The Last Remnant Preview

VideoGamer.com: The game has been designed to appeal to a Western audience. What exactly about the game means it will appeal to a Western audience?

Naora-san: Visually we aimed towards both the West and the East. It was definitely a global aim there. Our motion capture was done by foreign actors. You might notice a definite difference seeing the characters move around but in general we wanted to make something that everyone around the world could accept and see and think, 'oh OK, that could be me, if I was Rush'.

VideoGamer.com: I've been told The Conqueror has been designed to appeal to Western gamers. What is it about his design that means he will appeal to Western gamers?

Naora-san: When I was designing The Conqueror I was mainly thinking about going for a dark anti-hero type, someone darker than you usually see in our games. I wasn't necessarily aiming for a specific, 'oh I need to do this and this and this to make this appeal to Westerners', but in general I really wanted to get somebody who was older, someone who looks very strong and powerful and someone who would appeal more to males. It was also somebody that I wanted to draw, so that helped. One of the really neat things I think about The Conqueror is his eyes, you aren't exactly completely certain where he's looking at because he could be looking at everything or something. He has a strong presence and a lot of power so that was one of the things I wanted to aim for when designing the character. I hope that people, not just Japanese people but people around the world, see what I was trying to do and love him.

VideoGamer.com: The battle system is quite unique. There are a lot of units on screen at the same time and it doesn't feel like a typical Square Enix RPG. What was the inspiration behind the battle system?

Maehiro-san: I've never created a typical Square Enix RPG since I've been here. I was always doing something original. For Final Fantasy XII I created a system, but I wanted to revolutionise the system. Also, I've got old and I'm too busy pressing commands for FFXII! My fingers don't move as fast as they used to! So I wanted to give users the time to choose the tactics and select so it becomes a turn based commanding system.

VideoGamer.com: The battle system doesn't allow you to give specific commands to your units but more general commands to the leader of your Unions. Are you concerned that some fans might feel that they won't have enough control over what's happening during the battles?

Maehiro-san: It's really one of those things where as you play the game you really get used to it. When you start out it might be a little bit like, 'oooh I don't know!', but once you actually get your hands on the game it won't be such a big deal. As you go through you can see what your different units can do, when you put them together into unions and you see what your different unions can do you'll really think of that union as a single unit.

VideoGamer.com: How does the art style and overall look of the game differ from Square Enix past, present and future?

Naora-san: Once we decided that we wanted to use UE3 we figured we wanted to go for a realistic art style versus other games which tend to be more cartooney or whatever. So we really focused on making stuff more photo realistic or realistic within the world and developed things in that direction. Our artists really stepped up to the plate and came up with some really good stuff and we were able to do a lot with the engine and making things look the way we wanted them too.

VideoGamer.com: Square Enix role playing games are very popular all over the world. What are the defining characteristics of a Square Enix role playing game?

Kataoka-san: It's a really good and difficult question to answer! Basically we make the type of games that we want to play. We make games about what's interesting to us and it's not that we don't ever think about what other people would want but we don't just think, 'well yes, if we just...', it's not that technical, and say 'well if we make a game that has this and this then this market will like it'. We aren't really doing that, we're just doing what we think would be fun and we hope that other people think it's fun and it seems that other people do so it's good.

It's not about there's a grammar for Square Enix RPGs and we create a game based on that grammar but rather we have a really free and big environment in which we're asked to create what we love, so probably all of us have a sense as a user while being creators.

VideoGamer.com: Do you listen to fan feedback and incorporate that into game design?

Maehiro-san: I'm constantly doing it.

VideoGamer.com: What kinds of things have you heard from the fans that you've taken on board?

Maehiro-san: I nearly got beaten up for Final Fantasy XII! And so I got a lot of feedback. For FFXII we got a lot of very polarised feedback. There were people who really really liked the game and there were people who really really did not. I looked at lots of the different things that people were saying and so tried to take that into account, especially for the things that seemed to annoy people, things that players didn't want to be able to touch or things that players did want to be able to adjust, like the equipment limit, so we worked on that. We tried to take all of that sort of thing into account while still staying true to the original vision.