Key Person Interview (EP3) Translation Request

[Altiea]

Something of a cross-post from my other thread, the Materials Collection contains a very lengthy interview with some of the minds behind the game, which would be Satoshi Sakai, Yuya Kimura, Akikazu Mizuno, and Ryohei Uno. I thought it would be an interesting read, but, being unable to read most of it, I think I'm missing out on a lot of commentary, and Google Translate doesn't help that much with these long paragraphs. So if anyone would like to translate it for all of us, I would greatly appreciate it!

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[Saffran]

[spoiler-box]

The story quests that people came to like

Q: Can you start by telling us how you feel now that you're done with episode 3? (EP3 hereafter)

Uno: You say "done with EP3" but quite frankly, I feel like we're not done yet. We got to explain a number of things about Matoi and Dark Falz. We had to finish things up before EP4, so... I guess it's good that we could reach a certain plateau in the story.
Kimura: It was planned in four parts, originally.
Uno: Yes, when I first showed the story to the team, it had four phases.
Kimura: In the end we only made three parts, but we could include all the contents in them.
Uno: That much is true. The parts of the story pertaining to the events of ten years ago (Quest 2-6) were supposed to be EP3, in the early drafts.

Q: So what we see in 2-6 was supposed to be EP3?

Uno: Yes, it was supposed to include all that happens ten years ago, with more details. But then, we had a lot of debates, and in the end, it came out like this. But as far as the story I had in mind is concerned, I could tell what I had to tell up to that point.

Q: So... up to EP3, what's the part you achieved the best?
Uno: That would be 2-6. We could really structure the scenario of the 2nd generation Matoi particularly well. We managed to call back to hints given in the very first chapter (Calls from the past) which was our intent all along, so that was good. It came out so well because the team for the story events, Mr Kimura and myself all were on the same page as to what we had to do. It doesn't mean the other quests were bad, I just have a soft spot for that quest, I personaly think it came out great. Plus, 2-6 is called "The reason I was born" and we could finish the story with 3-7 being called "The reason you were born", which is very satisfactory to me.

Q: Which reminds me, those quest names are written all in hiragana in some parts, but have some kanji in other occurences. Why is that? Any hidden meaning?
Uno: Well, that was because of... a problem of text limitations, actually.
Q: Whaaat ?
Uno: In the menu of the Quest Counter, we only have room for 10 letters. So if we wrote the name in hiragana, it would make a 1 letter text overflow. Which is why we need to write it with kanjis in menus and whatnots. But when the story name is called up on screen in the quests themselves, we made it all hiragana. It's not just to be rebellous or anything.
Kimura: We still get bug reports for this, you know? "The text is not the same for the story name, is that OK?"
Uno: We had no choice !

Q: There's a side-story to EP2 revolving around Melfonsina. All the little scenes revolving around specific NPCs are actually interesting. It leaves you wanting for even more of those.
Uno: If I had unlimited amounts of time to my disposal, I'd write a ton more.
Kimura: The side-story of EP3 revolves around Aurora, but it wasn't planned, originally.
Uno: We had already a concept and settings for the Photoners, so we thought, hey, might as well cram a few things in there while we're at it. Hints that will pertain to EP4 and beyond.
Kimura: The rest was a matter of choosing from what we already had. Some planets were still not decided, so for Harukotan, we had to add it all to the mix, but we got around to doing all we had planned for the events leading to the Profound Darkness. In our former series, like PSU for instance, you start with the offline portion of the story, all flashy and impressive, and as you got to the point where the story went online, we then kept the scenes rather simple.
Q: Well, you kinda *need* to have the players included in the story events, right?
Kimura: That, too. As we rolled out the story parallel to the game updates, we had to cut some tidbits. In PSO2, we made the story into small cutscenes, so we knew we could pull it off at least until the release of the PSVita version, but I wasn't confident we could still be doing that 2 or 3 years down the road. I was afraid that the end of the story would be a novel.
Mizuno: What, like a sound novel or something?
Kimura: Yeah, we could totally have done it that way. So we started in EP1 and waited for the reception, what the players would say about the format, etc, and we used their critics to make it better in EP2 and EP3. That's where the story went strong, and users liked it better. The cutscene events themselves were better, we got a lot of reactions from some parts where we had put a lot of efforts. But that means the team for those events had to put more work in...
Sakai: Yeah, the budget kept rising and rising. How often do you need to redo those motion captures, anyway?
Mizuno: Some days I'd think "Wow, Kimura is missing work today as well?" but in reality you were in the motion capture studio...
Kimura: Well, I started to be adamant about some things. Because I had finally gotten the hang of it. And when the cutscenes are good, the players are happy and they will make sure you know it. There's return on investment to consider, of course, but if you do a good job, the users will support you all the more, so I wanted to do things right.

Q: I guess it's difficult to know where to spend the budget when the game is free?
Sakai: That *is* true.
Kimura: There's the money, but for me, there also was the time I'd spend on it. I was a Main Director on EP1, so I had to check everything. Not only the story and the lore, I had to look at the combat, the quests, the items, the UI (User Interface), etc, so there was only so much time that I could dedicate to create the story cutscenes. But then near the end of EP1 and from EP2 onwards, we had Nakamura and Suganuma promoted to Directors, so they checked a lot of it, and I could look into details to the way the story events were made. It allotted me more time to think about how to tie the story and the contents, or to ponder what changes I wanted to include in the updates. I think it all led to an overall better quality.
[/spoiler-box]

Let's try this...

[Altiea]

Thank you so much!

[Meteor Weapon]

So...I'm guessing that EP4 would link the story to the Photoner origins along the line?

[Altiea]

So...I'm guessing that EP4 would link the story to the Photoner origins along the line?

I'm assuming that was the plan, anyway.

[Sirius-91]

I'm assuming that was the plan, anyway.
It's possible that Mother is a photoner or a being that is similar to one.

[kurokyosuke]

It's possible that Mother is a photoner or a being that is similar to one.

I can forgive everything that went wrong in EP4 if this is the case.

[Maninbluejumpsuit]

I can forgive everything that went wrong in EP4 if this is the case.

There is no forgiving the anime.

I will never forgive SEGA for that anime.

My eye still stings after SEGA stroked themselves so much in the opening episodes.

[黒雪Yacchi]

The first half of that anime is why I can't even stomach the first episode, they could have added WAAAY much more story instead of padding it with Slice of Life bullshit.

[Meteor Weapon]

[Photon Fagtasm] Radiant Stargazer Friendship Asspull Excalibur one shooting a FUCKING PERFECT FORM DARK FALZ APPRENTICE instead of ABSOLUTE PERFECT TEAM WORK OF MULTI AIS PHOTON BLASTER AND FOLMEGION WITH ZANVERSE is like the "best" thing ever.

[Zysets]

I mentioned before in another thread that my guess would be that humans on Earth are the Photoners. There's plenty of stable time loops in PSO2 so far, so I figured that the Earthlings discover their ability to naturally use Photon energy (or Ether for now), using that to create more advanced technologies and leaving Earth, and finally becoming the Photoners that created ARKS in the first place. They do say Earth is in another dimension or something of that sort, but it might just be that it's the past.

I'd still like to believe that it'll come full circle like that somehow.

[Zyrusticae]

I mentioned before in another thread that my guess would be that humans on Earth are the Photoners. There's plenty of stable time loops in PSO2 so far, so I figured that the Earthlings discover their ability to naturally use Photon energy (or Ether for now), using that to create more advanced technologies and leaving Earth, and finally becoming the Photoners that created ARKS in the first place. They do say Earth is in another dimension or something of that sort, but it might just be that it's the past.

I'd still like to believe that it'll come full circle like that somehow.
Too much of a paradox even for this ridiculous timey wimey bullshit story.

Plus it'd be fucking dumb if ARKS technology progressed so slowly over the years that Earth beings could compete with them on any level.

