One interesting about this title is the change in the art direction -- where did that come from?
Tim O'Leary: Sure. Well, it all comes from the team back in Japan. In the course of the series, they'd make a lot of changes to gameplay and how the system works. But they were hearing a lot of comments in the media, and things from users: "We like the game, we love the game, but it's the same thing." Where we've got the same game -- it looks like a solid game, but there's not really a lot of new things.
Their reaction was, "What? We're changing so much!" But I think a lot of the changes that they were doing were not cosmetic changes. So we were seeing that sort of feedback. They decided, "OK, well, let's make a cosmetic overhaul of the game. Let's see if that works." And it was really an organic process for them, where they said, "OK, what is 'war'?"
And they discovered that they, as Japanese people, have an idea that is different from what other audiences were looking for -- and this is all based on comments that I've heard from them -- a lot of their view of war, based on their previous games, was that they had a very light-hearted take. You know, pastel colors, quirky characters, and what-not; and they basically said, "Well, let's take that and re-envision it." You know, it's dirtier, it's darker, it's more somber.
And basically what they did from that is they said, "OK, we want to give people a new idea of our vision of war. Introduce a darker palette, so it's all browns and grays and dark greens, and it's a much more somber looking game. We want a world that will inhabit that vision. And so they created this world, and then they destroyed it with this meteor strike, and so 90 percent of the population is dead; there are tsunamis, and earthquakes; and there are these giant ash and dust clouds that block out the sunlight, so the vegetation is dying. So it's a very somber, very dirty, dark world.
And then they said, "OK, who will inhabit this world?" And that's how they came up with the character creation, how they came up with the motivation for the different characters, and that of course informs the whole plot line in the whole game. It all stemmed from this much-re-envisioned take of 'war'.
That's where the art direction came from, and also like I said earlier, it seems to be a very organic process. "OK, we have a world. We crush it. What does that world look like? OK, these are the colors that display that best. Who inhabits this world? These characters. What are these characters doing? Well, what would you do if you were the last remaining 10 percent of the population? What kind of people are you going to find?" And again, it all just stemmed from that conversation. That's where this new world came from.