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There are three seals that we brought over from the original Phantasy Star games. A lot of the Phantasy Star elements were up to me, and I took the initiative to incorporate them into the game.Ī lot of the motifs of the Phantasy Star games were galactic and planetary references, so I incorporated those.
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That was about the time I joined the team, and at the time, there weren’t any Phantasy Star elements in the game. Initially, PSO was not a Phantasy Star game, but partway through the development Naka decided that the game should be a Phantasy Star game. Some of the PSO character designs, such as Rico Tyrell, aka Red Ring Rico, take after that motif. Nishiyama: In the first Phantasy Star, there’s a female character that challenges Dark Falz, the final boss of the game.
#Pso2 limited quest episode 1 series
The Phantasy Star series provided the background and world, but other than that, what were the guidelines for bringing elements over into PSO from the original series? And what were you told to ignore or leave out? I wouldn’t have said this back in the day, but it was luck that the various collective expertise that the game needed to succeed all converged on the project at the right time to bring the game together.Īkinori Nishiyama (left) and Takanori Fukazawa (right) Photo: James Mielke for PolygonĮven though it’s Phantasy Star-themed, there wasn’t an overt effort to bring the past lore of Phantasy Star games into PSO. But it was only until after certain Sonic Team members came back onto the project that it really took off. So it was fate or destiny, whatever you want to call it, that I was put on this project to do similar things for PSO. I guess the success of PSO was rooted not necessarily in the leadership of the game, but because Sonic Adventure had a lot of talented people on the team, so there was a lot of combined experience going into development.Įven before PSO, I had handled similar responsibilities on other projects. For example, the player can complete three levels, but has to go back to the initial stage to unlock the fourth stage. Another thing I handled was how the player progresses through the game. When I was brought back to help, they hadn’t begun to build the universe or the scenario or quests, or construct any of the city levels, so that’s what I ended up working on. Before the game became PSO, having trouble finalizing the concept, and people who left to work on other projects were brought back to help with the PSO project.
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We developed Sonic Adventure and then the team split up into various projects, and one of the projects eventually became PSO. There were many staff members with director-level skills. For a single title, there was a lot of talented people attached to it. To explain the origins of the team members more clearly, before working on PSO we all worked on Sonic Adventure together, about 120 people. Even though PSO may look primitive by today’s standards, it was quite groundbreaking for its time, and the timing at which they decided to release the game was optimal because Diablo was already out, every Dreamcast had a modem equipped inside, etc. What do you attribute that success to?Īkinori Nishiyama: As you know, the genesis of PSO was rooted in Diablo, and the producer wanted to make something along the lines of a console version for Dreamcast. Meanwhile, Fukazawa describes what it was like to work in a near-vacuum from other parts of the team, giving us insight to the working styles of Japanese game developers in the ’90s.Ĭonsidering the scope of the game, it’s impressive how you were able to synchronize your team back then, creating everything from user interface to user experience, and to do it with a relatively modest team size. To find out what was (and wasn’t) essential to the game, we probe Nishiyama on his role in PSO’s development, suggestions from producer Yuji Naka that he soundly ignored, and regrets he may have 20 years after the fact. And now we’re diving a bit deeper with a roundtable discussion with script writer Akinori Nishiyama and effects designer Takanori Fukazawa. Over the past three weeks, we’ve posted chats with producer Yuji Naka, director Takao Miyoshi, and composer Hideaki Kobayashi. With 2020 being the 20th anniversary of Sega’s Dreamcast RPG Phantasy Star Online, we’re looking back with a series of interviews featuring key team members who worked on the game.