[yoshiblue]

I find the history of Arks to be strange in general. They make the past seem very recent. In the same "30 years makes you an old man" kind of way.

[Zysets]

There are a lot of weird timeline issues in PSO2.

I admit my theory doesn't hold up though, I honestly came up with it without much thought going into it.

I'd just like for the story to tie back into Episodes 1-3 somehow. I actually like Episode 4 so far, and don't have many complaints, but I liked having each episode build on the other.

[yoshiblue]

Still have this though.
So after asking in the quick questions thread, I learned that AP is "After Photon." I've taken some terribad phone pics of a page in the pso2 section of the Visual Chronicles of what looks like the timeline leading up to the game's events. They can be found here (http://imgur.com/a/oiTti).

You might be better off just looking at the whole page instead of the blowup of the bottom. The top of that one is blurry and for that I am sorry. :wacko:

This is the timeline that Aida cooked up in the original story thread.
[SPOILER-BOX]????: Photon particles discovered. A method to use them as energy is found.
0: With photons used as energy, problems with space flight were solved. A new era in space begins!
20: Arks create a Mothership.
50: 24 more ships are added to the fleet, now named "Oracle".
200: Oracle travels to a lot of galaxies, studying about different life forms and energies.
500: A science vessel studying a black hole disappears. There was no distress signal, and no signs of attack.
600: On a new planet, a naturally aggressive life form is discovered. This life form later becomes known as "Darkers".
700: More information is discovered about Darkers - They consume both living and nonliving matter. More Darkers attack Oracle -
normal weapons have no effect, and many Arks die. A being known as "Dark Falz" is discovered to be behind the Darkers. Photon
weapons are found to be effective against Darkers, so lots of research is put into enhancing them. However, many more planets
are lost to the Darkers.
1000: Arks, which was once intended for science and discovery, changes its purpose to wiping out the Darkers.
Arks design a new calendar so they never forget the turning point in the war.


(All dates from here on out are using the AP calendar. So, for example, AP 40 would be the year 1040.)


AP 0: A new timeline is forged - The Arks Military calendar
AP 40: Naberius is discovered
AP 90: Planets Lilipa and Amduscia are discovered
AP 140: The Dragonkin language is fully translated
AP 170: Something about battle with darkers <will be re-translated later, hopefully>
AP 190: Regias, Maria, Clarisa, and Casra become famous for battles on several planets
AP 198: Deciding battle with Dark Falz (The three heros seal Dark Falz Elder away)
AP 198: The council of six members is formed: 1) Regias 2) Maria 3) Casra 4) Atosa 5) Clarisa 6) Volf
AP 207: The first Clarisa Claes dies
AP 210: The second generation of arks manage to push back the Darkers for few years
AP 220: The first Casra dies
AP 225: The relationship with the Dragonkin suddenly gets worse
AP 226: Clarisa Claes' name is passed down
AP 227: Atosa and Volf die
AP 228: The second Clarisa Claes vanishes in a battle with Dark Falz Apprentice
AP 230: The Casra name gets passed down
AP 235: Huey becomes the 6th member of the council
AP 238: The current year that PSO2 takes place[/SPOILER-BOX]

Does anyone with some savvy Japanese knowledge know if anything else important is written in there compared to what Aida has written?

Also, what does the kanji say in that blue strip to the left of each half of the timeline?

[Altiea]

Next stage!

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[Sirius-91]

Not sure what camera you're using, but if it's a phone, you could try Office Lens for android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officelens&hl=en) or ios (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/office-lens/id975925059?mt=8).

[Altiea]

Not sure what camera you're using, but if it's a phone, you could try Office Lens for android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officelens&hl=en) or ios (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/office-lens/id975925059?mt=8).

Ooh, I've never heard of this before. I'll give it a shot. Maybe it'll improve my picture quality on my other thread.

[loafhero]

Oh! Never knew that the directors actually listened to feedback from players who have played through EP1's story. It is true, at least for me, that EP2 and 3 were huge improvements over EP1. The plot isn't as dragged out and there was still room for sub plots for the other NPCs.

I'm glad that MB 2-6 was made as the finale for EP2. Like any 2nd Act of a trilogy, it had an epic plot twist followed by a dark-ish ending that left things on a cliffhanger. It also answered a lot of things about Matoi and her attachment to Playa-chan in a satisfying way.


The first half of that anime is why I can't even stomach the first episode, they could have added WAAAY much more story instead of padding it with Slice of Life bullshit.
Or, considering how the anime probably wasn't targeted towards newcomers but long-time players of PSO2, it could have been an episodic anime revolving around the lives of the NPCs. I wouldn't have minded Slice of Life bullshit if it involved the NPCs we are familiar with throughout our time in PSO2 and as long as it didn't take place in a school setting.

Director Uno said it himself in the interview about how he would have loved to write more side stories about the NPCs if he had more time so the anime could have been that alternative. Maybe even get Ufotable to produce the anime since video game adaptations are their specialty.

[Meteor Weapon]

I wonder how many long time players really liked the anime, because the other side of the world obviously don't.

[loafhero]

I wonder how many long time players really liked the anime, because the other side of the world obviously don't.

Guess we can only judge by the Blu-Ray and DVD sales.

[Meteor Weapon]

sales are pretty bad according to someone I know, like, not even 1.5k lol

[Saffran]

So....

[Spoiler-box]
(Resuming from page 30)
Q: Saga's always around her, and I guess people liked the way they seemed to trust each others, despite what they were actually saying.

Uno: Plus, there weren't that many characters that approched the players so simply, just like that. I mean, Kuna did, but she had ulterior motives. I think people liked the fact that she approched you in a very innocent way.
Kimura: She has a sly side to her, so you think there might be more to it, but there's also a genuine side, we kind of made Katori to be walking that fine line. Mrs Kuwashima, her voice actress, even told us "I bet she gets a lot of hate, right?".
(everybody laughs)
Sakai: But then she went an got 1st place in the popularity contest.
Mizuno: That is scary!

(next are charts which will be discussed later so I'll just ignore them.
The 2 parts are not from the same charts so we may be missing a bit in the middle there.)

Q: Speaking of characters, you hold a popularity contest every year, but do you follow the results?
Sakai: I sure do! I check how the polls are going quite often.
Uno: I check the polls every day to see how things are going along.

Q: The results for female characters in 2014 had Io in 1st place, Risa in 2nd place and Kuna in 3rd place.
Kimura: Pretty much what we expected.
Uno: Yeah, we were so sure they would win that we had already prepared some Voice Drama discs for the players' rooms. Mr Sakai, what did you think of the order?
Sakai: Well, for Io, I mean, c'mon, of course.

Q: And for the guys, the 1st place was Klotho.
Sakai: Yeah, Klotho. Now THAT was unexpected.
Uno: True, true.
Sakai: I totally understand Gettemhart in 2nd place though.
Kimura: Mr Uno, who did you think would win?
Uno: I thought the 1st place would be taken by Huey at that point in time.
Sakai: At the time, he was still "funny". He was still "Huey, the funny guy".
Uno: True. He starts being cool in 2-5, after all.

