Interview LiveWii Act II : LostWinds : Winter of Melodias
- Indubitavely, LostWinds was and is still one of the most acclaimed game delivered from the WiiWare platform. Did you expect to get so a great wellcoming for the game ? And at the opposite, do you agree with the negative critics about the game like the difficulty and the fact that LostWinds was too short ?
The fact that LostWinds was very well received is very exciting and gratifying for the team, and even more so because the game is an original idea that has come up through the ranks rather than us working on someone elses license, for example. Its very much the baby of the development team and, like all good parents, they are very interested in what others think of their offspring, and proud of what it achieves!
Basically we wrote the LostWinds game for people like ourselves, who wanted a deep gameplay experience on the Wii with a beautiful skin. So we could tell from the reaction to the games original concept and during development internally with the company and with a few others to whom we showed the game that we were doing something right, so we very much hoped people would like it, but of course one can never be certain of such things.
With regard to the length of the game, there was some criticism of the length taking between three and five hours to complete but personally I take that as praise, in a funny sort of way people were wanting more. Ironically, looking at the forums discussing LostWinds, a similar number mention that it is too short as those that didnt complete it! More seriously, though, we do take peoples criticisms seriously, and Winter of the Melodias is significantly longer than the first game. Having said that, there are full priced games I have completed in five hours!
I hadnt heard that the game was too easy or hard. We are aware that some people felt a little lost at some points. So for Winter of the Melodias we have put in a high level map and various hint mechanisms so that people will always understand where they are meant to be headed, but not giving specific directions to keep the explorative feel of the game.
- One of the questions our readers asked a lot is why don't you see further and publish a LostWinds adventure on a DVD ? Don't you think that the gamers will think this sequel won't be longer because of its format ? Have you tried to get an agreement with Nintendo to be able to publish an « heavier » game and not only a « 43 Mo » one ?
We have always had a very grand vision for LostWinds, we put a lot of effort into establishing the ethos and mythos of Mistralis, the gameworld - there is a lot more of the story to be revealed.
For now, we like the creative control that digital distribution gives us. Obviously we have done what we can to try and maximize the amount of quality gameplay time (as opposed to pointless grinding) that is in the second game, we have made many optimizations to create more space for content. If people are put off buying the game by their expectation of the length of the game then we are sorry about that but its their choice -we have played many fullprice disc-based retail games on all consoles whos playthrough time was only an hour or two more than the original LostWinds, and we dont hear particular complaints about them.
About Winter of Melodias :
- The possibility offered by « twisting » the seasons seems a great way to deliver a fully new gameplay. Should we expect more changes to the game's mechanics ? The last trailer showed us a kind of new costume for Toku. Is that a key about a new power ?
Thank you - with Winter of the Melodias we have made a big effort to offer the same amount of new gameplay ideas that were in the first game, rather than sit back and just do more levels using the same mechanics. You can expect the same clarity of control system, but there are definitely a whole host of new mechanics, all used in combination with those from the first game.
Foremost is the ability to switch seasons the player can do this pretty much at will for a large part of the game, and so the environments and the seasons characteristics become part of the puzzles. The players powers also have different effects for example in winter if the player draws a vortex in the air a snowball forms, that can then be used to bash enemies or as part of puzzles.
There are several other new powers, the most important probably being cylone, which you can use to transport Toku, smash enemies, move water around the landscape or even drill through the rock around you.
We wondered whether anyone would notice Tokus suit - you have sharp eyes! I dont want to reveal how he gets it, but early in the game Toku suffers from the cold (so you have to keep him near fire). The suit helps him keep warm form longer, and also have a better grip on slippery surfaces. One of the Snow Monsters is also in the background of one of the videos we have released, but I dont know that anyone has noticed it yet!
- The graphics were one of the highlights of the first title but different areas were perhaps too similar. Do you renew the pleasure of the eyes mainly with the transition between seasons? Otherwise are there more varied environments in the specifications?
We agree with your comment that the different areas were similar one of the other objectives for this game was to increase the visual diversity of our environments. Fortunately the story this time takes us through different areas of Mistralis, the mountainous Chilling Peaks area in search of the Melodia City, the fabled cradle of the lost Melodia civilization whos statues are found dotted throughout Mistralis. This provides some fantastic environments within which to play the game.
So there is both a greater diversity of fundamental environments, and then the ability to change to Winter also gives a complete graphical makeover when it happens and more importantly changes how the player plays the game.
People will also notice even further improved graphics generally, lots of little touches and some great water and ice effects.
