herald: That’s what I loved about RPGs. Are you familiar with the Ultima series?
Toshihiro Kondo: Of course! The people who made Ultima used to work at Falcom, before I joined the company.
(Editor’s note: Yep, that’s Richard Garriott with Masayuki Kato. I had no idea about this when I asked the question. Here’s a link with more info about the photo.)
Toshihiro Kondo: They still have the sleeping chairs in the company.
Anime Herald: One thing I remember from the Ultima series is there was an island with very tough enemies. On that island, there was a chest ten paces in. So, you’d have to survive ten paces in, and ten paces back out to the ship. It was the biggest risk/reward you could imagine.
Toshihiro Kondo: I absolutely love stuff like that. Dragon Quest 1 & 2 had exactly what you’re talking about.
Anime Herald: I love Dragon Quest as well. Let’s talk about the differences between Ys X and Ys VII, VIII, and IX. Are there any things you felt you could improve upon from them that you’ve done so here?
Toshihiro Kondo: For VII, VIII, and IX, I feel we accomplished what we set out to accomplish. I am satisfied with how they turned out. For X, we wanted to know what we could do differently. For the party system of combat, if we were to continue with it, it eventually would become a dead end. We went back to our roots and thought about what we could do to make it different and more exciting. To differentiate it from what came before and still offer the player a satisfying experience.
What we came up with was, instead of the party system, having Adol and Karja be the only playable characters, focusing all of our energies into them, and creating the combo system.
Moving over to the story side, I was the scenario writer for this game. One of the big differences for this from a narrative perspective, in contrast with the party system, with up to six characters, with their backstories and everything, you only have two characters. All the focus is on those characters. It’s very important that the player likes those characters, and enjoys the experience they have with them. As the player plays through the game, and experiences what these two characters go through, when they reach the end we want them to have a deep sense of satisfaction with the story they experience.
How deeply you get invested in the characters changes too depending on whether you have a party system, or just these two characters. If you have multiple characters in a party system, your feelings will be spread out across multiple, whereas with two characters the closeness and sense of intimacy is much different.
Ys X: Nordics
Anime Herald: Does this suggest that you want to stick with fewer characters going forward?
Toshihiro Kondo: We haven’t made any definitive declarations internally about what we’re going to do going forward. We do feel that there’s more room to explore a much smaller party in terms of narrative. That’s something we want to explore going forward because there’s more to be done in that space in terms of having a small cast.
In Japan, there was a lot of feedback from Japanese players asking us to keep doing this. They liked the two-person party system. Now, we need to release the game in the West and get feedback from Western players and see what they say. We’ll think about that and go from there.
Anime Herald: How often do you find the feedback from Japan is similar to the feedback from the West? How often do they differ?
Toshihiro Kondo: Surprisingly, we get the same type of feedback from Japan and the West.
Anime Herald: Interesting.
Anime Herald: Do you ever get feedback from Japan and the West and you go “Yeah, they were right”?
Toshihiro Kondo: Even if the players give us negative feedback, we can’t fault them for that. We can’t say that they’re wrong, because at the end of the day, we’re making the games for the players. The players’ opinions and their reactions to the games is everything. In situations like that, all we can do is say “Maybe we didn’t have enough time or budget to create the type of thing that you wanted.”
The games are being made for the players. They are what’s most important.
Anime Herald: Are there any times where you’ve received feedback from the players that has influenced your design choices for a future game?
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes. A great example from the Trails series where we took player feedback regarding characters. We listen to that very closely. If there are particular characters, whether they are party characters or NPCs, if the fanbase really likes a particular character, we’ll give that character more of the spotlight in a future title. More of a close-up.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
Anime Herald: Can you give a specific example where this has happened?
Toshihiro Kondo: There are examples in future titles I can’t talk about right now because they would be spoilers. For the most recent title, Trails Through Daybreak, Shizuna has limited screen time and limited play-ability. Let’s just say, in future installments she gets more of the spotlight due to fan feedback and fan reaction.
