The Making of ‘SOULCALIBUR VI’ (Part 1)

●Takahashi (Yoshinori)：　No, not always. In development, a Developer should also be a team player, right? We mainly approached people who seemed like they would be able to work in a team.

●Nakatsuru：　It must have been so difficult to choose!

●Ozawa：　Yes, and finding a good time to approach them was also difficult. They were so surprised, going “What!?”, when they were suddenly talked to at the event. It’s only natural, I suppose. Moreover, we often brought the player to a corner to talk more. We must have looked so suspicious there.

●Osaka：　You took them to the corner of the food court, didn’t you?

●Ozawa：　Yeah! That’s right.

●All：　Seriously? (Laughter)

●Ozawa：　To build a team which can create a “Reboot” (Meaning a “restructuring”, not “rehash”) product, we desperately needed young talents. Those enthusiastic players already have a deep understanding of the SOULCALIBUR world, though they were inexperienced in game development. All I had to do was to prepare a workplace for them, taking that risk upon myself, regardless of what the company would say. In addition to the veterans, who are now core members, I think we must never forget to bring in a new gust of wind (new staff) now and then to invigorate things.

■Ozawa：　Well, now I’d like to ask a programmer a question. Mr. Ota, what challenges did you face in the development of ‘SOULCALIBUR VI’?

●Ota：　‘SOULCALIBUR V’ was developed for PlayStation®3 and Xbox 360®. But ‘SOULCALIBUR VI’ had to run on new hardware – PlayStation®4, Xbox One and Personal Computers – hardware that we had never developed for before. In such cases, we usually do lots of research before starting. However, thanks to Unreal® Engine (*4), which we adopted for this title, it did not take long for us to get the visuals out.

As for game mechanics, if we had developed everything on Unreal® Engine, we might have lost the rich atmosphere of SOULCALIBUR born from 20-years of history. We struggled with how to migrate resources accumulated over 20-years of SOULCALIBUR history… For example, we had to throw ourselves at the challenge of figuring out how to reuse animations, battle scripts, and other complicated things, to create vivid battle scenes in Unreal® Engine.

■Ozawa：　Masuteru-san (Mr.Takahashi), when experienced players played ‘SOULCALIBUR VI’ for the first time at EVO Japan (*5), how did you feel?

●Yoshinori Takahashi
Game Designer / Director

●Takahashi (Yoshinori)：　The ‘SOUL’ series has 20 years of history. From the first version ‘SOUL EDGE’ to the latest one ‘SOULCALIBUR VI’, every title has a different operational feeling. So, it’s very difficult to find out what kind of feeling is required every time. This time, I told Mr. Ota “I would like to pick up and combine good points from different versions like– the responsive feeling from ‘SOULCALIBUR II’, and the well-balanced feeling from ‘SOULCALIBUR V’.

●Ota：　Yeah, that was where we started.

■Ozawa：　 Mr. Ota, what did you think when you heard that request from Mr. Takahashi (Yoshinori)?

●Ota：　Well, I just laughed.

■Ozawa：　Do you mean that it was “A piece of cake?”

●Ota：　Oh, no. Of course not.

●Takahashi (Yoshinori）：　Actually, Mr. Ota himself is a dedicated “fighting-game player”. That led to a breakthrough. There are programmers who tend to only think about the technical aspects, but Mr. Ota went about it with the passion of a die-hard player. I believe that we managed to get good results thanks to having Mr. Ota in the Battle Team.

■Ozawa： 　Mr. Ota, the Director, Mr. Takahashi, just gave you a stellar appraisal. How do you feel?

●Ota：　Well, programmers spends most of their time on programming, but I spend time on playing various fighting-games, too. That helped me to come to realizations such as, “Ah, the Battle Team wants me to make that,” instantly, and I think that really helped to increase efficiency. In that sense, regarding my involvement on this series, I guess it was rather easy for me to work on; or easy for me to make. I have been playing fighting games for more than 20 years, since I was in elementary school, and I just love the genre, but I had never imagined that I’d work on fighting games as a programmer. Now I feel lucky because I can make use of my experience as a player on developing this game.

In our company, when fighting game development teams come across good players, we tend to try to recruit him/her. Interesting company, don’t you think? (Laughs)

■Ozawa：　Mr. Osaka, could you tell us what challenges you encountered in the development of this title?

●Osaka：　When we adopted a new battle system this time, we first tried to link actual battles and the visual presentation, with consideration as to how to make tournaments more exciting.