- As we've said, LostWinds was maybe too easy for some gamers. Do you have a word on it ? Could we expect a more complex game ?
You can certainly expect a more sophisticated game. We always try to keep our games accessible. We would much rather people got to the end of our games having enjoyed themselves and wanting more than giving up in frustration part way through.
Winter of the Melodias has a story arc where the fate of Tokus mother Magdi is entwined with the fate of the ancient Melodia civilization, and also an interesting parallel to Toku and Enril where an unfortunate character called Riveren found Balasar in the same way Toku found Enril but things didnt work out quite as well for him
On top of that we still have all the powers from the first game, combined with the new powers such as season switching, swimming and cyclone plus some great new enemies.
So Id prefer to say the game has evolved there are definitely many more aspects to the experience but we still retain the clarity and simplicity of control that characterized the first game.
- In this connection, side quests and mini-games are they in the program for LostWinds : Winter of Melodias ?
One of the benefits of a strict file-size limit is that it really forces us to distill the content that goes into the game, to make sure that everything in there is fun and gives bang for buck in terms of development effort. We have added new types of gameplay to the game, but as I mentioned before they are selected for quality reasons rather than grinding to get the length of the game up or disconnected mini-games. In particular there is a greater interaction with the NPCs and a more sophisticated story for those that want it.
- Does the team that handles currently LostWinds 2 is the same as the first step?
All the key creative personnel behind the first game are back, yes.
- The idea of the seasons appears in the first artworks from LostWinds . Does that come from one of your famous meeting « Game of the week » ?
Yes, we put a lot of effort into brainstorming gameplay ideas during the very early creation of the game via our Game of the Week process, where seasons were discussed along with a lot of other things. The real seed for Winter of the Melodias came at the end of development of the first game when Chris Symonds, the art director, had some time to experiment with making one of the first games environments wintery.
The success of that experiment led to winter being the major theme of the second game.
- Last time you had mentioned some interesting ideas on paper but not some much in action. Have you once again encountered this kind of "trouble"? Does the potential contribution of the Wii MotionPlus would it not helped you in this direction ?
I think this is really a reference to the large amount of background work we had done on the game concept before we started development on WiiWare. The volume of this would be far more than could be done in one game no matter what the platform. Development of the first game was very efficient, with very little being discarded it was just we had (and still have) a large number of other ideas for the gameworld. The second game is exactly the same in that respect.
MotionPlus is great for games that can benefit from the extra precision, like sports for example, but doesnt really change the use of the Wii Remote for pointing. The gameplay we offer mainly relies on pointing at the screen, so there isnt anything in Winter of the Melodias that would benefit from MotionPlus.
What do you think are the advantages of WiiWare compared to Xbox Live or Playstation Network? The disadvantages?
We think all the digital distribution channels are great. They allow developers like us to make innovations which would otherwise be more difficult to bring to market. At Frontier we are fortunate in that we have been able to fund the LostWinds projects ourselves and therefore retain complete creative control, which is a fantastic experience.
I dont think one service is better or worse than the others the thing we need to keep in mind is the audience we are able to address. If we were to do a game for PSN or XBLA then it would probably be completely different to LostWinds for this reason.
- The last time, you had mentioned LostWinds as a « launching pad » for WiiWare, but that you had proposed titles to be released on DVD. Today, nothing has yet been unveiled. What happened to these projects? Canned, postponed or simply not unveiled yet?
Yes, we are working on three other projects, all for disc release. Unfortunately we are not able to talk about them at the moment, but all three are different from each other (and LostWinds) but they all have in common the fact they are very exciting! I hope early in 2010 you will start to see information about them.
- The accessibility of digital gaming for you was a good thing. Do you still consider that the "Clouding gaming" will be the alternative in future years ?
We dont really align ourselves with any particular platform as long as it allows us to reach an audience for our games we are happy to use it.
- The question everybody expects : will LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias be the last episode of the adventures of Toku on Wii ?
We really hope not after the first LostWinds game we had other commitments for the team to work upon, and it took us longer than we would have liked to get them back together to start work on Winter of the Melodias. But Im happy to say that after a well deserved rest the team will start to prepare for a future LostWinds-related title, and so if there is a still an audience for more LostWinds then there is no question we have the enthusiasm to deliver more, and lots of great ideas for the future.
So far I only played 20 minutes, but there was already some new stuff, you can create snowballs out ouf snoeflakes and there is an "attack" with which you can freeze burning enemies.