To give an even older example, if we go back to the Trails in the Sky games, there’s a bracer named Anelace. She has a yellow ribbon in her hair and likes cute stuff. She wasn’t playable in the first game. Players really liked her so in the second game, she’s with Estelle in the bracers guild.
Anime Herald: Before we switch over to Trails questions, is there anything else you’d like to share about Ys?
Toshihiro Kondo: Ys is a series that allows us as developers to continually challenge and remake ourselves through each game. In contrast, because the Trails series is based on storytelling, there are things we have to adhere to as we make them. It has certain traditions that we have to maintain. For Ys, we can constantly reinvent ourselves. For Ys VIII, we have the dual protagonist system. For Ys IX, we have the whole party available from the beginning, and they can turn into Monstrum, and they explore the city. For Ys X, we have the combo system. Each game is a completely new experience for the players.
Anime Herald: Roughly how many hours into the game do you have freedom of movement with the ship?
Toshihiro Kondo: Between 30% to 40% into the game. Closer to 30%
Anime Herald: Altogether, how many hours do you think it will take an average player to complete the game?
Toshihiro Kondo: If someone is rushing, it will probably take around 40 hours. If someone is taking their time and doing all the bonus content, it will take between 60 to 80 hours.
Ys X: Nordics
Anime Herald: Switching over to the Trails series, how do you feel about difficulty spikes in games? Is that something that bothers you, or something you like to throw at players, or are you neutral on them?
Toshihiro Kondo: I don’t like or dislike them. There are good things and bad things about them. One thing you have to be careful about is that if you make an area instantly too difficult, that will irritate the player. It’s generally good to have an area that contains stronger enemies, so that when the player reaches a new area, they are mentally prepared for what’s to come. One thing we do in the Ys series to mentally prepare players for bosses is that, usually in the room before the boss, no music will play. You walk in, and it’s just the sound of the character’s footsteps. That’s the warning that there’s something coming, “I need to get ready.” Preparing the player for what’s coming next is an important part of game design.
Anime Herald: There’s a specific reason I asked this question. In Trails Through Daybreak, when you’re fighting (names redacted to avoid spoilers), there was a noticeable difficulty spike. It was the hardest battle in the game, by far. Was that intentional? Or was that an accident?
Toshihiro Kondo: I didn’t personally design that battle, so I can’t comment directly on it. What I think is that the designer wanted the players to experience totally getting wiped out once. It’s a callback to things that have come before. A lot of early Atlus games had bosses that could one-shot you in an early turn.
Even within Trails, you’ll occasionally run into a boss that could completely wipe you and you’ll go, “Wait, what? What just happened?” I think it’s a callback to that because it’s a fun thing to do, to have the player experience getting completely one-shotted by the boss.
On the flip side, narratively it’s important to show that characters who are strong in the game world, are also strong via combat. Loewe is another example. Whenever his character is mentioned, they talk about how strong he is. It was important to show how strong he was (in combat). But, if you make the character too strong, players can’t beat him, and they can’t proceed, so what’s the point? We thought we had a good balance and released the game. Players complained he was too weak.
We went back and did a patch. But back then, patches weren’t distributed digitally. We had to print new discs and send them out. When players received the discs, they complained that we had released an incomplete game. That wasn’t the case. It was simply to make this boss fight more appropriate to match the players expectations.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
Anime Herald: (Laughs) I apologize, but that’s one of the funniest video game stories I’ve ever heard.
Toshihiro Kondo: At that time, there was kind of a mandate that we couldn’t patch games. The bosses didn’t want us to. Sometimes we wanted to patch games, but couldn’t because the reaction from the players would be “This game is incomplete. You wouldn’t be releasing this patch if there wasn’t a problem.”
Anime Herald: I’ve done some programming. From my perspective a patch doesn’t mean something was incomplete. It means something was broken. Anything can be broken. You can’t test everything. So, we fixed it. What makes me laugh is that the thing we are fixing is “This boss brought shame upon our company.”
