Eurogamer: You mentioned you have a philosophy for what makes a good game. What is it?
Shigenobu Matsuyama: One of the game philosophies I have is I want to recreate the feeling you get that, oh, I made a mistake. I've been doing this for over 10 years. A lot of people in the company - executives - don't like this style. For a gun-shooting game, you accidentally shoot a normal civilian. Nowadays it's normal, but in the past it was almost a taboo. I wanted to represent - not because I wanted to shoot civilians - but I wanted to make people be careful, get the feeling of, 'Oh, I made a mistake.'
I thought it was very important. But I also added a non-reward when you do that. When you shoot a civilian, your rank becomes lower from a police officer to a junior police officer. You're punished when you do that.
It's the same with Rising. I want to recreate a feeling that you made a mistake and you feel like you made a mistake, not to the extent that you're going to hate the game, but people will think, 'Okay, next time I will try to not make a mistake and I want a challenge.' That feeling is very important to a game, and I want to put that in Rising. Keeping the tension of that feeling is important as well.
So, in Rising, you might make a mistake. You might try to get just his weapon but you might cut his hand, and then you're surrounded more and you're in a more difficult position. Or, you're trying to do the zan-datsu, you're trying to cut the mechs and get the batteries out. But if you make a mistake, you can't get that item out.
I want to make people learn from their mistakes. That's one of the philosophies I have.