Q: During the Competition (in the EP1 side-story) he was still a hot-headed jackass, I mean, in a good way!
(everybody laughs)
Kimura: That's why we thought that Gettemhart would win. Huey was still a gag character.
Q: A lot of users actually played with Gettemhart, right?
Kimura: That's right. Which is why I thought that the most popular ones would be Gettemhart, Huey and possibly Regias.
Uno: Klotho totally came out of left field.
Kimura: Well, if you looked at the contents, he was the logical choice!
Q: He was giving out a lot of mesetas, so I guess it was a logical result.
Sakai: No! That was a joke choice!
Uno: Well, we used that argument to make it an in-joke!
Sakai: For some reason, users like the characters that are a bit hard to handle. Look at Dudu.
Mizuno: It's a well-known fact that the sidekicks get all the love...
Q: Like the guy who disappeared from the EP3 lobby, Anri, he's strangely popular, too.
Uno: That one has to be a joke choice, for sure.
Q: He got stuck sometimes, and sometimes just teleported up or down in the city. I guess people like characters with gimmicks?
Kimura: We had to take that into consideration as well. I mean, when you have to nominate a character, you automatically pre-emptively exclude some of those. Hans or Dudu never made it in the rankings as stand-alones. And if a joke choice makes it to the top through random luck, it gets really awkward. Sure, some people genuinely like Hans and some people like Dudu, but it's not good to have a character win the polls because of a misconstrued opinion. However, we thought it would be OK in a "best Partners" category, so we had Monica and Dudu in the nominees.
Uno: We even made a team "Luther and Shion".
Kimura: I still thought Patty and Tia would win, but it was quite a gambit.
Uno: Yeah, it was reassuring. I was really glad they'd won. To be honest, it got me nervous. What if a joke choice had taken the 1st place? Imagine Luther and Shion winning. I would have been stuck with writing a Voice Drama for them, but... what to write?
Mizuno: Yeah, it wouldn't be a conversation, Luther would be speaking alone.
Kimura: We had a lot of teams that could be possibly ranking 3rd or below, so I think we devised up a good contest, it was very nice.
Mizuno: True, true.

Q: Let's have a look at the 2015 polls results.
Uno: Best female character was Katori, right?
Sakai: Katori, then Matoi, then Kuna.
Uno: Kuna ranking 3rd two years in a row makes her a legend. it's impressive, really, almost every other character fell down the charts.
Q: Yeah, Io took 4th place.
Sakai: But Matoi got up.
Uno: Yes, she ranked in.
Mizuno: Uno was telling us week to week, "hey, Matoi was 5th but she got to 4th place, she's 3rd right now".
Kimura: When Io was 3rd place he was like "Go down, bail out, you have to fail!"
Uno: Well, I mean, she had already ranked 1st! I wasn't being mean to her or anything. I love every character.
Q: It's because she was so popular that we got to see her a bit more grown up in EP4.
Uno: Yeah, exactly!
Mizuno: In 2015, we also held a contest about best enemy.
Uno: And Dark Falz Luther took 1st place.
Mizuno: He wasn't in the characters poll, so I guess people cast their vote for him in this category.
Uno: They didn't have much of a choice.

Q: Could we first have a look at the best male character polls?
Uno: For the guys... in 2015, Huey won.
Q: I guess we talked a bit about it earlier.
Mizuno: We got the impression that it was the logical choice.
Q: Huey, then Saga, then Kotoshiro. It almost feels like their order of appareance in EP3.
Kimura: No, Kotoshiro was a bit unexpected.
Uno: His time to shine is 3-6 so had the contest been after chapter 6, we would have understood.
Kimura: But it wasn't. Although, he was indeed a bit interesting already by that point.


[/Spoiler-box]

[loafhero]

Thanks for the translation!

I don't think Katori could have ever been as popular as she is without Saga.

In general, watching cutscenes of two or more NPCs talking to each other is far more interesting since you're seeing different personalities play off each other whereas a cutscene of just our character and only one NPC tends to look like the NPC is talking to themselves which can be rather boring. Maybe giving us more dialogue options would've been better.


sales are pretty bad according to someone I know, like, not even 1.5k lol
I guess those character costumes, voice tickets and in-game posters included in the DVDs weren't worth the money for JP players.

[wefwq]

I guess those character costumes, voice tickets and in-game posters included in the DVDs weren't worth the money for JP players.
They deserve it for trying too hard to lure newcomer instead of keeping old-timer from leaving the game.

[yoshiblue]

Hard to tell if Klotho winning that poll surprised, confused or rubbed them the wrong way. Thanks for the translations.

[Altiea]

The charts I cut out were the 2014/2015 General Election results. The top was from the Female category, the middle was from the Male category, and the bottom is from the Enemy category.

[Raujinn]

Luther and Xion wouldn't really have been a joke choice. :( There's some lore between those two damnit...

[Zyrusticae]

Luther and Xion wouldn't really have been a joke choice. :( There's some lore between those two damnit...
It would've been a joke choice in the sense that the poll was to determine who would get a drama CD written and recorded for them, and with Xion being either dead or simply staying silent whenever Luther is in the vicinity that is obviously not a very good choice for a drama CD.

[yoshiblue]

Hey they break it, they buy it. Except nobody in the area noticed them break it, so they got away with it. Besides, it could have easily been Luther talking to a wall while Xion sasses him in her head.

[Selphea]

Aren't both Xion and Luther in Photon Valhalla right now though

[Sirius-91]

Aren't both Xion and Luther in Photon Valhalla right now though
If you call being inside PD Valhalla, then sure.

[Altiea]

And then it occurred to me that I skipped a page. *Not taken using Office Lens*

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[loafhero]

It was already said by one of the interviewees that a Luther and Xion Drama CD would have just been Luther talking to himself.


If you call being inside PD Valhalla, then sure.

Luther does it have it better than Xion (and Persona) since he at least maintains his free will... though at the same time, as we've seen in EP3, Luther is slowly losing his sanity from being isolated from the outside world for too long. I mean, he did go batshit insane the first time when he was defeated in EP2 and transformed into Dark Falz Loser but then he became stable again upon being consumed and trapped in Double's dimension.

[Meteor Weapon]

I don't see him going insane in ep3, Luther just guided mc and matoi and shrugs off not showing the slightest expression of leaving. He as a scientist was interested in Double's cloning ability tho.

[Sirius-91]

Luther is slowly losing his sanity from being isolated from the outside world for too long. I mean, he did go batshit insane the first time when he was defeated in EP2 and transformed into Dark Falz Loser but then he became stable again upon being consumed and trapped in Double's dimension.

Don't know where you got him going insane, when it's been established before the creation of ARKS that he had already gone over that edge. He and few others witness the destruction of their kind through their own creations, thus had an extreme radical idea on how to fix it that involved subterfuge, manipulation, blackmail, planning, and time; Which sets up the plot of the first 2 Episodes.

[loafhero]

Don't know where you got him going insane, when it's been established before the creation of ARKS that he had already gone over that edge. He and few others witness the destruction of their kind through their own creations, thus had an extreme radical idea on how to fix it that involved subterfuge, manipulation, blackmail, planning, and time; Which sets up the plot of the first 2 Episodes.

That's not called going insane. That's called being an asshole or a sociopath.

To elaborate on what I said about Luther showing signs of insanity, throughout that little adventure in Double's dimension, Luther had a tendency of talking to himself even when there were two other living people in his presence. That's a sign of early stages of insanity. Even if it was just brief moments of him probably losing his mind, any person stuck isolated from others for long periods of time would eventually crack.

[Saffran]

If talking to yourself is a sign of insanity, I've been insane for 28 years...

[Altiea]

If talking to yourself is a sign of insanity, I've been insane for 28 years...

Ditto, except reduce the number to like, 11.

[loafhero]

If talking to yourself is a sign of insanity, I've been insane for 28 years...


Ditto, except reduce the number to like, 11.

... Was there really any need to admit that?

Its not like you're stuck in a hell-like place with the laughter of annoying children constantly playing over and over again.

Alternatively, talking to yourself is also said to be a sign that you're a genius... while I'm not sure about others here, it definitely fits Luther who happens to be a scientist.

[Meteor Weapon]

Is there a need to further speculate he went insane inside double? Cuz he doesn't show it for me no matter how many times I see it.He was rational enough to talk to Matoi that there's no need for them to fight. Egoistical, prideful, obsessive and greedy? Yes. But a total cuckoo nutjob? I don't see it.

[NoobSpectre]

Is there a need to further speculate he went insane inside double? Cuz he doesn't show it for me no matter how many times I see it.He was rational enough to talk to Matoi that there's no need for them to fight. Egoistical, prideful, obsessive and greedy? Yes. But a total cuckoo nutjob? I don't see it.