Toshihiro Kondo: Honestly, in this case Loewe being so weak might make the game be considered broken.
Anime Herald: Sometimes, an enemy you’ll fight against will then join your team. When you fight against them, they have 30,000 HP. When they join you they have 600 HP. I understand why this happens, but does this give you pause in terms of game design?
Toshihiro Kondo: (Laughs) From a game design perspective, it’s a necessary evil. But on the flip side, for the player, it’s really unreasonable. In Shonen Jump comics they’ll have that situation where a former enemy will join the protagonist and they’ll comment, “Wait a minute. You were way stronger when we were fighting you. Now that you’ve joined us, you don’t seem as strong.”
Anime Herald: I’ve quit steroids. I’m clean now. (Laughs)
There is one exception to this. Thunder God. Cid from Final Fantasy Tactics. After he joins you, he can solo entire maps.
Toshihiro Kondo: I remember. That’s one of the good things about SRPGs. Often when one of the strong characters joins you, they remain strong.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II
Anime Herald: You’ll be announcing a new game in a few days.
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes. Trails through Daybreak II. It’s the direct sequel to Trails through Daybreak. The interesting thing about it is that, in contrast to Daybreak I, where Van collects different party members and mentors them, now they’ve spent a lot of time together and have grown as people.
In Daybreak II, we get to see their growth and how they can support Van rather than the opposite way around. Aside from that, we get to meet a new character who is another Grendel, like Van. The team felt that having a rival Grendel to van would be really cool. In terms of the story, in Daybreak I, the scenario writer led and directed everything. In Daybreak II, almost everyone on the team contributed something to make this game what it is and bring it to life.
Anime Herald: What is the Falcom office culture like?
Toshihiro Kondo: It’s difficult to put it into a phrase or a word. One thing the company founder said to me way back in the day was, “You don’t have to do what you don’t want to do.” The reason he said that is, generally speaking, when someone has to do something they don’t want to do, there’s this feeling that they’re being forced to do it and that comes out in the end product. Everybody that’s gathered at Falcom is there because they want to be there, and they enjoy working on what they want to work on. The result of having that mindset is that rather than feeling like they are being forced to make a game, they’re actually making the game because they want to.
If you are in a position where you are being forced to do something, neither side is happy. The employee feels like they are being forced to do it because “the market data says this is what will sell, you have to do it.” There’s no passion behind it. You’re not interested. On the flip side, the people who are managing it are constantly having to scold the staff, so they’re not happy either. It’s much better to have a system where people are happy and invested in what they’re doing. That allows them to create the games they want to create and it shows up in the final product.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II
Anime Herald: That is a wonderful answer, but it’s also a great change from the company used to be when you had one week to write a scenario.
Toshihiro Kondo: That was something I wanted to do. I saw it as an opportunity. A chance for me. Yes, I was told I had a week to do it, but I had an economics background. I didn’t think I had the necessary skills to build a game or work on game development. This was an opportunity for me to learn how to do these things. I took this time to learn how to write stories and scripts. I believe that Mr. (Masayuki) Kato could see that I had this ability, I just needed an opportunity to perform. It ended up being something that I used as a stepping stone to do what I wanted to do, which was make games.
Anime Herald: In America we have the expression “sink or swim.” I don’t know if Japanese has such an expression, but that was the situation you were placed in.
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes, Japanese has such an expression. It translates into “you have to do it.” A slight correction is that I was given two weeks, and that I did it in two weeks.
(Editor’s note: It appears that the initial request gave him one week, but in practice he had two weeks.)
Toshihiro Kondo: The thing is, you don’t have to do what you don’t want to do, but if you want to do this, then you have to prove it. I wasn’t in a situation where the management was constantly checking on me or giving me directions. It was all self-motivated and self-driven. “This is clearly what you want to do, so do it.” I was able to rise to the situation and perform.
On the flip side, if someone was in a situation where they said, “I want to do this, let me do it” and then they couldn’t do it, well yeah, then there’s trouble. But if you want to do something, go do it. That’s where I found myself, and I did it.
