What Went Wrong With Kizuna, Explained By Developer - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 11 July 2009 / 2,886 Views
Ougon no Kizuma is a Wii RPG that promised a dark huge boss battles that drew comparisons with Shadow of the Colossus. But when the game was released in Japan on the 28th of May, it got slammed by reviewers like Famitsu (who gave it a 17/40) calling it "unpolished" and "one step behind the standard".
Now the same magazine conducted an interview with one of Kizuna developers, producer Naoki Hoshi, as a special feature of the magazine, about what they call "bad games" and how they end up being released in that state
About one of the frequently voiced complaints, the loading times, Hoshi said. "We had always been calculating the amount of data to be loaded at once, but we kept on adding assorted things afterward which increased the amount of data, so we were forced to up the number of loads."
Then he moved onto the graphics: "We put a filter on the graphics, and it looks good on still images. But once things start to move, the filter moves along with it and it looks like you're seeing the game through a pane of frosted glass.
As for the battle system, Hoshi explained "I thought the battle system went pretty well, but the enemies are made out of too many polygons and sometimes the game has trouble keeping up. The demo sequences use high-polygon models different from the ones used in battle, but that proved to pose a lot of difficulty for us."
And about the story sequences, which the magazine describes as "boring", the dev commented: "I really wanted to place characters right on the map and have them move around and talk there for the demo scenes, but we couldn't do it, so we had to explain it all in text instead, which I regret."
Even with all, the dev remained optimistic about making a new game, though he also showed a willingness to improve. "I think we made the right choice in the game concept and in the way we tried new things. I'd like to keep that attitude going and continue making high-quality games, but I think I'd like to make them more complete products from now on."
It's not often that we see a developer explaining what went wrong with a game, and acknowledging all the mistakes the game had, so it's great when a developer sits with a reviewer that tore his game to pieces (and probably costed them a lot of sales) to talk about that. We can only expect that in his next game things go better in development and he's able to translate his concept into a more polished product.
Source: 1UP
Article originally submitted by vaio
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this game came out? hmmm no wonder there wasn't any real news for it. i wish it had turned out better, the art style is really great and the battle system seemed interesting enough, but i wish they could've spent a lot more time fixing up everything. i wouldn't even care if it was pushed to 2010, then at least you could fix the kinks out and get a better score and more buyers. heck Crystal Bearers was pushed back so many times and now it looks and feels like its going to be amazing. Arc Rise Fantasia already looks like an awesome game but pushing it back a year for the outside japan release could mean they could also be adding stuff instead of just translating and dubbing. at least these guys are respectable for admitting their mistakes,now they just need to remember not to rush a game and maybe try to get a bigger team
When a developer admits they made a mistake while making a game instead of making up excuses and blaming the platform or the users, it gets my full respect.
I wish I could play that game. because I really liked the concept
Not the way I was hoping this one would turn out.
arrrg didn't know this ended up bad :x it looked pretty interesting (but I guess as he says, it looked much better in stills than moving :/
