Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice Preview

The Disgaea games are among the most hardcore Japanes RPGs to reach Western shores, featuring 2D graphics, turn-based battles, and the ability to build characters up to a maximum of 9999 levels. With Disgaea 3 due to hit the PS3 early next year, we spoke to Sohei Niikawa, development director and producer at Nippon Ichi Software

VideoGamer.com: How did you come to work in video games?

Sohei Niikawa: I used to play games when I was a kid. I really enjoyed playing them, however I never thought about working for a video game company until I was a university sophomore. When I was playing Final Fantasy V at university I thought, "Wow, this game is good!", but then I started thinking about how it could be better or how I could do something more with it. The process of thinking about these things was very fun for me, so I thought that was maybe some kind of calling, that I should go and work for a games company.

VideoGamer.com: What was the inspiration behind Disgaea 3?

SN: First of all we wanted to create something that no other company could make. In order to do that we thought that we had to make people laugh and giggle, to say "this is stupid!", to make it all crazy and stuff. That's how we came up with all these crazy systems, stories and characters. We wanted to do something different from any other company.

VideoGamer.com: What were the technical benefits of making this game on the PS3, as opposed to the PS2? What's next for Disgaea 4?

SN: After the jump from PS2 to PS3, we were able to add a lot more characters, because of the bigger memory. And the programming time is faster. As in any Disgaea game, people will play Disgaea 3 for a long time, so we believe it is important to give users a nice environment to play in. It's going to take a long time to finish the game, and people like to play for hours and hours. We believe that because of the PlayStation 3 system, users have a better way to play the game. Also, in Japan we've now started doing downloadable content, so that's an additional bonus to having the game on PS3. We've not really decided what we want to do for the next game. We want to keep the 2D characters, because we think it's cute and appeals to people, but we want to change how we express 2D on PS3. We're just testing it now, but hopefully it'll turn out really well.

VideoGamer.com: All your games are 2D in a comic book style. Will you go 3D in the future?

SN: In the future we'd love to move to 3D, but what we're thinking right now is that we won't use 3D images like you get in Final Fantasy. That's beautiful, but we'd like to go a different way. So it's going to look 2D but it'll have all the 3D skills and technical stuff behind. It'll move like 3D, but it will sort of look 2D.

VideoGamer.com: Do you have any plans to offer European DLC?

SN: At the moment we don't have any schedule for that, but if we get a lot of demand for this or that, we might consider it. But what we could easily do is make some exclusive wallpapers for Europe. It could happen, but at this moment we can't really promise you guys that it's something we're going to do.

VideoGamer.com: The Disgaea games are very Japanese. What is the challenge in adapting titles like these for the West without losing their unique flavour?

SN: I put 100 per cent of my trust in the localisation teams - but I always want them to know and love the games. We understand that there are a lot of jokes that only Japanese people will understand. So in the US version, when characters are talking about Japanese TV shows, for example, they've changed that to American Idol. In Europe, you'll probably see references to things that only European gamers know. We trust the translators and the localisation guys to do that.

VideoGamer.com: Does Nippon Ichi have any plans to work with Vanillaware again in the near future? Perhaps on another GrimGrimoire game?

SN: We have a very good relationship with Vanillaware - we went out for drinks last week! We don't get to do it as often as we'd like to, as we're so busy, but we're still good friends. There are no plans right now, but it's something we talk about and we want to do it, so hopefully you'll see something.

VideoGamer.com: You've made lots of refinements to the battle system in Disgaea 3. How do you come up with ideas. Do you listen to your fans, or just lock yourselves in a room and brainstorm?

SN: We have two different ways for making features. The first is that we research what fans thought of the previous Disgaea games, ask what the good things about them were and what the bad things were. We gather all this information, and for the good things we try to make them better, and for the bad parts we fix it. We also go to websites, read forums and all that. That's how we improve the game system, but for new ideas there's a chief developing guy at NIS, and he just tries out new things to see if they work If it doesn't then he tries again and just keeps experimenting with all these ideas that he has. He doesn't sleep at all! He has to create new games and other stuff.

VideoGamer.com: Does he do that for all of Nippon Ichi's games, or just the Disgaea series?

SN: This guy does it for Disgaea and all the other strategy games. But seriously, he doesn't sleep at all! And if he's not in front of a computer, he's doing the trial-and-error thing in his head all the time.