The only time he went really really nuts is when PC rekted him when he become omniscience and Xion dies. He kinda reach the limit when he loses he precious thing while the whole Oracle didn't die with him because of Xiao's mothaship.

And no, I dun bother the spoilers cuz this is already out for like... 2 years and 3 months ago.

[Zysets]

The only time he went really really nuts is when PC rekted him when he become omniscience and Xion dies. He kinda reach the limit when he loses he precious thing while the whole Oracle didn't die with him because of Xiao's mothaship.

To be fair, I'd go insane if I had been planning something for so long only to be stopped by some random no life and his/her girlfriend.


and just to answer this from a few pages back

I wonder how many long time players really liked the anime, because the other side of the world obviously don't.

I did, I liked the anime, and I've enjoyed the game's Episode 4. I've been playing since PSO v2 on DC, all through PSU, and now PSO2 since it released.
I guess I'm the one who's a bit off if the general consensus is that the anime was really bad.

[Altiea]

And then it occurred to me that I skipped a page. *Not taken using Office Lens*

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http://i.imgur.com/RWjG8Qs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ACE2rEP.jpg
[/SPOILER-BOX]

At any rate, bumping the last image dump.

[Great Pan]

Luther is a bad guy, and that's enough.

[Keilyn]

I wonder at times if Episode IV itself is pretty much filler or the beginning of a stand-alone story in its roots. This happens a lot in anime with filler episodes that lead to filler movies (Naruto is filled with Filler Movies) and some anime series end each season with 12 episodes, but they add a 13th Episode to be a recap episode or a filler episode to show that they are out of ideas and the series will continue next season.

I don't particularly like the story to Episode IV, but I do like the graphics and animation that I do see in there.

[landman]

Japanese developers should play more western RPGs if they really think custom characters can't give a cinematic story experience... even if you have to sacrifice voice options to do so (but frankly, for the very few sentences we are supposed to say, it wouldn't hurt them to record like a dozen different voices for them).

Thanks for translating, kinda wish we had that expanded Episode 3 and PD being Episode 4, now I feel we will miss a lot of Gettemhart or Zeno background...

[loafhero]

Japanese developers should play more western RPGs if they really think custom characters can't give a cinematic story experience... even if you have to sacrifice voice options to do so (but frankly, for the very few sentences we are supposed to say, it wouldn't hurt them to record like a dozen different voices for them).


While looking at other games for inspiration is a good kind of thinking, I wouldn't want PSO2 to start becoming too similar to the Mass Effect or Dragon Age series. I wouldn't want our only dialogue options to consist of mostly variations of "We'll bang ok?"... as tempting as that is.

I think having a voiceless playable protagonist is fine as long as there's plenty of dialogue choices that creates a decent sense of involvement. I think I would enjoy the PSO2 random side cutscenes more if almost every one of them gave our character a lot more interactive opportunities. The Quna cutscene back in EP1 where she asks us of our opinion of her stage performance is one of my favourite cutscenes because it gave us FOUR lines of dialogue to choose from and each one elicits different reactions from Quna.

[landman]

I wasn't talking about choice, I was talking about main custom characters behaving as a single player character, with their actions, their dialogues and their screaming, instead of mister or missus silent. They pointed out how PSU Episode 1 was so flashy and then the online portions were so bland, well, that was their choice, not a limitation of player characters as they believe.

[Saffran]

Apparently you didn't put the photos in the right order, I had to do a bit of back and forth to find the text. (Plus I'm busy translating a show for TV.)

[spoiler-box]

Q: I see... What about you, Mr Mizuno?
Mizuno: Let me say this first that... I haven't designed a single character in EP3.
(everybody laughs)
Mizuno: In this Material Collection book, there shoudn't be a single design artwork. But I did a lot of illustrations and I checked a lot of them, too. The events got bigger, the contents got bigger, so I just had a lot more checking to do.

Q: There were also a lot of IRL events, outside of PSO2. This is something that you, Mr Sakai, wanted to do, right?
Sakai: It's not so much that I wanted to do it, I mean, it's an online game, but you enjoy it a lot more when you actually know people in-game and when you meet new people through it. "Don't just play the game all the damn time, go outside, too!", so to speak.
Mizuno: That sounds like something out of some anime director's mouth...
Sakai: No, I've had a history of saying you need to play games to enrich your life.
Mizuno: Back to the topic of designs, in EP1&2 we knew that for weapons and enemies, the rare versions would get bigger, so I made a point of keeping all designs to a manageable size, it was an obsession. And then EP3 comes along and the first random fodders are like 7m tall...
Kimura: And the bosses! I mean, you saw Magatsu, so after that...
Mizuno: Yeah, exactly!
Kimura: I think Magatsu is the biggest thing we can do right now. If we want to go further, we will need to take a different spin on how to show the boss. Plus, it was really difficult to design it, it took a lot of work.
Mizuno: It did take a long time.
Kimura: The team assigned to Magatsu was young, so it was a bit rough.
Q: The AIS were also a new experience.
Mizuno: Yeah, we had big plans for them at first, like a heavily armed version, and several other variations.

How NPC are created

Q: Let's go back a little, so... Mr Mizuno, the last design you made would be Luther?
Mizuno: Actually, the last character I designed was 2nd Generation Clarisse Claes. [whatever the spelling actually is]
Uno: For EP3 we had a bunch of designers work on their own little things.
Q: Well, there aren't that many new characters in EP3.
Sakai: True, the's Sukunahime, Kotoshiro... and Double, I guess? Plus Aurora.
Kimura: We often had the case where the character would already exist but needed a new outfit or so.
Uno: Yeah. It was the case for Apprentice... I mean Euclita.
Kimura: And then there was Katori and Saga.
Uno: About Katori, it was actually Kimura who created the character.
Kimura: Well, we had the costume for the new class, and we needed a character to push the class and the costume.
Mizuno: We knew Harukotan was coming, it had a japanese flair to it, so we need that plus the bouncer aspect.
Kimura: I took charge of the design while trying to stay as close as possible to what you had planned out. I had to put a lot of work in there. It was really a difficult birth.

Q: We can say it was worth it, Katori is a really propular character now.
Kimura: After EP1, we consciously tried to make Kuna into the heroine, so it's no wonder she got popular, but then I thought, now we can't create a new character that will get everyone's attention anymore. I was feeling bad about it.
Uno: In EP1, Risa was incredibly popular though.
Kimura: Ah, yes, Risa, true. But she didn't get popular in the usual fashion, right? For EP2, Uno said he wanted a character that would definitely become popular, so he came up with the settings for Io.
Q: Io sure was popular!
Uno: I'm really glad it turned out that way. I did it!
Q: I guess the choice of her voice actor (Ayana Taketatsu) was good too.
Kimura: Actually, it was quite an adventure. Miss Taketatsu is a very popular voice actress, but in her other works she never does a voice for a character like Io. She even asked us "Me? Really? Are you sure about that?". But I thought that if she could nail the voice it would probably be very interesting. We actually had her sing in her character voice, it turned out nothing like she usually sings, but this, in itself, was quite an interesting result. As a character, Io turned out surprisingly well. And so when we then had to think of something for EP3, it was really hard.
Uno: We really spent ages dwelling on this.
Kimura: Our biggest problem to solve was to come up with a better character than Io for EP3. The main ones, Sukunahime and Kotoshiro, would come up in the story anyway, and we had to make Sukunahime someone to difficult to engage, because of the plot. Plus her story and Kotoshiro's past are sad. They couldn't be a match for Io. And that's when Uno told me, "how about this?".
Uno: And I told him about Katori.
Kimura: He did a presentation, complete with dialogues, and I thought that could do the trick. But since she was supposed to inherit the Bouncer class, I had to make her different from the girl in the main visuals. So I chose a different hair style, and since we had introduced a new type of face in the character creator, I really wanted to use that as well.
Uno: Katori had to be completely changed. In the beginning, she was more like Patty. I had to press reset and rewrite her from scratch.
Mizuno: Oh, she has that kind of dark secret past?
Uno: At one point, we wanted Jean to be her father.
Kimura: Yes, actually, I made the offer. I said that for a new character, maybe we could talk about her parents or something.
Uno: Oh yeah, you did!
Kimura: I wanted her to be someone's daughter, and so, since Jean is a bit older in the cast, we thought it would be interesting if she were his daughter.
Q: Who would have thought! Jean?
Uno: In the end, we decided to scrap that idea though.
Kimura: But because of that previous setting, she still says "Father" at one point.
Uno: At first, we imagined her to be this really obnoxious girl. She was this young lady from a nice family, blonde, quite shorter, and she'd be yelling and stuff.
[/spoiler-box]

I'm pretty sure there still is a part missing between this and part 3.

