Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice Interview

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.

VideoGamer.com: Was there anything that fans didn’t like in Disgaea 2 that has been changed for the third game?

SN: A lot of people say that they wanted a character to be this or that way, but that’s more down to personal preference. Overall, we usually hear from fans is that the map is very hard to look at – especially when you go into random dungeons, where there are lots of levels. Sometimes the characters are kind of hidden under towers. Throughout Disgaea 1, 2 and 3 we’ve heard people say that the map isn’t that good, but we’ve tried to improve it. But we’re still not satisfied with the improvements, so that will be our homework for Disgaea 4.

Last week we received a letter from a Disgaea fan who asked why we don’t make a more serious game. But if we made a serious game for Disgaea, it wouldn’t be Disgaea!

VideoGamer.com: Do you have any plans for a Disgaea game that supports online battles against other players?

SN: At this moment there are no plans for online battles. We did multiplayer via WiFi for the PSP but I feel that people didn’t really play it – so we actually don’t know if users liked it or not. Next time we’re probably going to create something completely different from what we did on the PSP. It’s kind of a test of something new for multiplayer. It won’t be online but it will be something new and we’ll see if people like it not.

VideoGamer.com: Aside from Disgaea 3, Nippon Ichi has ported the original game to the DS. What do you think of the DS as a platform? Why do you think it’s done so well?

SN: I really don’t know about outside of Japan, because I don’t know much about how well it’s done in Europe and the US, but in Japan Nintendo did really well with promoting the DS console in TV commercials. Nintendo was really successful at grabbing people who are not usually gamers. So I believe Nintendo built this huge wave behind the DS, and they grabbed everybody with it. It’s kind of like a short term kind of thing, because those people who are not usually gamers will probably get bored with it. It’s more, “Oh, it’s cool so I have to get it to.” And in terms of price, it’s not very expensive either.

I don’t believe that DS users are really hardcore gamers. Disgaea has been released on PS2, PSP and now PS3. We thought that maybe there are people who are still hardcore gamers but who never played a Disgaea game before. So we thought we could catch those people who have a DS console. And also, this is the first time we’ve released the game for a Nintendo console. We thought this would be a good way to start.

VideoGamer.com: Are there any PS3 games coming out in the near future that you’re looking forward to?

SN: For the PS3… I don’t know when it’s coming out, but the new Final Fantasy game from Square Enix. I believe they’re going to create something really good, in terms of graphical style. It’s not like Nippon Ichi will follow in the same steps, but I can’t wait to see what they bring. For the PSP in Japan, there’s going to be a new Prinny game. I’m really looking forward to that.

VideoGamer.com: Would you ever consider making a Disgaea game for a younger audience, or a wider one?

SN: I only have a general idea about this, but I want to create a strategy game outside of Disgaea, but which is as good and as much fun as Disgaea. I want to make something like that for everybody, for a general audience. I ask myself how we can do that, but there’s no answer to it yet – it’s still something we’ll think about for the future. However, we still want to create stuff that appeals to hardcore gamers.

VideoGamer.com: The Disgaea games allow you to build your characters up to enormously high levels. What do you think it is that makes this fun, that makes people want to do this?

SN: When people play Disgaea 3, they’ll complete the main story in 24 hours. The reason why people play longer and longer for hundreds of hours is because of the new features and more complicated games systems. It was not our goal to have people play for hundreds of hours, it just turned out that people like it. It wasn’t like we wanted to enslave those gamers! I think that for every Disgaea disc, there is probably only 10 per cent of people that plays and enjoys 100 per cent of the game. I doubt there are many people who even do 50 per cent. But for those people who do play 50 per cent or 100 per cent, those people are getting to something they’ve created. It could be useless, just an idea they’ve come up with, but I’m very grateful to those people!

Disgaea 3 is due for release on PlayStation 3 in Europe in early 2009. Disgaea DS is scheduled for spring 2009.