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Interview with Guilty Gear Series General Director Daisuke Ishiwatari

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
Courtesy Gearnuke. Preview:

Guilty Gear XRD Sign’s initial launch trailer has over 1.6 million views to date on YouTube. New Guilty Gear has had 1.2 million views and it’s been less than 6 months. What it’s like to experience that level of enthusiasm for the new title?
Absolutely, it was definitely surprising to see that enthusiasm, but what was more surprising than just the number of plays on the first launch trailer was the second trailer is actually over a million views. The rate at which people are engaging with this is really astonishing and all we are doing is really just staying inside our space and working really really hard to bring these to you guys. It’s definitely surprising.
Visually New Guilty Gear looks stunning, and I’ve heard lots of early conversations that it might be the best looking fighting game we’ve ever seen. I know Sakamura-san is the Art Director on this title as well as XRD. What type of conversations did you have about the look of the game because it looks different, yet still Guilty Gear?
First, I want to start by saying that we work really closely of course and right now how we are arranged in the office is that he sits directly in front of me so it’s not so much meetings or let’s go book a conference room, as much as lets have a you know “Hey, how is that thing going?” So it’s a really very type of, casual interaction that we can have with each other. With XRD we were very careful to make 3D look as 2D as possible. So A lot of our reference material and things we would be comparing it against would be just animation, 2d animation, anime that type of thing. Whereas with the New Guilty Gear, we are very conscious to use movies as a reference. We want to respect the 3D and make sure it does have that 3D-ness to it. So we’ve been looking at a lot of movies as opposed to anime.

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Lots more at the link. Daisuke talks about wall-breaks, the changes to the gatling system, and this quote about the concerns over Guilty Gear Strife's possible simplification:

The simplification of fighting games I think isn’t necessarily when people are watching people play to engage with them to make sure they are having fun. That doesn’t mean to say complex games aren’t fun. I think there are definitely complex game mechanics that if you get into it can be really engaging and fun. But I think where it stops being fun is where you don’t have people around you that are the same level as you. So one thing we are really conscious of right now is how do we fill that gap, bridge that to make sure there is still an element of fun even though the skill level might be kind of different.
 

Sp3eD

0G M3mbeR
Make strive like x2 and I will be super happy with the gameplay. It looks thats the direction he is going.
 
I'm struggling to parse the first sentence of that final quote. And just when I think I kind of understand what it's saying, the second sentence makes me think again.

Anyway, I think the interview with Ars Technica is a good supplement and at least the entire interview is written in a way that I can understand without wracking my brain. I'll post scattered thoughts and comments later on if you don't mind.

 
I wonder if Xrd's sales were good enough to justify the roughly "6 months of work" per character from the perspective of Arcsys.

I'm assuming that even after the semi-reboot of Xrd, they still weren't gaining enough of a playerbase.

XXAC+ was like the grand culmination of adding more and more systems/mechanics with each successive iteration when even in XX it was quite overwhelming as is.

Which is perhaps why they've decided to reboot it one more time and keep it even leaner than Xrd, cause I think Arcsys wants GG to be their version of SF; the hallmark fighter of the company.

And they can't have that when the sheer number of things to learn is (hypothetically) keeping people away.

With regards to how Ishiwatari felt about seeing 3S, I share a similar feeling when I first saw XX in the arcades all those years ago; simply couldn't believe what I was seeing on screen.
 

Final sentence in the article reminds me of what Yoshinori Ono said with regards to SFV: resetting the playing field because of the gap between the strong and average players mostly crystallizing.

Also, glad that Ishiwatari talked about what I've come to think is plaguing all of gaming: diminishing returns.

Consumer expectations of what a 60USD game should look and sound like has resulted in ridiculous workloads and expenses, resulting in a need to sell more copies just to break even.

I think for games that require lots of iterative work to get the systems, mechanics and balance sorted out, this is a particularly tough situation. Yup, I'm thinking specifically of fighting games in this case.

The indie scene does a great job of filling out the price range and graphical styles that AAA would hardly touch but to expect anything close to an Xrd (even just gameplay-wise) out of the indie space is practically dreaming. If they can pull off the gameplay side, then production values are most likely to suffer.

Best indie FG I can think of is Skullgirls and that still took lots of effort, time and experience.

Wanted to list Under Night with it but whilst French Bread is effectively indie, the price of their game wasn't for a long time.

Let me put it this way: people willing to fork out 60USD for a fighting game are mostly hardcore FG fans who think of gameplay first whilst the actual casual buyers (that devs need for a profit to stay in business) are going to be turned off by the price.
 
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An aside, but the OST for GG XX #Reload is absolutely incredible. Ishiwatari made some kickass music.

Interesting that you specifically named GGXXR because that is the one version where they had a Korean band (N.E.X.T.) compose the OST.

I vividly remember Ky's Korean theme called "Pillars of the Underworld" cause it was used in some combo video more than a decade ago and I thought it sounded melodic but decidedly different in terms of tone and vibe from Ishiwatari.

But yes, Ishiwatari's compositions were great and IMO fully realized in GGX Heavy Tracks as well as the XX arrangements. Not a fan of the cheesier stuff I've heard from Strive, mostly because of the lyrics. (Unsure if it's even him composing this time round.)

His work in Blazblue is equally good but has more complex arrangements which might have made them less accessible and memorable from a melodic standpoint. I read comments from people who prefer GG music because it's "memorable" and "catchy".
 
Interesting that you specifically named GGXXR because that is the one version where they had a Korean band (N.E.X.T.) compose the OST.

I vividly remember Ky's Korean theme called "Pillars of the Underworld" cause it was used in some combo video more than a decade ago and I thought it sounded melodic but decidedly different in terms of tone and vibe from Ishiwatari.

But yes, Ishiwatari's compositions were great and IMO fully realized in GGX Heavy Tracks as well as the XX arrangements. Not a fan of the cheesier stuff I've heard from Strive, mostly because of the lyrics. (Unsure if it's even him composing this time round.)

His work in Blazblue is equally good but has more complex arrangements which might have made them less accessible and memorable from a melodic standpoint. I read comments from people who prefer GG music because it's "memorable" and "catchy".

To be perfectly accurate, while it is true that N.E.X.T. composed an OST, that was for the Korean localized version--Ishiwatari made the OST for the JP version (I'm fond of "Keep Yourself Alive II" (Sol) and "Liquor Bar & Drunkard" (Johnny) personally), and then NEXT created a brand new separate OST for the Korean version. Both are incredible, mind you.

Fun little aside: the lead vocal of NEXT, Hae-Chul Shin (may he rest in peace, a legendary rock vocalist in Korean music history), served as the Korean voice actor for Testament in addition to creating the OST.

I mentioned XX because it was when I first encountered Guilty Gear, and I had the music on my CD player for basically all of my high school years lol.
 
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