[Altiea]

I guess that answers the question about "AIS customization". "Scrapped during development".

[Zyrusticae]

Credit where credit is due, Uno did his job well. Io was a shoo-in for that contest.

That line about Katori's parentage makes me wonder how familial relations actually work among the ARKS. Especially for the kids that were test tube babies (like most Dewmen probably are). Who even raised Io, for that matter?

Questions that will never be answered...

[Saffran]

Yeah, and where is the litter of kids we expected from Xeno and Echo?

[Altiea]

Here's the missing question from Page 2 (with a nice picture of Sakai)

[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/zMsQmnv.jpg[/SPOILER-BOX]

Next stage!

Page 4 (In order this time, I promise)
[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/ZW91Gqi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ht6ZlM8.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/MP1uXRx.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EcPliHE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wK3FuuZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/B6j76xe.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pW53EaO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/J7ped6f.jpg[/SPOILER-BOX]

[Zysets]

I wonder at times if Episode IV itself is pretty much filler or the beginning of a stand-alone story in its roots.
It's definitely going to be a new story that's just getting started. We've seen multiple members of Mother Cluster, but we've barely gotten around to many. I imagine we'll have recurring villains like the Falzes in Episodes 1-3. Plus Episode 1 was pretty slow to really get going, at least to me, so I don't expect too much right at the start of Episode 4.



Yeah, and where is the litter of kids we expected from Xeno and Echo?
Sega won't ever openly state these characters are in a relationship, shipping is much more interesting than an actual romantic relationship. The "Will they or they won't" thing keeps people into the whole thing.
I don't expect to see any Xeno juniors or Little Echos anytime in the near future.

[Altiea]

Kimura stated that because he was the only director in EP1, he didn't get to dedicate a lot of time to the story because he had to keep tabs on everything else. He only got around to expanding the story once he had co-directors working with him. I wonder if it's the same for the EP4 director.

[Keilyn]

The problem exists that the developers introduced story elements too soon.

I remember high school creative writing classes and electives had us writing storyboards. We would get a C or C- if we wrote our story and ended a section too soon or too late. We had to sync our storyboard ideas to our writing, as well as expand or condense ideas depending on how far ahead or behind we were. The game has so many characters and I feel bad that the Episode I director had to also make sure that all the programming of the game worked. In short that director was doing two jobs and being paid for one, which is very common in game development.

I guess I feel that there are not enough people actually working on this game to make this game the best it could be, but rather the game's current state is a result of what has existed behind the scenes. So all the stalling with Emergency Quests and the way the Story has been developed really is to slow things down due to lack of people who need to work at story development, game balancing, content-creation, marketing and promotion, and everything else simultaneously.

One of my wishes in Phantasy Star was always that the series creator did not leave. Rieko Kodama developed and created the universe for Phantasy Star I - IV. She was an artist who before the game existed she had the characters drawn in her own scrap ideas for comics. There is something seriously wrong with Japan when my favorite stories have all been created by women, but when the stories became popular... the main writers leave the design team or are fired and are replaced by a team of males writing the stories.

At least when reading manga, the authors never get replaced when their stories get good.
[spoiler-box]I always laughed at how Women's Rights groups attack males for watching anime and reading manga that have skimpy female characters without realizing that most of these authors are actually women, while never attacking anyone for playing Otome games and the kind of stories found within that genre.....[/spoiler-box]

[loafhero]

Uno: At one point, we wanted Jean to be her father.
Kimura: Yes, actually, I made the offer. I said that for a new character, maybe we could talk about her parents or something.
Uno: Oh yeah, you did!
Kimura: I wanted her to be someone's daughter, and so, since Jean is a bit older in the cast, we thought it would be interesting if she were his daughter.
Q: Who would have thought! Jean?
Uno: In the end, we decided to scrap that idea though.

NO! WHY?! That sounded interesting!! Maybe they had to scrap it due to wanting to give Saga more screen time but they could've at least made one cutscene of Jean and Katori following the original father-daughter idea! It would have actually explained why Katori, despite her laziness, is so determined about being an administrator for the Bouncer class; daddy issues! Most of us know how nagging Jean is.


Uno: At first, we imagined her to be this really obnoxious girl. She was this young lady from a nice family, blonde, quite shorter, and she'd be yelling and stuff.
Pretty sure Claris Claes III fits that role already, minus the blonde hair and nice family.

Also glad that they didn't go with the idea of making Quna the main heroine after EP1 and stuck to continuing to Matoi's story.



Sega won't ever openly state these characters are in a relationship, shipping is much more interesting than an actual romantic relationship. The "Will they or they won't" thing keeps people into the whole thing.
I don't expect to see any Xeno juniors or Little Echos anytime in the near future.

If Zeno and Echo ever make a return to the story (in-cutscenes) and if their still just friends, I hope we get a dialogue choice complaining to Echo over how she hasn't made a move on Zeno even after 2 years.

[Meteor Weapon]

Rieko Kodama is the producer for 7th dragon, 7th Dragon 2020/2020-II and co producer for 7th Dragon III Code: VFD which surprise is still under SEGA as the publisher with Image Epoch's as the developer team(which went bankrupt sadly). Despite having not played much the PS classic series I see both PS and 7th Dragon having almost the same feel of First person View battle system.

[Saffran]

Rieko Kodama designed Quartet, which was the first video game that my parents bought specifically for me. The humanoid characters of Quartet are basically the cast of Phantasy Star 1. (that's all my personal trivia about her.)

translations later, I was going to launch PSO2...

[Zysets]

One of my wishes in Phantasy Star was always that the series creator did not leave. Rieko Kodama developed and created the universe for Phantasy Star I - IV. She was an artist who before the game existed she had the characters drawn in her own scrap ideas for comics. There is something seriously wrong with Japan when my favorite stories have all been created by women, but when the stories became popular... the main writers leave the design team or are fired and are replaced by a team of males writing the stories.

At least when reading manga, the authors never get replaced when their stories get good.
[spoiler-box]I always laughed at how Women's Rights groups attack males for watching anime and reading manga that have skimpy female characters without realizing that most of these authors are actually women, while never attacking anyone for playing Otome games and the kind of stories found within that genre.....[/spoiler-box]

I don't know the details but maybe she just left, by the time PSO came around really nobody from the original team was still working with Sega from what I've heard. I do wish Kodama, and other members of the original PS team, could come back, I love the atmosphere and designs of the original series the best, it really felt "Scifi-Fantasy". The use of mythology and the medieval feel, coupled with the space travel, technology, and overall tone of the first four games really stand out, they're my top favorite classic RPGs.

And while I don't want to start this discussion out of fear of it provoking an argument, I imagine cultural differences are a big factor in "skimpy outfit" hate. Plus I personally know many people you could consider Women's Rights Activists who have no problem with that as long as it's fun, not creepy or forced, which I agree is better.

[starwind75043]

I don't know the details but maybe she just left, by the time PSO came around really nobody from the original team was still working with Sega from what I've heard. I do wish Kodama, and other members of the original PS team, could come back, I love the atmosphere and designs of the original series the best, it really felt "Scifi-Fantasy". The use of mythology and the medieval feel, coupled with the space travel, technology, and overall tone of the first four games really stand out, they're my top favorite classic RPGs.

