Interview with A single Piece Odyssey Sport Producer Katsuaki Tsuzuki – Anime Expo 2022

A single Piece Odyssey is an future role-taking part in video activity currently being developed by ILCA and revealed by Bandai Namco Enjoyment set to launch sometime in 2022. The match attributes an original, self-contained tale with involvement by series creator Eiichiro Oda. At Anime Expo 2022, Anime News Community was presented the opportunity to job interview Katsuaki Tsuzuki, the game’s producer who hopes to “deliver an epic drama adventure of the Straw Hats which both Just one Piece followers and JRPG followers can experience and appreciate”.

An odyssey typically indicates a lengthy and eventful journey. The Straw Hat crew has currently gone on numerous jaw-dropping adventures up right up until this issue. What would you say will make this journey stand out from many others?

Katsuaki TSUZUKI: Yes, so we set the title of Odyssey to emphasize an epic journey, and which is anything we will be portraying all over the tale. As you are conscious, the tale can take spot in the Waford island and on this island, the occasion wants to defeat a variety of mysteries and resolve diverse clues in purchase to progress as a result of the tale. And it truly is as a result of this mystery that we hoped to construct this epic tale.

An epic, but self-contained story. Am I right?

TSUZUKI: Indeed, you happen to be precisely right. It is pretty substantially a self-contained story different from the key story in each the manga and the anime. When it will come to RPG online games, the key emphasis is the story and I consider a ton of individuals are searching for a pretty grand tale practical experience. So we thought that like the collection, when you can find no definitive finish to the story, it tends to be unsatisfactory when folks perform games for that explanation. We took a lengthy time in creating this video game absolutely recognizing that the original story would be continuing when we were being functioning and we didn’t want the content material of the sport to be motivated by that development. So we produced a thing that both longtime fans and newcomers could both take pleasure in devoid of missing significantly.

Nicely you just answered one of my other concerns presently about no matter if or not this recreation would be a very good entry for newcomers, because it can be these types of a distinct love letter to the franchise. In point, I recall in the trailer there was a line about how this new entire world we uncover our crew in is basically made up of their recollections. Can we expect a lot of callbacks and references to our crew’s previous adventures?

TSUZUKI: Sure, stuff like that is anything that we would like to expose little bit by bit. But what we can tell you now is that we labored truly hard to put an emphasis on permitting gamers expertise the One particular Piece environment. But we also didn’t want everything to be obvious to lovers or nearly anything that they’d clearly see coming. That element of surprise is important. Regarding what the reminiscences entail, we won’t be able to actually inform you that just nonetheless, so stay tuned as we reveal additional.

The focus on audience for the sport are obviously the extensive-time followers of the series, but we also listen to that there are a lot of US followers that are just now acquiring into the series and we unquestionably want to attractiveness to each of individuals crowds. It is essential that the attitude coming into this journey has the context of what the crew has earlier conquer, so that will be integrated. That way, new and aged supporters alike will grasp the emotional context of what they are experiencing.

You outlined before that in RPGs, there is a big emphasis on tale, but a large amount of prior 1 Piece game titles have been really action-oriented. Was that desire to build this tale what influenced this preference in game style? Was it the reverse? Or were being both of those of those wants recognized at the very same time?

TSUZUKI: So throughout the arranging of Odyssey, we have been really slating this for the 25-calendar year Anniversary and we were being imagining about it for 5 yrs. The summary that we came to was that when the action is important, I think the most important suggestions we gained from the followers was that they definitely preferred to practical experience that emotion of identifying a new island and obtaining new issues. So that concept of journey and discovery is what we made the decision to concentration on. But how do we portray that? How do we have the gameplay reflect that experience?

In an action title, if you have just one character, the target is ordinarily on that just one character, but this recreation is about the full Straw Hat crew as a staff. So in purchase to put the emphasis on the crew and that group perform, we decided to go for this flip-primarily based gameplay wherever teamwork is vital. It truly is not just a person character doing factors while absolutely everyone else is on the aspect. Anyone is working with their personal capabilities and bringing their very own quirks to the table to conquer the problems that they may possibly encounter during this experience. That is why we chose that structure.

Were being there any issues in implementing the nuts capabilities of the Straw Hat Crew to a regular turn-dependent RPG structure?

TSUZUKI: Sure, you happen to be appropriate, there had been some challenges. Since it’s transform-based mostly gameplay, illustrating a amazing motion was straightforward. The obstacle was that when you think of the story arcs in a regular RPG, you ordinarily acquire and recruit extra party associates as you happen to be taking part in the activity. But with A single Piece Odyssey, you commence with all the customers! So the social gathering won’t genuinely develop, and we believed it was heading to be hard to portray and develop the properties of the figures if we went the far more regular route. So what we determined to do as an alternative was introduce a mechanic named the Scramble Region Struggle. When you enter a fight, the group associates get separated into these 4 different places in which they can struggle separately. If a person character sees one more character struggling to defeat their monster, they can ship an help or jump to that location to aid. That’s how we attempted to include that all-significant teamwork ingredient from One Piece into the gameplay and I consider we did a superior career handling that obstacle.