In cartoons or movies, we often see scenes where, when a swordsman is fighting for his life, at critical moments, it looks as if time has stopped, right? We talked about how it would be interesting if we could have that sort of effect in fighting games, and how when that occurs, players would be able to dish out lots of damage to opponents. It is visually stunning; and at that moment, we switch to a special camera, and your character looks super cool.

Then, someone in the audience might think, “I don’t know much about SOULCALIBUR because I’ve never played it before, but this player must be an expert because the way he/she beat that opponent just now was so cool!”, causing the atmosphere in the event to heat up. Linking up the battle system and the visuals in this way was my challenge this time (The Reversal Edge, the Lethal Hit).

■Ozawa：　Do you mean that you made it in such a way in order to make live commentaries more exciting too?

●Osaka：　That’s right. I have been doing live commentaries for a while. I know when I should speak loudly, how the audience will react or when they will applaud, and so on. I designed the battle system will all that in mind.

■Ozawa：　It’s important for games to be easily live-streamed.

●Osaka：　Yes, it’s really important!

■Ozawa：　How about the Sound Team? What challenges did you face?

●Yano：　For sound effects, in special scene, like the Reversal Edge, we added a special sound effect to change the atmosphere.

●Nakatsuru：　When I first saw the prototype of the Reversal Edge, its visual effects looked nothing like anything ever seen in previous SOULCALIBUR titles. Mr. Yano and I have worked on this series for long time, on the Sound Team. So far, we focused a lot on battle tempo. Now all of a sudden, with this slow-motion effect, it looks as if the flow of time has been changed just for that effect.

It took some time to get used to it, but after that, I realized just how effective special visual effects like are in terms of stirring up emotions, whether in commentaries or battles. Then I realized that we also needed to add unique sound effects for that visually unique scene to express the change in how time flows

■Ozawa：　What changes did you make?

●Nakatsuru：　For the Reversal Edge scene, when activated, instead of stopping the music, we decided to make some changes to the ongoing music. For example, in some stages, we reduced it to rhythmic instruments only, or even by adding in new sounds, in order to make things more exciting.

■Ozawa：　You mean to say, you strove to recreate the tense atmosphere of an intense battle between master swordsmen.

●Nakatsuru：　Yes. Adding sounds is a very effective method, but not always. In some cases, subtracting some sounds and leaving only necessary sounds behind can be more effective. We had to judge which method was most suitable for each individual situation.

●Yano：　Depending on the situation, sound effects can be very important. In such cases, I would lower the BGM volume in order to emphasize sound effects. Furthermore, if very thrilling BGM is played from the beginning to the end of a battle, the battle can be end up feeling monotone or flat. We have to add sound effects appropriate to each scene. For example, when two characters in a battle step　away from each other, the tempo of the music  becomes slower, to express the cooling down of tension in the scene.  We had a lot of trial and error when it came to making sound effects that would change in line with the state of the battle.

●Nakatsuru：　In Reversal Edge scenes, we would often play some impressive dialogue. If the BGM is too loud, those lines will be lost. However, when other sounds are quiet, those lines will sound really dramatic and effective. I believe this resulted in a really good system where players can get a glimpse into the characters’ state of mind during battles.

●Takahashi(Yoshinori)：　Yeah, it makes it easier for players to find out more about characters. For example, “Ah, these two characters are rivals!” The Sound Team had a perfect understanding of what we were aiming for with our specifications, and I am truly grateful for their help. We were able to make a much better game thanks to them.

●Yano：　If a player becomes interested in a characters’ background through a battle, and thus decides to play the game’s in Story Mode, that’s exactly what we aimed for. Connecting battles to the story was one of our goals as a Sound Team. I am truly happy that our sound effects contributed to making this a more dramatic game. Dramatic effects are really moving, aren’t they. Being able to ‘feel’ the story while going through battles. It is really rewarding for us when, through sound effects, we can help players to understand how characters are feeling, or why that character is fighting.

●Nakatsuru：　Usually, it’s hard to balance between the battle system and the Story Mode (Laughs). Finding a good balance is a difficult task for Developers, however if the game fully focuses on battles, we won’t be able to satisfy players who are interested in the Stories, and players who are only interested in Battles won’t care much about Story Mode. In that sense, I believe we have managed to do an exceptional job on this game.

●Yano：　I often found myself thinking of the difficult destiny some of the characters had, and often found myself holding back tears while working on some characters like Amy…

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「SOULCALIBUR VI」
SOULCALIBUR™ VI & ©BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc.