KH3D Siliconera interviews Tai Yasue on Kingdom Hearts 3D

[DChiuch 5,773]

Kingdom Hearts 3D releases in 1 day (July 20) for Europe, and in 13 days (July 31) for North America. Please keep our spoiler policy in mind when posting anything on KH13, including comments, topics, posts and statuses.

Siliconera have conducted an interview with Tai Yasue, the co-director of the Kingdom Hearts series, concerning Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]. They have published the first half of this interview, and thanks to them, you can read it below.

How did you pick the worlds? You have the Hunchback of Notre Dame world; the Musketeers, which isn’t as well known; and Fantasia, which is a key film.

 

Tai Yasue, Director: Each world has its difference and meaning. Notre Dame had a lot of user feedback. A lot of users wanted Notre Dame to be added, so we listened to them and we put that in. For The Three Musketeers, we thought it would just be interesting that Mickey, Donald and Goofy were dressed differently. [They] were sort of themselves but in a different way. We thought that would be sort of fresh.

For Fantasia, we wanted players to play with the music. We have some nice classical music, so I guess a music-centric game.

I remember reading in another interview that you were originally thinking about having the original Tron world in the game, and then you decided to go for [Tron] Legacy. Sora was supposed to go to the original Tron world and Riku would go to Legacy. Can you tell us about that?

That was Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, but we also considered Tron, too. I think we wanted Tron: Legacy at the very beginning, but for Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, we were thinking about that. Sora was going to go to Fantasia and Riku was going to go to Fantasia 2000.

We wanted Sora and Riku to go to the same world but in a different way, but at the very end, we looked at a lot of music and locations in Fantasia and thought that was really rich, and we wanted to concentrate on the best locations, so we concentrated on one Fantasia.

A lot of fans are happy to see The World Ends With You characters in Traverse Town. It was kind of cool how you had Joshua explain what was going on between Sora and Riku.

Well, actually, Nomura wanted The World Ends With You added and we wanted to sort of change Traverse Town. We always use that world, so we wanted to make it fresh and new in a way that would work. The fields for example were buildings that looked sort of like Shibuya with a lot of graffiti and we had a change of look.

For previous Kingdom Hearts, we’ve used a lot of Final Fantasy characters and we wanted a departure from that for Traverse Town, so The World Ends With You was a natural selection.

What was it like programming the AI for all the different Dream Eaters?

We actually used a different AI system for [Kingdom Hearts] 3D. During Birth by Sleep, it was script-based, but for 3D, we used a new game flow tool. For one Dream Eater, there’s actually several “characters”. Several personalities. So if you have your mascot characters, they would do different things. We were able to have the freedom to make a wide variety of tweaks and changes for the Dream Eaters.

For the mascot Dream Eaters that you carry along with you, they actually change along the way if you pet them and stuff. So it really depends on the character. They might just sleep, they might be really useless, or they might be angry all the time and attack a lot. Overall, there was a lot more AI than Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.

What are you going to do with all that AI for a future Kingdom Hearts game? What are you going to do with all this tech that you developed for 3D?

Well, there are a lot of ideas coming along. I’m not really in a position to talk about the next Kingdom Hearts, but I think AI is something that we really have put more power into. For the next-gen consoles like the PS3 for example, there’s a lot more things you can do compared to the 3DS, just because there’s a lot more CPU power. So, if we were to make a game for the next-gen [systems], for the PS3 for example, we would rather like to utilize that part.

[darkchaser 788]

awesome. Hopefuly when they make KH3 they bump up the AI to be useful

[Lu Xun 2,069]

Nice interview...

Always good to read them talking about KH games (:

[Shana09 5,769]

Now I love the dream eaters more, but I am wondering, if they just sleep, will they sleep right in the middle of a boss battle?

[DarkRealm20 121]

Awesome, I think he was hinting that the next KH is gonna be on a next gen console.

[atheist123 583]

Awesome, I think he was hinting that the next KH is gonna be on a next gen console.

 

It's weird, he said "next-gen" then said PS3 so I really don't know.... was this a translation? could be an error (:

[Rob 5,571]

Old repeated interview...

Always good to read them talking about KH games (:

 

Fixed.

[Exodaze 491]

I hear Tai Yasue's voice in my head as I read it. lol

[Rob 5,571]

I hear Tai Yasue's voice in my head as I read it. lol

 

lol Me too

[Sarah Choco 8]

I really hope they dont bring the next KH on PS3 ,next gen system is better. Sounds weird in the Interview.

Oh ,i really cant wait to play the game. It arrived today ,but i will wait till next week when i get my 3DS Xl for the ultimate experience

[KHLegendIII 709]

I really hope they dont bring the next KH on PS3 ,next gen system is better. Sounds weird in the Interview.

Oh ,i really cant wait to play the game. It arrived today ,but i will wait till next week when i get my 3DS Xl for the ultimate experience

 

 

 

 

Well they likely will bring it to the PS3 if it is Kingdom Hearts III as a matter of fact a kingdom hearts project is said to utilize Crystal Tools.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Tom13

[baptiscool19 68]

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/07/19/kingdom-hearts-3ds-director-discusses-drop-mechanic-and-flowmotion/

[Kishira 2,854]

So the only changes for our version is the tweeked health-bar after dropping during boss battles and a new Drop Bonus? Cool. owo

[Tails 6,690]

So the only changes for our version is the tweeked health-bar after dropping during boss battles and a new Drop Bonus? Cool. owo

 

Do I smell a Final Mix coming along? if there are gonna be bonuses in the English version of the game then that means another Final Mix.

[SquareSora 133]

well,its a good thing that they changed some things in the NA version.

 

Do I smell a Final Mix coming along? if there are gonna be bonuses in the English version of the game then that means another Final Mix.

 

probably but we still have no confirmation.

[Rob 5,571]

Oh Tai Yasue.

[LadyZizi 0]

"Kingdom Hearts 3D really connects to the next Kingdom Hearts–Kingdom Hearts 3."

It's kinda funny when you think how reluctant Testsuya Nomura was on saying that clearly in his interviews.