Anime Herald: Would you say that’s an accurate description of the company’s culture?
Toshihiro Kondo: Yes. You could absolutely say it’s still the company culture. To give an example, on Ys X, there are a lot of cut-in animations during battle. That’s something the staff wanted to do. They did it not under my guidance or instruction. They decided they were going to do it, they implemented it, and when I had a chance to check it, I didn’t say anything to them. I didn’t say “no, you can’t do this.” I was like “OK, it looks great, it looks good.”
The only time I would say something is if I thought it would affect sales, in which case it might get cut. Other than that, the staff is free to do what they want. If it works, it’s in the game.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
Anime Herald: Before we switch over to the next topic, is there anything else you’d like to say about the Trails series?
Toshihiro Kondo: For Trails, Daybreak falls on the 20th anniversary of the series. Up until now there have been many mysteries that have been hinted at throughout the course of the series. Daybreak I marks the start of what will ultimately be the series’ climax of the overall narrative. This is when things will come together on the broad narrative scale. I really hope that players will pay attention to that specifically, and enjoy what we’ve prepared for them as we move into the endgame of the trails series.
It also represents a new starting point for the series in terms of location. This takes place in Calvard, which is a place we hadn’t visited yet in the series. For players who have been interested in the series and were looking for a good place to jump in, this is a good starting point.
Anime Herald: The Trails series is known for people asking where they should start.
Toshihiro Kondo: Start with Daybreak. No problem.
Anime Herald: Are you more of a Bracer or more of a Spriggan?
Toshihiro Kondo: Spriggan. I have a bit of a dark side.
Anime Herald: You were at Anime Expo in 2019. How would you say you and Falcom have evolved over the past five years?
Toshihiro Kondo: Within these five years, a lot of staff who had recently joined at the time, have made their bones within the company. They’ve come up to a high level of contributing to the development team. The vast majority of the people who originally worked on the Trails in the Sky games twenty years ago are still there, but we’ve had plenty of new blood come in as well. Particularly with Daybreak. We’ve had a lot of new people come in and contribute.
Because we have two main series within Falcom (Ys and Trails), there have been a lot of voices in the company saying they’d like to do something new. I’ve allowed them to let their creative impulses run free. We’re working on other projects outside of these two series. As a company, we’re continuing on the tradition, and forging new paths as well.
(Editor’s note: At Anime Expo, Mr. Kondo mentioned that Falcom is working on something that might be considered a remake.)
Anime Herald: Do we have a rough timeline of when we might see something new from Falcom?
Toshihiro Kondo: Within the next few years.
I believe that anyone who plays Ys X and (Trails through) Daybreak will feel something different. There’s something different about these games. I feel that’s directly because of the new staff members, who have learned over the years how to contribute. As time goes on, those staff members will contribute those ideas into the new projects. That will become evident as these games get released into the wild. You’ll see how much they have changed the company.
Ys X: Nordics
Anime Herald: What are your goals for Anime Expo?
Toshihiro Kondo: Definitely meeting the fans. It’s been five years since I’ve come. There was COVID. This is finally a chance to come over and meet Western fans and hear what they have to say. They’ve probably spent a lot of time during the pandemic playing the games. This is an opportunity to listen to them, receive their feedback, and take it back with me to Japan.
Anime Herald: Do you have any questions for us?
Toshihiro Kondo: From my perspective, the Japanese game industry is not in a very good place. But, as a Japanese developer, all I can see is what is around me. As someone outside of the Japanese development scene, do you see any issues or potential problems within Japanese game development, and if so, what are they?
Anime Herald: Follow-up question, how honest do you want me to be?
Toshihiro Kondo: (Laughs) Very.
Anime Herald: Okay…
There is no word I hate more in the industry than “Freemium.” These are phone games that have made so much money that they make me angry. You must have them in Japan, we have them here in America. I hate the business model. They are pure Skinner Box manipulation. They basically hack your brains. You get addicted to them.
