RGJ/USAT: There are a lot of games with big areas but nothing to do or they just send you out on fetch quests without a story. How have you designed exploration to make it interesting?
Itsuno: First and foremost, we put a lot of emphasis on the density of the map. When it’s your first time visiting some place, we try to design it in a way so that you could see the goal where you’re going to, but there’s no clear path. This is based on the idea that well, if you’re going to a place and you can see the road and it’s just a straight road, it’s not that exciting to go through the straight route. But if you can see where you’re going to but you’re not sure how you’ll get there, you’ll get a bit more excited. Like, OK, how how will I get there?
Also, as far as getting to one destination, we prepared multiple routes. We also prepared points of emphasis along the way so you have multiple options and it would be difficult to experience them all at once. So even though you’re visiting the same place, you will get different experiences and find different things. One of the things we also emphasized is that when you visit in one location, the enemies don’t show up in the same way but show up in varied ways so that even though you visit the same location multiple times, it will still provide some value to the player.