And while I don't want to start this discussion out of fear of it provoking an argument, I imagine cultural differences are a big factor in "skimpy outfit" hate. Plus I personally know many people you could consider Women's Rights Activists who have no problem with that as long as it's fun, not creepy or forced, which I agree is better.

I loved that about the Phantsy Star series as well its really made my love for sci fi mmo/rpg come to life.

[Sirius-91]

I don't know the details but maybe she just left, by the time PSO came around really nobody from the original team was still working with Sega from what I've heard. I do wish Kodama, and other members of the original PS team, could come back, I love the atmosphere and designs of the original series the best, it really felt "Scifi-Fantasy". The use of mythology and the medieval feel, coupled with the space travel, technology, and overall tone of the first four games really stand out, they're my top favorite classic RPGs.

And no one really except Sakai as of now, worked on the original PSO. PSU brought in a whole new team apparently.

[Meteor Weapon]

Sakai was incharge of the game designing in PSO, and a Producer in PSO2. And I don't think Rieko Kodama left Sega, but probably change department or something since she lead 7th Dragon series which was still a Sega product.

[Zysets]

Ah yeah, that was mentioned earlier in the thread but it had slipped my my mind. Well, I'd love if she could bring back some of the aspects of the original four PS games into PSO2 or future PS titles.

[Saffran]

Last tidbit (sort of...)

[spoiler-box]
Uno: We created it fully believing that if we missed that, the character would be done for.
Q: But the fact that she's a team with Saga is part of her charm, right?
Uno: True, you could say that it wouldn't have worked if she 'd been alone.
[/spoiler-box]

part 4

[spoiler-box]
(continuing from page 120)

Q: Well, his voice actor, Mr Tomokazu Sugita, surely had something to do with it.
Uno: Yes, the voice actor himself is a part of his success. But I was still suprised he'd rank in 3rd.
Kimura: I think Saga got there because he's always around Katori.
Uno: That's quite possible, after all, we always put them in a set. All their lines were created together.

Q: It's a bid sad that Oza and Maru and always in the lower parts of the rankings though.
Uno: It's OK, these two are done anyway. I mean, we're done with their relationship and what is going on with them, how they progress.
Kimura: There's that, but also, keep in mind, we have a lot of guys playing this game, so if we make them an official couple, the players might stop looking at them. Although of course, the exact same thing would apply to Xeno and Echo.
Uno: I like them, they have these very humanly traits about their characters, but...
Q: Echo is also one of those victims, she doesn't get as much success as she should, really.
Sakai: Echo's Fried Noodles aren't selling !
Q: Those from the food booths at the Thank You Festival?
Kimura: All the other booths named after a character had lines of people waiting, except hers.
Mizuno: She's always talking about Xeno or crying after him, so of course players would think she has no interest at all in them anyway and would stop looking at her.

Everybody can see why Loser/Luther is number 1

Q: Now, we mentioned this earlier, but I'd like to go back to the enemy popularity ranking.
Mizuno: Loser was number 1.
Sakai: Isn't that because Luther (his human form) is popular?
Kimura: There definitely is a part of that in the results, yes.
Q: Looking at the rankings, Magatsu in 2nd place is probably because he gives so many rares.
Uno: And Ko Lera is in 3rd place because of the gap between her looks and her voice! When we were recording her voice, Kimura begged for an ultra loli voice.
Mizuno: But thanks to that, we could talk about enemies in P-SPEC (official PSO2 doujinshi) and it led to other good things.
Kimura: Loser is popular because of the character, but also because he's the best enemy we did, in my opinion.
Mizuno: Ah, in terms of gaming.
Q: Yes, the fight against Dark Falz Loser is pretty cool.
Kimura: We upgraded that fight at one point, and with this upgrade, Loser and Magatsu can be seen as two things we really created well. And the way he moves is good too. Even if we forget the character for a moment, the Loser fight in the game is just fun. I'd put it up front when describing the good parts of the game. And after those two, maybe Elder.
Uno: Well, for Loser, we had the settings, the scenario and the game system really blending in each others, so we could write his parts into every aspect at once.
Mizuno: Yes, Loser was quite some minute work. Honestly, I think we could have done a bit more with Elder. But for Loser, maybe it's because we were at EP2, we had more meetings, and we had gotten the hang of it?
Kimura: Magatsu was made a team of youngsters, so quite frankly, the lack of experience probably still showed a little bit.
Mizuno: Yeah, we had trouble understanding where the "game" was in the Magatsu fight, at first. Never before had the enemy been so big, and we had to come up with game mechanics for it.
Kimura: Plus of course, he had to be more shocking than what had come before. It's always difficult to create something at later stages, because the hurdle of quality gets higher and higher.

Q: I think though that at the time, a fight agasint Dark Falz still meant something to the players. Nowadays the fight agasint Dark Falz is still like the preliminaries.
Uno: Well, yes, just after that, you have to fight "The Profound Darkness".
Q: I think users still see Elder as the Boss of EP1 and Loser as the Boss of EP2.
Kimura: In the early drafts, we wanted Dark Falz to be a group like the Four Heavenly Kings, so we decided there would be 4 of them. Then we had Uno write the story and have one Dark Falz coming up in each part. But then, the end of EP2 is Dark Falz, OK, yet if we have another Dark Falz at the end of EP3, it would be the same old thing. So we decided to pull out the Profound Darkness. But then, what happens with Dark Falz? We thought about it, and we decided to make The Profound Darkness stick out by saying that compared to it, even the fight agasint Dark Falz is just an appetizer.

Q: I see... Incidentally, how did you decide the special names of the Dark Falz? Like Elder and so.
Uno: It was all made to accomodate the story. The "Young Person" one is read "Apprentice", it means "Trainee", and Elder is kind of "someone who stands above you". Loser is, well, exactly that. As for Double, people still ask me if the name shouldn't have been "The Twins".
Kimuro: Double is still OK. The kanji for Elder are "Giant Body", so the reading is absolutely not related. Why did you choose that?
Mizuno: Because it looks sooooo cool.
Uno: Well, we couldn't read it "Big", it would have sounded stupid. I wanted something that sounds cool, and that would stick in the users' heads.
Kimuro: After each recording session, people would say "you didn't specify the readings and I had no idea what it was". Actually, we didn't write the reading throughout the entire script of EP1. So I had to tell them "Look, just say Elder every time it comes up" and some veteran voice actors just laughed, "Wow, you really want to show off with such a name!" I remember Uno was pretty embarrassed.
Q: And you, Mr Sakai, who's your favorite enemy?
Sakai: I suppose it's Dark Biblas. (Vibrace?)
Mizuno: Actually, this one was one of those difficult births too.
Sakai: At first, Dark Biblas didn't have arms. It was too normal (for a king beetle), so I looked at the material, did a few rough lines saying "Do this, like that, and that, or so" and handed the rough to Mizuno, and I had it done again. I was pretty blunt with the designer, he seemed pretty depressed about it, so Mizuno hat to cheer him up.
Mizuno: The team stayed until the middle of the night for this. Mr Sakai could say surprisingly harsh things, so the designer of the art team would pretty often be all demoralized. After this, Mr Sakai started giving his instructions to me, and I had to sugar coat it and bring the new to the rest of the team.
Kimura: In PSO2, we prepare general settings and ideas for the enemies and their place in the story, then we go to the team in charge of enemies and have them play around with those ideas, within the boundaries we'd come up with. And so the planner would build upon what Uno or I had come up with, in more details and specifics. And we'd end up with "OK, let's go with a king beetle, or with a spider". And once that had been decided, we then give the files to the art team so that they come up with the designs. In the last case, we said we wanted a king beetle, and they gave us this really awesome looking king beetle. But Mr Sakai wanted the designer to "go beyond the file".
Mizuno: In his eyes, darkers are mutations, abominations of living creatures so Mr Sakai thinks they can't be the spitting image of something that already exists. The mission of the art team is to imagine something that goes beyond the initial idea we give them.
Sakai: A designer is not someone that just puts the words of the plan into faithful images. You have to chew on it, think about the world view, the game systems, and come up with a way to make things blend together. If you don't, then the project wouldn't need a designer, now would it? At least, this is what I have done in my work as a designer, and that's the very reason why some people have praised my work to begin with. If the general idea on paper is "a king beetle" or "a scorpion" and you give me back a really well-made, plainly normal true-to-nature king beetle, then what am I to say other than "That's not the work of a designer"? But then when I say it, Mr Mizuno scolds me...