Because there is only so much disposable income that can be spent on video games, money that used to be spent on console games, or computer games, or arcade games, is now spent on phone games. The spending itself has remained fairly stagnant, but now a larger portion of it is now no longer going to console games.
(Editor’s note: I could go off on an enormous tangent here, but I’ll try to keep it short. First, please read this article by Matthew Ball. It puts all the relevant financial and economic data in one place. For simplicity, I will also put one key graph here:
Second, the most recent “freemium success story” is Monopoly Go. Monopoly Go has spent $500M on marketing, and earned over $2B in revenue in just ten months. For comparison’s sake, the development cost of a modern AAA game is around $200M to $225M.
Instead of trying to explain the allure of Monopoly Go, let me suggest you check out this video which deservedly shreds it. This is the enemy we face. If you look at a list of the most successful video games of all time, we see Space Invaders, Pac Man, Street Fighter II, and then things start to get hairy. Candy Crush Saga still makes over $1M per day. But I digress.)
Anime Herald: Putting on my accounting hat, accounting for inflation, the industry has been shrinking. And now there’s another mouth to feed, phone games.
Toshihiro Kondo: When a person dies, they’ll think “I’m glad I made that game,” or “I’m glad I played that game.” It won’t be a freemium gacha game.
Anime Herald: That’s a good line. There’s a long history of video games, so I’ll try to condense it. Pong was the first video game that became popular. There were tons of versions of it. And then came Space Invaders, and then Pac-Man. Later, we got Street Fighter II. They were wildly successful because they created new experiences for the players. The arcade was the medium, and then they came home. Street Fighter II at home was an amazing thing.
(Editor’s note: If you’re curious about the history of video games, this video is astoundingly good. It’s six hours, and none of it is wasted. Also, if you’re more specifically interested in the history of RPG’s, I’d highly recommend this video.)
Street Fighter II cannot be replicated on your phone. If the home video game market is going to keep growing and evolving, it has to create new experiences that you can’t get from your phone. There has to be a reason for you to be playing those games at home.
In my mind the most successful modern video game system is the Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo Switch succeeds in multiple ways. You can use it as a tablet. It is easily accessible. You can play on it during a commute. You can also play it on the big screen at home. It can give you whatever you want. It is not the most powerful system, but it is the most convenient system. Video games are about fun. They’re about the experience. The harder you have to work to play a video game, the more friction there is.
Phone games are very fast. They are much easier on the attention span. I think video games have to compete with phone games. They are very fast, but video games have controllers. They have larger screens. Force the battle onto the ground where video games have the advantage.
Toshihiro Kondo: I agree with you. That’s what Falcom is trying to do. Whether it be through new gameplay experiences, or the stories we tell in our games, this is what we strive for when we create the games. If we’re not living up to that goal, that’s a skill issue on our end. The end goal is to provide the player a unique experience that only we can provide. I completely agree on your diagnosis of the ill, and how to remedy it. To provide an experience that only we as Falcom can provide.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
Anime Herald: We’re on the same page so far. Now for part II. In America we have an expression, “eating your seed corn.” Perhaps it applies more to the animation industry than the video game industry. I find that there are a lot of veterans, but they have not done a great job of training the next generation. We have to get the episode out this week, over and over. They haven’t taken the time to slow down and explain how and why they’re doing everything. I don’t know enough about the Japanese video game industry to say if it has the same ill the Japanese animation industry has.
Toshihiro Kondo: You could say the Japanese game industry has the same issue. The reason is that game development costs are ballooning. They are bigger than ever. Projects can’t afford to fail. So, in situations like that, you can’t leave really important parts of development to the younger staff. They don’t get a chance to perform those roles, so they don’t learn how to do them. Think about the famous game creators, directors, that you know. Most of them are in their 40’s or 50’s.
Anime Herald: Or their 60s or 70s.
Toshihiro Kondo: Yeah. How many people in their 20s or 30s do you think of? The direct cause is the ballooning costs. We don’t give these people the experiences they need to become great game creators, directors, or producers. So yes, the same problem does exist.
