I am a big fans of CyberConnect2’s (they like to call themselves CC2 and worked on the Naruto and .hack games) works and their lovely character design has been a huge inspiration for me personally. After teasing it for so long, CC2 boss Hiroshi Matsuyama finally reveals the DS title that will celebrate the company’s 15th Anniversary. Solarobo (working title) is an ARPG that has been in the planning for 10 years and in production for 3 years with quite a few heavy weight collaborators behind. Matsuyama himself will the Executive Director, Takayuki Isobe the Director, Nobuteru Yuuki the character designer, Yoshitaka Taniguchi (of Super Robot Taisen fame) the robot designer and finally the opening movie is currently being made at Mad House.

Story

The story is said to be a mix of sadness and happiness that our character will goes through in this really expansive world that CC2 created. Sheparudo Republic is a nation made up of several floating islands and as you’d expect, its concept arts look amazing. Two races dominate the country, Inuhito (the Taiwan version of Famitsu translate it as Dog People) and Nekohito (the Cat People). Our hero Red Savarin is from Inuhito and he controls his Robo (the official name given to robots in the game) called Dahak-AZ103 to take on missions as a Hunter and earns rewards for his efforts.

Red Savarin & Dahak-AZ103

17-years-old Red Savarin is a hot blooded young boy who likes to take care of other people’s kids. The story in Solarobo started with him meeting a mysterious Nekohito called Elh Melizee. Although he won’t reveals anything at this moment, Matsuyama says both human and Robo will have character growth system.

Actions

Red moves around and fighting enemies in the game while riding on Dahak-AZ103 but there are situations where his Robo can’t reach and he has to get down to move around in ‘human form’. You will need to make use of both Robo and Human forms to solve the various gimmicks and situations. Unlike the enemies it will meets in the game, Dahak-AZ103 doesn’t carries a weapon in the game as it fights by lifting and throwing items at them. Some of the things it can grabs and throws include cannon fired by the enemies or even quickly move behind enemies to lift them.

On the other hand, Red has to find item, operates machines, climbing ladder or swimming on his own. In human form, Red should move stealthily since his weapon don’t really do any real damage to the enemies. If he get killed when moving alone, it’s game over. According to the Matsuyama, there will be times when the Robo are fighting each other. The graphics when moving around in towns will make use of a technology that looks closer to anime, where the perspective of the background will readjust based on the movements of the character (the screen above is an example given). This allows CC2 to apply their beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds into the game. However, dungeons in the game will be standard 3D graphics.

Characters

A bunch of characters get shown and needless to say, they look great. They are grouped into partners, enemies and mysterious characters with brief introduction. The aforementioned Elh and Chocolat Gelato will be your partners, the former doesn’t really talk a lot but will sometimes make some comments that make her looks cold blooded while the latter is Red’s younger sister who are like his brother, loves to take care of other people, loves robots and use some kind of communication tools to help Red.

Beluga Damiens and his Robo called Salamander//009 are in the mysterious characters group. He is a Nekohito as well and always appears at places that Red goes to. His Robo is good at hit and run and the Buster Cannon is its finishing weapon.

Opera Kranz (Robo is Tiamat-FL), Gren Sacher (Robo is Mephisto TA), Calua Napage (Robo is OverMephisto 9MS), Merveille Million and Bruno Dondurma are in the enemies group (by the way, the English character names are displayed in the magazine report). They are belong to the largest Hunter group in Sheparudo called Gubasu with Bruno the leader behind.

1000+ Artworks

The concept arts for the title has apparently reaches 1000 pieces already. Everything in the game world, including houses, technology, costumes, its culture or even things that you won’t see on the tiny DS screen are drawn in details.

Interview With Matsuyama

“It has been a while! This will be CyberConnect2 first ever new IP for Nintendo DS” is Matsuyama’s answer when Famitsu ask why DS instead of a PlayStation platform. “This is the year when CyberConnect2 has been around for 15 years and our very first game was Tail Concerto. This is the game to celebrate these passing years and we are at the final adjustment stage.”

So is it really 10 years in the planning? “No kidding! We really spent 10 years to think about this with 3 years of production. It’s hard to believe isn’t it? A DS game that take three years to make. Thankfully Bandai Namco Games are willing to wait for us!” Matsuyama says jokingly. “Techinically, we spent one year designing and official development time is two years. However, the game is already running at designing stage.”

“As a creator, I would like to let people see my works as soon as possible but I feel since we are doing it, we should try to cramp as much content as possible into the game. As a result, three new models of DSes has been released since then.” he laughs. “Due to the announcement of DSi, we also added some DSi features.” although he confirms that the game is still playable on DS.

“The design materials created for this is comparable to an OVA. Although the game probably won’t be able to show all of them, we decided to properly designed its culture, social, politics and religions before merging them with the game system.” So is everything being used then? “Of course there will be things that can’t make it. We really overdo it this time! But thanks to all these details, it make it easier during development when we need to imagine the settings.”

Matsuyama went on to explain the two main races in the game world. “Inuhito has higher intelligence and more agile hands. They also created the robot culture in the world. On the other hand, Nekohito is strong physically and know how to use magics. However, they are not good at operating robots.”

“There will a huge event at the beginning of the game that changes the life of the main character. This ‘problem’ is big enough to destroy the world and the main character’s goal becomes clear after that. As for the enemies, they also have a good reason to fight against our hero.” Famitsu asks if this will be a heart warming story, just like its character design. “Really sorry, it actually won’t be heart warming. The game will starts with plenty of warm to it but will be very serious from then on. We are not trying to tell a fantasy story but a sci-fi world, its the kind of story that I frequently see in manga or anime, something that are full of ’sci-fi fun’”.

At the end of this Famitsu article, Bandai Namco (publisher for the game) says the game is 70% done and given that CyberConnect2 isn’t particularly well known for its timeliness in the past, don’t be surprised if this one come out after the recently announced 3DS, which will makes it four DSes get released during its development time. They are also very stingy when it comes to releasing shots to the online medias, which explains why there are only a handful of them (taken from the official site) for this report but seeing the mag report will convince you that this is a must-have late DS games :)

Posted in News on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 12:17 am | Tags arpg art bandai namco cyberconnect2 famitsu interview
Comments Feed | You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.