|
What do you think of other combo-heavy games? There's Skullgirls; that's very much based on Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but it's another very combo-heavy game.
TI: With that subgenre of fighting games that's combo-heavy, it's very important that the process you go through from practice to being able to do everything is a great deal of fun -- that you're developing yourself. I've only been seriously involved with combo-oriented fighters for about six years, but for me, it's really fun and addictive to go through a well-designed curve like that until I'm at the point where I'm beating players who were at it before I was.
I think part of the fun of Continuum Shift at the start is the player having the ability to just press the buttons to get a taste of all the sorts of moves you can do in the game. He can't beat another human player that way, but against a CPU that's at the level of Stylish mode, he can. It's not fun for the player if he does nothing but lose from the point he starts the game.
With Stylish, the CPU level is down to the point where it's plausible for the player to finish the story mode. Once the player gets used to the game through that experience, then he'll be able to take on human opponents. There's always the impression that combo-based games are harder to learn because it's difficult to see how moves connect with each other, but I don't think that this game is as rigid with those rules as others.
Can you talk about your animation process? SNK does 3D models that they draw over, but Skullgirls does it all hand-drawn.
TI: We work the first way, with 3D -- well, first we come up with concepts for each of the moves the characters would be capable of, then we build those motions based off of that with 3D models. These motions get converted back to 2D, and then we engage in pixel-level cleanup and fixing to come up with what you see in the game.
Do you think that's faster or more efficient than the old hand-drawing type of way?
TI: I think there are cases where doing it all hand-drawn might wind up being faster in the end. Using 3D models, however, makes it easier to maintain an even visual balance across every move from every character. The backgrounds are 3D, too, and thus it's important the characters seem natural against those backdrops -- something that the 3D model approach also helps with. So it may take more time, but I think it's still a more efficient approach to getting better results.
I like 2D art a lot, so I'm happy you've made the choice, but why do you choose to have it be 2D in the end instead of just polishing up those 3D models you make?
TI: I think that's just been a part of the flow of our game history, starting with the first Guilty Gear. It's something that people expect from us at this point. There are tons of 3D fighters these days, but it's not as if the market is demanding every one of them to be 2D. That's the philosophy our producer takes to it, and one of the aims of BlazBlue was to retain the nice things about pixel art while taking the whole package to the next level.
Well, I'm glad that you're protecting 2D.
TI: (laughs) Well, a lot of players still enjoy that style. If you went fully 3D -- like with Street Fighter IV, presenting a 2D style with 3D graphics -- then that's inherently not going to be the same. That same animation style won't work, for example -- there are players who really enjoy looking at each individual frame of animation.
The UI in your games have always been excellent and stylish. It's been the case all the way back to Arc's visual novel games -- is that something that naturally evolved from that era?
HM: That's something we've almost forgotten about at that point. (laughs) The visual novel era. I think there are fewer people who know about that than don't.
TI: It's true that we pay special attention to the UI, to the point where we have artists specializing in that sort of thing. We do make an effort to not just take the simple approach, but to really pay attention to the transfers from section to section and make everything look nice. It starts with the graphic team's requests for the programmers, and then [BlazBlue series director Toshimichi] Mori, at the top of the project, checks that and decides how much of it is practical to implement.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
Combos arent just a matter of execution barrier but of allowing new set ups for risk-reward, allowing new mixups mid combo, allowing different setups for knockdown, allowing different rewards based on positioning and how much super you have, etc. Different games do this differently- skullgirls has a lot more mid-combo mixups and guilty gear/persona/blazblue has more options for combos leading to different setups, especially with certain characters.
It is really a shame that even in games with decent tutorials like Blazblue or Skullgirls, one has to go to the internet to start to understand a lot of stuff like this. Most fighting games dont explain themselves at all,which means new players have a hard time understanding why they lose(or even call the games button mashers), an understanding which is pivotal to the growth and fun that makes the genre so addictive.
