Eternal Sonata feature

Every now and again Gamestyle gets a very welcome e-mail that raises a smile. Most recently we got the opportunity to have our questions answered by Hiroya Hatsushiba (President Tri-Crescendo Inc.), the creator behind the upcoming Xbox 360 title, Eternal Sonata. Naturally we jumped at the chance and couldnt wait to hear what to expect from his latest RPG offering.Firstly thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. Eternal Sonata has an unusual story. Where did the idea originally come from?The idea of the title started with the question, what does the word life mean? As long as we live, an end to our life is unavoidable. Therefore, we came to a conclusion that time is limited in anyones life and how you spend this limited time is the true meaning of the word life. However, a question rises in the way we treat our limited times. Are we treating this valuable time in a way as we should treat it? If one was to be told that you only have another day to live, it is likely that one will try and make the most out of the remaining time. At this point in time, that person is likely to question how they have been spending their life since the importance of time has drastically changed for them. This game is set inside Chopins dreams where one is able to use the power of magic once the remaining time to live becomes limited for them. In other words, one can understand that time has become limited for them to live once the power of magic becomes available for them. In real life, we cannot use magic or be aware of our remaining living time but one can feel that you have not too long to live at some stage. The game was created by tri-Crescendo with a message to all the players which hopefully will be read as live to your best by the time one finish it.Being about the famous composer Chopin, how much of a part does music play in the gameplay?Basically, music is not a part of the core gameplay itself. However, as our company started from music we wanted to build the concept of the game through music as that is our area of expertise. There are many musical factors in the game and everything is united by music in some way.It's certainly a fantastic looking game. What made you go with this visual style?There are many development teams in the world who are aiming to create photorealistic games. Their aim is to make it look like the world we live in. Its like all of them are racing towards the same goal so that visuals are judged by just one set of values. I think this is very risky and narrowing the possibilities of computer graphics, which can show a great range of expression. We think there should be another goal rather than competing in a drag race with other developers to make the most realistic environments. Therefore, we aimed for a look which is not a copy of the real world but one of unique colour, a world born from our own creativity.The console of choice for Eternal Sonata may seem quite unusual. It's a very Japanese RPG on a console that not only has very few of them, but also doesn't sell well in Japan. Is there a reason for choosing the Xbox 360 over the PS3?Our mission was to develop an RPG for a high-end platform. When we started to develop the game, Xbox360 and PS3 had not been released and we were developing the game for Windows. Then Xbox360 was released so we decided to make Eternal Sonata for Xbox360 instead. We also looked at the fact that Xbox360 is a developer-friendly hardware platform. Furthermore, we were hoping that Xbox360 would be successful and wanted to contribute to the sales of Xbox360 in Japan.Is Eternal Sonata going to be an epic quest? How long will the game take to complete?You will be able to finish this game around 30 hours or so. Therefore it is not exactly epic in scale. However, you will be able to enjoy twice as much if you pursue sub-quests and replay the game.Will the story have many twists and turns as it develop? And for those of us without any knowledge of Chopin, will that affect how well we understand the story?The story is uniquely structured. Each episode is narrated by a sort of cinematic dialogue. However, I can assure you that you will be able to understand the story without any prior knowledge of Chopin or his works.You were also behind another popular RPG Baiten Kaitos and Baiten Kaitos: Origins on the Gamecube. Are there any plans to return to that series? The Baten Kaitos project was a very memorable and meaningful project for us. I think we were able to make Eternal Sonata because of the Baten Kaitos series. However, there are no plans to return to that series at the moment.Can you give some examples of how the light vs dark scenario is utilised in the game? How will the combat system in the game differentiate itself from other RPG's?The most important concept was to be able to learn the battle system quickly. We needed to simplify the controls as well. However, this reduces the potential variety within battles so we came up with the idea of each special move in light and dark places behaving differently. Also we created enemies that will change their forms depending on whether they are in light or dark places. I feel that we brought a new type of variety and strategy to the battles with this feature.The game is set in the final 3 hours of world-famous music composer Frederic Chopin's life. Has real time frozen in this world? Why only 3 hours?The speed of time within dream and reality are not exactly matched. I am sure we all have an experience dreaming spectacular drama in short period of time. One week in dream can be one minute in the real world. However, real time is not frozen completely. I set up the 3 hours time frame because you will be conscious of death if you are only given this amount of time to live. If you face up to death, you will think seriously about the meaning of life. These things are motifs of this story.Our thanks to Atari for arranging this interview, and remember Eternal Sonata is currently scheduled for release this fall on Xbox 360.