[/spoiler-box]

[landman]

For those who have not been around from mid 90s to now:

After Phantasy Star 4 Kodama was in charge of the RPG Magic Knight Rayearth and a Resident Evil wannabe called Deep Fear, after that her next title was Skies of Arcadia.
The Sonic Team made Burning Rangers for the saturn, multiplayer didn't reach the release and was cut, the game features maps that change layouts every time, like PSO.
ST started to work on an online action RPG for the Dreamcast, and because Yuji Naka was at the peak of his career he took the name Phantasy Star, because he did some programming in some of the original games and as such he was entitled to continue the franchise...
Overworks (Kodama's Team) supervised PS collection (GBA) and the remakes for the Sega Ages 2500 (PS2), then they made one of the worst Sega games on the PS2: Project Altered Beast, since that, Kodama is credited as 7th Dragon producer, she was not involved in Valkyria Chronicles (Overworks remnants)

As far as I know, Kodama does not recognize the online series as a continuation of the original games, and before the online series started she said she wanted to make PSV and maybe fight against the Great Light.

https://twitter.com/phoenix_rie

[yoshiblue]

Bleh, not sure I buy the relationship nonsense for their popularity. I mean, it does factor into things, but i'm going to agree with what people said before and chalk it up as bad writing/character development. Echo especially. But . . . as far as bad writing goes, I don't think I have much room to talk.Then again, i'm not effected by the idol craze and the desire for "pure" characters either.

[Altiea]

Bleh, not sure I buy the relationship nonsense for their popularity. I mean, it does factor into things, but i'm going to agree with what people said before and chalk it up as bad writing/character development. Echo especially. But . . . as far as bad writing goes, I don't think I have much room to talk.Then again, i'm not effected by the idol craze and the desire for "pure" characters either.

It's hard to say that they had bad character development if they had almost none in the first place. I would personally like it if Marlu and Ohza got together. Echo doesn't get much of a pass, but they acknowledged that her character is explicitly one-dimensional, so at least they know.

I would understand the lack of line at Echo's Fried Noodles if they tasted like insecurity and bittersweet friendship.

[Zyrusticae]

I find it weird that they won't let Marlu and Ohza become an official couple. What's the point of that? Not like they lose anything if people pay even less attention to them when they're already near the bottom. Plus, y'know, Theodore and Ulc are already a couple and look where they ended up...

[Zysets]

As far as I know, Kodama does not recognize the online series as a continuation of the original games, and before the online series started she said she wanted to make PSV and maybe fight against the Great Light.[/url]

I didn't expect her to really care for the Online series, it's an entirely separate thing altogether with only a few borrowed names and themes.

But boy would I love it if we did get a PSV, especially if the Great Light is involved, you get into the whole thing about the Great Light not necessarily being benevolent in PSIV, so it would be the perfect next step.

[starwind75043]

Last tidbit (sort of...)

[spoiler-box]
Uno: We created it fully believing that if we missed that, the character would be done for.
Q: But the fact that she's a team with Saga is part of her charm, right?
Uno: True, you could say that it wouldn't have worked if she 'd been alone.
[/spoiler-box]

part 4

[spoiler-box]
(continuing from page 120)

Q: Well, his voice actor, Mr Tomokazu Sugita, surely had something to do with it.
Uno: Yes, the voice actor himself is a part of his success. But I was still suprised he'd rank in 3rd.
Kimura: I think Saga got there because he's always around Katori.
Uno: That's quite possible, after all, we always put them in a set. All their lines were created together.

Q: It's a bid sad that Oza and Maru and always in the lower parts of the rankings though.
Uno: It's OK, these two are done anyway. I mean, we're done with their relationship and what is going on with them, how they progress.
Kimura: There's that, but also, keep in mind, we have a lot of guys playing this game, so if we make them an official couple, the players might stop looking at them. Although of course, the exact same thing would apply to Xeno and Echo.
Uno: I like them, they have these very humanly traits about their characters, but...
Q: Echo is also one of those victims, she doesn't get as much success as she should, really.
Sakai: Echo's Fried Noodles aren't selling !
Q: Those from the food booths at the Thank You Festival?
Kimura: All the other booths named after a character had lines of people waiting, except hers.
Mizuno: She's always talking about Xeno or crying after him, so of course players would think she has no interest at all in them anyway and would stop looking at her.

Everybody can see why Loser/Luther is number 1

Q: Now, we mentioned this earlier, but I'd like to go back to the enemy popularity ranking.
Mizuno: Loser was number 1.
Sakai: Isn't that because Luther (his human form) is popular?
Kimura: There definitely is a part of that in the results, yes.
Q: Looking at the rankings, Magatsu in 2nd place is probably because he gives so many rares.
Uno: And Ko Lera is in 3rd place because of the gap between her looks and her voice! When we were recording her voice, Kimura begged for an ultra loli voice.
Mizuno: But thanks to that, we could talk about enemies in P-SPEC (official PSO2 doujinshi) and it led to other good things.
Kimura: Loser is popular because of the character, but also because he's the best enemy we did, in my opinion.
Mizuno: Ah, in terms of gaming.
Q: Yes, the fight against Dark Falz Loser is pretty cool.
Kimura: We upgraded that fight at one point, and with this upgrade, Loser and Magatsu can be seen as two things we really created well. And the way he moves is good too. Even if we forget the character for a moment, the Loser fight in the game is just fun. I'd put it up front when describing the good parts of the game. And after those two, maybe Elder.
Uno: Well, for Loser, we had the settings, the scenario and the game system really blending in each others, so we could write his parts into every aspect at once.
Mizuno: Yes, Loser was quite some minute work. Honestly, I think we could have done a bit more with Elder. But for Loser, maybe it's because we were at EP2, we had more meetings, and we had gotten the hang of it?
Kimura: Magatsu was made a team of youngsters, so quite frankly, the lack of experience probably still showed a little bit.
Mizuno: Yeah, we had trouble understanding where the "game" was in the Magatsu fight, at first. Never before had the enemy been so big, and we had to come up with game mechanics for it.
Kimura: Plus of course, he had to be more shocking than what had come before. It's always difficult to create something at later stages, because the hurdle of quality gets higher and higher.

Q: I think though that at the time, a fight agasint Dark Falz still meant something to the players. Nowadays the fight agasint Dark Falz is still like the preliminaries.
Uno: Well, yes, just after that, you have to fight "The Profound Darkness".
Q: I think users still see Elder as the Boss of EP1 and Loser as the Boss of EP2.
Kimura: In the early drafts, we wanted Dark Falz to be a group like the Four Heavenly Kings, so we decided there would be 4 of them. Then we had Uno write the story and have one Dark Falz coming up in each part. But then, the end of EP2 is Dark Falz, OK, yet if we have another Dark Falz at the end of EP3, it would be the same old thing. So we decided to pull out the Profound Darkness. But then, what happens with Dark Falz? We thought about it, and we decided to make The Profound Darkness stick out by saying that compared to it, even the fight agasint Dark Falz is just an appetizer.