Anime Herald: You brought up an interesting point: the ballooning costs. I wonder, what is your favorite era of video games?
Toshihiro Kondo: The Nintendo, original Famicom, era. Because before then, video games usually meant blowing something up, or hitting something. Whereas with Dragon Quest, that was an example where the player could become invested because there was a story to follow, characters to follow. Final Fantasy, particularly Final Fantasy III, the player had this feedback of raising your characters and watching them grow.
That was something you couldn’t get from film. You watch, and the story happens. You’re involved in the story when you’re playing video games. During that Famicom era, even though the graphics were so simple, where the sprites would just change direction, they had the power to make you cry, because the stories were so moving. Obviously in that time, because the graphics weren’t very advanced, our imaginations had to do a lot of the heavy lifting for how those stories played out. But the truth is, our imaginations did do the heavy lifting, so it created these experiences that were unlike anything that had come before. That was wonderful. I really loved it.
Anime Herald: That’s a great point. And you can still make those games. Our computers, our video game systems, can all play them. It’s a question of: Do we think the market would accept them? To me, the answer is 2D still works, so long as the graphics are appealing.
(Editor’s note: If they were to release a new 2D Dragon Quest, I would buy it day 1. I hope the remakes of Dragon Quest I, II, and III sell very well.)
Ys X: Nordics
Are you familiar with Hollow Knight?
Toshihiro Kondo: I think 2D games can still be done, but I am not familiar with Hollow Knight specifically.
Anime Herald: That’s fine. It’s just the idea that a 2D side scrolling game, or a 2D RPG can still be done. I like the NES era. I think I prefer the SNES era. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The development costs of 2D are so much cheaper that independent studios can release games for Steam or for the Nintendo Switch. Ys X is an expensive game to make.
I wonder if there’s room in the future for cheaper projects. For Steam, for the Nintendo Switch, and Switch 2. Perhaps PlayStation, as well. Games with much lower development costs, but stories that are just as grand. Games you can take a gamble on, because if they fail, you didn’t lose everything.
Toshihiro Kondo: Yeah, definitely. The things you are talking about are best represented in indie creators and developers. They’re forced to work in situations where they have a limited budget. With necessity being the mother of invention, they have to work in the limited realm that they have.
For Falcom, there’s things we can do to re-educate the players about the joy of a good story, and a world you can sink yourself into.
Anime Herald: My fear is that if any game fails… we’ve seen so many studio closures, even after games that we thought were critical successes. They just didn’t make enough money. I fear for that for any video game studio going forward.
Toshihiro Kondo: To put a cap on it, and hopefully in a positive vein, I really do feel that Falcom is hopefully living up to the dream that you have for things. You praised Ys X for costing a lot of money, but it’s probably a tenth of the cost of an AAA game. Pointing specifically to the Trails series. This is the 20th anniversary. There have been thirteen games in a twenty-year time span.
If you looked at a AAA studio, maybe they’d get 3-5 games out in that time period. Rather than spending a lot of money to make a game, use the knowledge you’ve accumulated to make games that resonate with people. I believe that’s why we’ve been able to survive in this difficult market. We make games provide experiences beyond just flashy graphics that people want to play.
Anime Herald: With a reasonable budget. Well done.
Postscript
We were also able to briefly speak with NIS America President Takuro Yamashita.
Anime Herald: Is there anything you’d like to add?
Takuro Yamashita: Would you like to know about NIS America’s corporate culture?
Anime Herald: Yes.
Takuro Yamashita: I can say it in one sentence: “Big fish in a small pond.” We cannot compete with Bandai Namco, Sega, Square Enix. We focus on niche titles. So that’s why I say we try to become the biggest fish in a small pond. That’s why we focus on products from Falcom. We stay away from phone games. Monetizing all the content. We focus on the old-school ways. Just like you.
Ys X: Nordics
(Editor’s note: Mr. Yamashita had the exact same smile. It’s good to be a big fish in a small pond.)
Anime Herald: Thank you very much.
