RPGFan: So it has been six years since Final Fantasy XV, which was the last game to use the Luminous Engine. In the end, when brought the designs into the game, they put their own original spin on them so that it felt authentic for Athia. Romania was a big one we used for more references and to get a feel of the air of cities where really old architecture still exists and what it might be like in Athia for inspiration. I know from a design perspective, our goal was to create a very new fantasy world that didn’t feel like anything else, but we did do location scouting. Raio Misuno: We didn’t base Athia on any existing civilizations or cultures. RPGFan: Were there any real-world cultures or histories that helped shape the aspects of Athia during development?
So if you add on that element of magic and fantasy to parkour, you can get even more speed or height or whatever else that really adds to that parkour experience, and that is where the initial idea came from. So, we went in and researched parkour and looked into what kind of actions you undertake in parkour and the kind of speed you get while doing it and took that into the world of Athia. Takefumi Terada: When we were initially creating Forspoken, from a story aspect, we had a modern-day female protagonist who gets transported to this magic-based fantastical world called Athia, so we started off thinking of an action that exists in our own world we could use, and parkour came to mind. RPGFan: What was the idea behind mixing parkour and magic together? They are our avatars, and they understand our world as much as we do, and her being from New York really adds to that layer of connection. It’s also great that New York is such a well-known place, because it was important with a fish out of water story for the players to have a connection to the characters. So once we had the story and the character, it was one of those things that we just felt, this is a character from New York, and it naturally gravitated toward that. We then knew we wanted to create a fish out of water story, so we wanted a character from our world and our modern times and throw her into this fantasy world. We then decided to model the character after her so that the character would be as authentic as possible. She checked off every one of the boxes in terms of that strong determination and amazing sense of humor that we wanted Frey to have, but also that soft, vulnerable side that you can see from time to time, and all the complex sides of Frey she was able to capture and portray. We started there, and once we figured all that out, we started the casting process, and we came across Ella Balinska. What are her characteristics, what is her personality, what is her favorite food, is she a dog person or a cat person, all the details that make a character what they are. When we started the design process, we started from the inside out. As far as I know, there has never been an RPG character from New York City, which begs the questions: what were some of the influences for Frey, and why New York City as her background? Also, what drew you to Ella Balinska as the voice of Frey? As a native New Yorker, I love Frey and found her to be a very cool and fun character during my time with the game.
RPGFan: So I have to start by asking about Frey. I hope you enjoy this interview with them that I kept short and sweet in hopes more people are excited to get their hands on Forspoken. I also had the privilege of speaking to and interviewing Takefumi Terada (Co-Director), Takeshi Aramaki (Head of Luminous Productions and Director), and Raio Mitsuno (Creative Producer) of the Luminous Productions development team at the event by way of an on-site translator.
Last week, thanks to the lovely people at Square Enix, I had the opportunity to get some hands-on time with Forspoken, which you can read about here.
0 kommentar(er)
