Soulcalibur – 1999 Developer Interview

—First off, could you tell me about Soulcalibur's characters?

Mitsunaga: In the previous game, Soul Edge, much of the cast was at the mercy of fate, so for this game we pursued characters that were acting in defiance of their supposed destiny.

Onda: For Soulcalibur, I wanted to make the characters happy. People told me that Siegfried's story was too dark and depressing. (laughs)

Mitsunaga: One of the project leads is the kind of person who always imbues the characters with a layer of darkness. To give one example, for this game, Kilik is a character that was suddenly given a very weighty burden.

Onda: His immediate backstory is certainly heavy, but we wanted his ending to be liberating. I think Siegfried had already reached the limits of that kind of direction in the previous game, so this time, I wanted Siegfried to push forward and evolve with a different set-up.

—So for this game, then, the character settings were designed with an eye towards happier endings?

Onda: The core direction of the characters were largely determined by the specs of the game itself. To give one example, because we'd determined to perform motion capture with a Chinese martial art, we decided to include several Chinese weapons, and because the martial arts expert doing the motion performance was female, we decided to add that "cute girl" element to the idea of a character wielding a Chinese weapon.

Mitsunaga: Looking at the overall line-up, we had characters like, say, Sophitia, who's a pure older-sister type, so we didn't want newer characters that'd overlap with the existing cast. In terms of female characters, we already had Taki and Seung Mina… so, when it came time to decide on the direction for new characters, we saw a space for an edgier womanly sort of character, so we decide to add Ivy. We also received requests from overseas to add more outlandish characters to the roster. Overseas players love their freaks. (laughs)

Onda: On that note, we decided to add a lot of out-there characters, and from there we landed on Nightmare, Astaroth, Lizardman, Yoshimitsu and Voldo. Ultimately, we left it to Mitsunaga to decide what sorts of designs they should have.

Mitsunaga: The basic direction was decided during the early planning stage, but I wanted to bring out the distinctiveness of each individual character. I was personally happy with Soul Edge, but that game's image was a little uniform, so for Soulcalibur, my goal was to made the bad characters worse and the good characters even greater. I also wanted to broaden the age range of the cast and generally add a lot of variety, which is how we ended up with polar-opposite characters like Xianghua and Ivy.

Onda: For whatever it's worth, the cast of Soul Edge were all nice people—even the guy who goes by "Rage of the Executor" is also a good dude. (laughs)

More than simply a sequel to Soul Edge

—A lot of the characters made the jump from Soul Edge to Soulcalibur, then?

Onda: That's right. Even so, we only ever positioned the game as a sequel to Soul Edge in terms of setting and story; as far as the core game goes, we introduced a lot of new ideas, and by the end of development, we ended up redoing the majority of the animation from scratch. In that sense, the game wasn't developed as a sequel to Soul Edge—when players sit down with the game and start to familiarize themselves with the setting, they might come to understand it as a sequel to Soul Edge, and that's perfectly fine. No matter the story or lore, it ultimately doesn't directly impact the game systems, so from that perspective, we were able to treat it as a completely separate project.

Mitsunaga: Of course, we designers and loresmiths had fun creating the new game as a sequel to the previous one. Personally, I felt I'd done everything I could with Soul Edge, but I also had a desire to tear everything down and rebuild it from the ground up, which turned out to be quite challenging.

Onda: After all, the the game itself takes priority, and the setting and theme are created based on what kind of story would best complement the core game. I can't speak for elsewhere but in our VSM department, at least, we wouldn't ever change the fundamentals of the game to conform to the story or setting. If I were to propose something like that, I'd get in big trouble. (laughs)

—I suppose it's natural for the game's integrity as a competitive tool takes precedence, huh? Is the opposite possible—are you able to explore the personality of the characters via the way they move and handle in-game?

Onda: Naturally. As you can see, as we continue to embellish upon and add depth to each character, they open themselves up to being suitable for truly epic stories.

—If the characters are created in accordace with the game system, does that mean we could see Soul characters appearing in other games?

Mitsunaga: Nothing would make me happier! (laughs) Someone could cameo in Tekken, or something. That said, it's certainly a neat idea, but…

Onda: …but we're most interested in continuing to do new things. Rather than just defaulting to bringing back the existing characters, we want to continue putting our effort into new characters, even if it means cutting old ones.

Mitsunaga: As you can see from the contents of this book, Cervantes is one of the characters that we sacrificed in order to come up with something new. I think that by taking the bold step of removing Cervantes from the game, we were able to add greater depth to the other characters.