Q: I see... Incidentally, how did you decide the special names of the Dark Falz? Like Elder and so.
Uno: It was all made to accomodate the story. The "Young Person" one is read "Apprentice", it means "Trainee", and Elder is kind of "someone who stands above you". Loser is, well, exactly that. As for Double, people still ask me if the name shouldn't have been "The Twins".
Kimuro: Double is still OK. The kanji for Elder are "Giant Body", so the reading is absolutely not related. Why did you choose that?
Mizuno: Because it looks sooooo cool.
Uno: Well, we couldn't read it "Big", it would have sounded stupid. I wanted something that sounds cool, and that would stick in the users' heads.
Kimuro: After each recording session, people would say "you didn't specify the readings and I had no idea what it was". Actually, we didn't write the reading throughout the entire script of EP1. So I had to tell them "Look, just say Elder every time it comes up" and some veteran voice actors just laughed, "Wow, you really want to show off with such a name!" I remember Uno was pretty embarrassed.
Q: And you, Mr Sakai, who's your favorite enemy?
Sakai: I suppose it's Dark Biblas. (Vibrace?)
Mizuno: Actually, this one was one of those difficult births too.
Sakai: At first, Dark Biblas didn't have arms. It was too normal (for a king beetle), so I looked at the material, did a few rough lines saying "Do this, like that, and that, or so" and handed the rough to Mizuno, and I had it done again. I was pretty blunt with the designer, he seemed pretty depressed about it, so Mizuno hat to cheer him up.
Mizuno: The team stayed until the middle of the night for this. Mr Sakai could say surprisingly harsh things, so the designer of the art team would pretty often be all demoralized. After this, Mr Sakai started giving his instructions to me, and I had to sugar coat it and bring the new to the rest of the team.
Kimura: In PSO2, we prepare general settings and ideas for the enemies and their place in the story, then we go to the team in charge of enemies and have them play around with those ideas, within the boundaries we'd come up with. And so the planner would build upon what Uno or I had come up with, in more details and specifics. And we'd end up with "OK, let's go with a king beetle, or with a spider". And once that had been decided, we then give the files to the art team so that they come up with the designs. In the last case, we said we wanted a king beetle, and they gave us this really awesome looking king beetle. But Mr Sakai wanted the designer to "go beyond the file".
Mizuno: In his eyes, darkers are mutations, abominations of living creatures so Mr Sakai thinks they can't be the spitting image of something that already exists. The mission of the art team is to imagine something that goes beyond the initial idea we give them.
Sakai: A designer is not someone that just puts the words of the plan into faithful images. You have to chew on it, think about the world view, the game systems, and come up with a way to make things blend together. If you don't, then the project wouldn't need a designer, now would it? At least, this is what I have done in my work as a designer, and that's the very reason why some people have praised my work to begin with. If the general idea on paper is "a king beetle" or "a scorpion" and you give me back a really well-made, plainly normal true-to-nature king beetle, then what am I to say other than "That's not the work of a designer"? But then when I say it, Mr Mizuno scolds me...

[/spoiler-box]

Main Waifus

By appearance in story

Quna, Matoi, Tea & Patty, Katori, Seraphy(psoes) Jean(psoes) Annette(psoes)

Side waifus

Lisa, Fourier, Melphonsina, Lisa, Lottie, Io, Azanami, Claris Claes, Weaponoids

side waifus that are attached to guys

Aki, Echo, Sara, Hitsugi,

Your dead to me

MArlu



Jesus christ.....I never thought about it but pso2 does have a Harem side to it lol

[loafhero]

Ohza and Marlu did sort of get some character development. They started off as being very proud of their respective classes but eventually learned to swallow their pride by EP3. That said, they are very boring and would have been completely forgettable characters if it wasn't for that short romantic misunderstanding sub-plot of them.

[EmuManiac]

The same translation issues are now present in the 2nd episode, chapter 5 - several parts of the story are in Japanese :( Is it possible to fix it? Or maybe there's a translation script somewhere, from which I can gather the missing pieces of the story?

And please don't do the story translation via the plugins! The game will be unplayable if you do, since running it from tweaker causes error 630 after some time has passed :(

[Zysets]

The same translation issues are now present in the 2nd episode, chapter 5 - several parts of the story are in Japanese :( Is it possible to fix it? Or maybe there's a translation script somewhere, from which I can gather the missing pieces of the story?

And please don't do the story translation via the plugins! The game will be unplayable if you do, since running it from tweaker causes error 630 after some time has passed :(

I heard the recent updates with the game messed up the way the Story patch works, give it time, the story patch team is probably losing their minds trying to fix that already.

And about Error 630, I've never encountered that, I think you should get in contact with the Tweaker team and let them know.

[EmuManiac]

Well, the story translation patch hasn't been updated for a very long time :'( It's current date is 5/8/2016 - 3 months ago...

And about tweaker, this is a known problem and it seems there is just no solutions (at lease for those like me, who never used proxy and still got the cursed NP103 error)

[Sirius-91]

Well, the story translation patch hasn't been updated for a very long time :'( It's current date is 5/8/2016 - 3 months ago...

And about tweaker, this is a known problem and it seems there is just no solutions (at lease for those like me, who never used proxy and still got the cursed NP103 error)

EP3/EP2 is low priority right now. We are aware of it though, AIDA said that it will take some time to fix it, considering how much became broken. Anyways, any new story updates will likely contain EP4 related updates, so don't get your hopes up.

[EmuManiac]

Anyways, any new story updates will likely contain EP4 related updates, so don't get your hopes up
Nooooooo :'(

[EmuManiac]

AIDA, thank you very much for answering me! <3 Please fix them when possible, you are the only one who can :)


It does? The Tweaker shouldn't be causing this.
It did before... I'll try to test it again in order to confirm the issue.

[EmuManiac]

Well, I just wanted to say that so far everything seems perfect when I use Tweaker 3.1.0.4 / 3.1.0.5. Great work, AIDA, you're really something else! :)

[Zorak000]

EPISODES 1/2/3 (The part where the story ACTUALLY MADE SENSE)
lol

this story has never made sense don't kid yourself

[Meteor Weapon]

I guess Aida is trying to say made more sense than wtf is going on in EP4.

[Altiea]

And then I got lazy and didn't post Part 5 for two weeks.

Part 5

[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/TXRU85Q.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hwTZXCH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HQ3H0xM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/BuuH4Re.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xdxXSNq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/6maiGq8.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/T9snBSR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/1kaCtGF.jpg
[/SPOILER-BOX]

I hate how Imgur handles image scrolling in albums, and since they were uploaded out of order, they maaaay be some consistency issues.

[Altiea]

Bumping!

[Zorak000]

I guess Aida is trying to say made more sense than wtf is going on in EP4.
honestly it feels like it is a bit on track with the previous episodes in terms of how much we know about what is going on. it's just the whole "There is an in-canon videogame named PSO2 that is beaming people into the ARKS fleet" thing that is throwing people for a loop, but they are already explaining bits of it; which beat's the previous episodes' MO of not really explaining anything until the last two chapters.

[Zysets]

honestly it feels like it is a bit on track with the previous episodes in terms of how much we know about what is going on. it's just the whole "There is an in-canon videogame named PSO2 that is beaming people into the ARKS fleet" thing that is throwing people for a loop, but they are already explaining bits of it; which beat's the previous episodes' MO of not really explaining anything until the last two chapters.

I feel the same way, Episode 4 doesn't make sense in terms of the "Phantasy Star" brand, but as a stand alone story it's been much more solid that the first Episode of PSO2. It's not perfect, but I feel like I actually understand this as it's happening as opposed to Episode 1 where half the time I had no idea what I was doing. That was my biggest issue with the Matterboards in Episode 1, there was so much random stuff being thrown at you, and sometimes out of order due to how a player might approach the content, and it made no sense until the end.

I like the overall story of EP1-3 better, but I can't really judge Episode 4 since it's not even over yet.

[Zorak000]

I like to think of Episode 1 and 2 as Xion guiding you through a Tool Assisted Speed Run that allows for glitches