I don't think the complexity of fighters is really the problem, but fighters dont give people the tools to process the games. It is like if chess didnt tell you what the hell a knight does, or if rpgs didnt let you easily compare old equipment's stats to new equipment's stats. People aren't shown how to distinguish what a move is for or what is beneficial about certain options, but once they start understanding how to interpret things in fighting games then suddenly an amazing wealth of depth is opened up.
As to tutorials: At least from my experience when I was diving head-first into the genre (about five years ago), I found that the (fan-made Internet) strategy guides for fighting games that were available in Japanese were fairly comprehensive compared to what materials (of a similar nature) were usually available in English for any given game. In addition, some games even had small (official) strategy guides aimed at beginners in addition to more in-depth ones. I think some things have certainly changed for the better on that front, though I am not prepared to fully evaluate the current state of the genre since I haven’t been able to play new releases, and have consequently not seen the current discourse.
I agree that more of these techniques ought to be discoverable within fighting games themselves, but I would surmise that part of that is the quality of what materials often don’t escape Japan along with the game. It’s not a great reason, and it’s not the only reason, but I think it is a reason.
Had a big long whinge about it here (and in the comments field):
Part 1
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanielBoutros/20091021/85759/Fighting_The_Good_Fi
ght_Why_Fighting_Games_Need_Their_Arses_Kicked_Part_1.php#comments
Part 2
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanielBoutros/20091023/85762/Fighting_The_Good_Fi
ght_Why_Fighting_Games_Need_Their_Arses_Kicked_Part_2.php#comments
Part 3
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanielBoutros/20100420/85788/Fighting_The_Good_Fi
ght_Why_Fighting_Games_Need_Their_Arses_Kicked_Part_3.php#comments
Also Brandon; a shame you are not writing things anymore. Your interviews were always among my favourites.
Gameplay improvements, making a game more enjoyable and deep like chess than like checkers, is clearly not something favored by the current market of gamers and gaming journalism. People focus more on things like abstract, loose and ultimately rather nonsensical senses of "content"(ie valueing the mediocre single player content of soul calibur 4 over the actual content and mastery presented by the greater gameplay system in sc5) This is not the field where fighting games need improvement - the field where they need improvement is the image of gameplay- how gameplay is perceived. Ability to understand the games, smaller emphasis on things like combos in many games(combos bring depth and are rather inevitable in any game with a sense of hitstun, but is there really a need for a 1f link instead of a late gatling on hit to make it easy?) so that people can get to the meat of these games more(the mindgames involved, the techniques and strategies which have incredible nuance, etc) as well as things like single player content like SC4's or decent story modes so that people are more interested in trying them in the first place.
Most people dont actively want depth. They merely want things that seem desirable to them in some loose sense of what will or wont be fun. When someone says "Minute changes aren't real innovations to me," that is not because those things arent innovations but because that person is not in the position to appreciate them and would rather have something that, instead of actually innovating, changes the game to something else. Difference is not necessarily new depth.
Clearer demonstration of the games as games like chess and less execution barriers are good things that would help the genre. But trying to change it to something else because of people (who dont see the depth in the first place cant appreciate the differences between Street Fighter 4's Ryu and Guilty Gear's Venom) isn't innovation - it is pandering to someone's mental image of what they want rather than the actuality of something's depth.
What is the goal of such "Innovations" that seek to "break the mold" of fighting games? It is not to make fighting games better(see how real improvements are ignored), it is not to give them more depth(they have tons), it is not to make them have a greater possibility field because they supposedly lack such - it is a matter of people's mental images. People with a light understanding of something want to see something that even they understand is new, regardless of whether or not it makes the game better because they are not even in a position to understand that focusing on making FGs better in depth instead of other genres is like giving a rich man a food stamp.
Its like complaining that heavy metal shouldn't be so heavy and angry :P
There's missing the point, and then there's not even being in the vicinity of the point.