"In Soulcalibur, every weapon's a standout

Mitsunaga: The choice of weapons was decided very early in the process; some of the choices were determined during the initial planning stages, of course, while others were made after we'd cast the performers for the motion capture sessions. Initally, though, we weren't thinking in terms of what kinds of characters we wanted, but rather what kinds of weapons and fighting styles we wanted to see, and what different play styles we could make possible.

Onda: Even before the project had been officially greenlit, we'd been brainstorming what kinds of weapons and fighting styles to use and all the different ways one could play. When we sat down and thought about whether those ideas would actually be fun in practice, I realized that some of my ideas didn't hold water. (laughs) To give one example, if we added a boomerang, it'd be something you could strike with but also throw… but once it's decided that throwing weapons are a no-go, then that idea's completely off the table. From there, I'd come up with ideas to succeed that one, like "it'd be fun to use a flexible weapon that could function as either a sword or a whip". Once I'd hit upon the concept of a dual-wielding character with both a short and long sword, it was easy to visualise game-wise, y'see? When you start thinking about a play style that lets you switch between weapons based on the button you press, the possibilities are immediately exciting. Many of our decisions were made via this process.

Mitsunaga: Also, I was personally interested in featuring more older-aged characters, so we thought about adding Toki and a few others.

Onda: Even when it came to Cervantes, we discussed not only having a sword in each hand but having one function as a gun.

Mitsunaga: There was also talk of adding a space sherrif from a future that had been invaded by Soul Edge (laughs). Another proposal featured a guy with something resembling an electric chainsaw—in the beginning, it was everything-goes. We really wanted to include some sort of dual-wielding sword character, and that style remained on the shortlist until the very end, but we unfortunately didn't go ahead with it this time. There was also a lot of talk about iai…

Onda: An iai character would have been cool, certainly. We were all hyped about the idea of going through with the motion capture for a Zatoichi-style character… but when we actually thought about it, we realized that a character based around iai, whose techniques are all reliant upon reacting to the movements of their opponent, would completely contravene the basic rules of a fighting game. (laughs)

Mitsunaga: In the end, that iai character stuck around for a while, before certain elements were absorbed into Mitsurugi's kit. We also kicked around the idea of a knight that'd fight on horseback during the first round and dismount for the second round, and we even considered a centaur character.

Onda: We're Namco, we've got this!, we thought… while giving absolutely no consideration to the difficulties we were foisting onto the programmers. (laughs) In fact, even in the version of Soulcalibur you see today, each character has their own sub-system—Nightmare's stances, Ivy's whip, Mitsurugi's stances, etc—so tuning each character and adjusting the overall game balance took a lot of hard work.

Mitsunaga: Settling on a design for Ivy also gave us a lot of trouble.

The ending is up to the player

—In the world of Soulcalibur, are people widely aware of the Soul Edge?

Onda: It's a weapon whose existence is only known to a select few, I think. I didn't want it to be something for which people had direct, concrete knowledge; the way I pictured it, there are as many rumors about Soul Edge as there are human vices. Those who want to live forever might perceive it as the "Sword of Immortality", and some might presume it to be the "Sword of Ultimate Power", just because they're the ones wielding it. It's just like fortune-telling—people naturally filter out everything but the parts they want to hear. (laugh)

—Has the team fully fleshed out all the backstory and behind-the-scenes lore? Fans have been enjoying digging into the story via fanzines and so on.

Onda: I'm truly grateful for all of that. Our imaginations are so much smaller than those of the players, so I think it's best to let players speculate on the details for themselves, and to expand the world of the game beyond our own imaginations. For example, in Astaroth's ending, he bursts into flames and is incinerated, but some people might believe he was able to get back up and go onto other things.

Mitsunaga: Games differ from movies in that the players themselves are the ones who reach the end of the story. Whatever they're left with after playing and completing a game is the genuine conclusion for that individual.

—Each player has their own beginning and their own ending.

Onda: Even without the Krita-Yuga, one might be able to seal the Soul Edge with Mitsurugi's Shishi-oh, for example, and I hope players are able to enjoy filling in the blanks in their own way. If there's ever a sequel, we might be like, "actually, this is what really happened…" (laughs)

—(laughs) Finally, is there anything you'd like to say to the players?

Onda: Please, play the game a lot! Also, I worked really hard on the story, so please give it a read. I hope it inspires people to be creative, whether by making doujinshi, cosplay, writing fanfiction, or using the game as a springboard for writing something original—not "Soul something-or-other", but something completely different.

Mitsunaga: I hope people really invest themselves into the game and, once they gel with a character, I hope they're able to really dig in and explore them to the fullest. As a member of the team, I'll continue to give my all, so I hope you'll continue to support me.

—Thank you both! I'm looking forward to your next game!

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