Hiroshi Matsuyama x Hiroto Niizato DIALOGUE [.hack//ARCHIVE 04 TRANSLATION]

 

Please read this before you start reading: This is a low to medium-translation level, which is not much higher standard level than how it was translated, especially how this translation uses translators and adds few edits to match English viewers' understanding, but hoping this would help viewers to understand what contents and information based on it means. If any translator is willing to help me for corrections I would be glad and appreciate their contribution and their help.

Disclaimer: The following this article is a non-profit fan-translation, all .hack title series, including .hack//Link is owned by CyberConnect 2 and Bandai Namco Entertainment, please buy .hack//ARCHIVE 04 (.hack//Link) Official Complete Documentation Setting and support the official release on CC2 Store Page.

It has been a year since the release of ".hack // Link". A nostalgic conversation between Hiroshi Matsuyama, director of the game at the time, and Hiroto Niizato, planning director, has just come to fruition! The two, who have a strong attachment to the ".hack" series, talk about their thoughts on the work!

Hiroshi Matsuyama and Hiroto Niizato

- Until ".hack//Link" was created.

Hiroshi Matsuyama (Matsuyama): Let me start with the third season of .hack projects. After the release of the trilogy game ".hack//G.U." ("G.U."), the second season ended with another ending depicted in the theatrical film ".hack//G.U. TRILOGY" ("TRILOGY"), and from there onward, the ".hack" 3rd season project will take on a new look. This project started with the idea of taking a slightly different approach from what we had tried with the ".hack" series up until now.

Hiroto Niizato (Niizato): Not only games, but also manga and anime! While continuing the multifaceted development that is typical of the ".hack" series, the third season of this project certainly differed from the previous ones in the way it was developed. The project was developed in stages, starting with the comic in 2009, followed by the game in 2010, the anime in 2011, and the movie in 2012.

Matsuyama: The multimedia development of the 1st and 2nd seasons was a "simultaneous development" in which the game, anime, novel, and manga were all developed at the same time, with some back and forth, but basically at the same time, and all at once. The third season was not a simultaneous development, but rather a sequential development of the manga, game, anime, and movie, one at a time over a period of several years. We decided to do the movie last, which would take the longest, and the game first. In the end, ".hack//Link" ("Link") was released in 2010, but the project itself had already begun in 2008, and development was proceeding in parallel with the production of "TRILOGY".

Niizato: At first, I was the only one on the "Link" development team. I was assisted by Seiichiro Hosokawa, the character designer.

The first volume of .hack//Link -Twilight Knight-

Matsuyama: The game "Link" was the first project for the 3rd season, but at the same time we were working on the manga ".hack//Link: Twilight Knights", which was based on the same work, and as a result the manga started first in 2009. The reason being that Kadokawa Shoten had just decided to launch a new monthly magazine called "Kerokero Ace", targeting a younger age group, and we decided to serialize ".hack//Link: Twilight Knights" from the first issue. So, we started the comic first with the first issue of "Kerokero Ace" in 2009, followed by the game in 2010, and then the OVA project "hack//Quantum" ("Quantum") and the movie ".hack//Sekai no Mukou ni" (Beyond the World) were also in the works. The "Beyond the World" project was also starting to get underway.

Niizato: The elements that foreshadowed those serial projects were incorporated into the game as well. When you completed "Link," you were able to see a prototype animation of the movie ".hack//Sekai no Mukou ni" (.hack//Beyond the World). The prototype movie was actually made in two versions, an animated version and a CG version, and we ended up making the CG version for the movie. It was positioned as a preview of the next installment to let people know that there is more to this project. The bonus booklet that came with the limited edition of "Link" also included a preview page for "Quantum," didn't it?

Kite (Sora) as a Secret Unison PC Member in .hack//Link illustrated by Kikuya Megane

Matsuyama: This kind of thing is one of the best parts of the series, but it is something that only the ".hack" series can do, as even the main character "Sora" (PC name in "Link" is "Sora") of the movie that will be released two years later appears in the game as a playable character! I guess that's something only the ".hack" series can do, but, well... (Chuckles)

Niizato: I was reckless, wasn't I? (Chuckles)

- I want to bring back the royal feeling of Shonen Manga

Niizato: Speaking of differences from past game titles, the fact that the hardware for "Link" is now PSP was also significant.

Matsuyama: At the time, the PS2 was already in the midst of a generational shift, and the PSP was experiencing significant growth in Japan. We had already developed a PSP title with the "Naruto: ULTIMATE NINJA" series, so the idea was to create a new ".hack" on the PSP, the first portable game console. As Risei Nakata, a producer at Namco Bandai Games, who has been a great help to me since the middle of ".hack", said to me at the time, "'G.U.' is too maniacal, it has a strong message, it is deep and elaborate, and it is too much fun. The message was strong, deep, and elaborate, and this accelerated the level of mania. Existing fans supported it, but the depth of the work made it difficult for new users to get involved. This is true, and I don't mean to say that it is wrong, since that was the concept behind the creation of "G.U." in the first place.

Niizato: I am aware that I made the music to be more aggressive than I intended, so I guess I was right in line with my goal.

Matsuyama: Yes. The first game in the ".hack//" series started with the idea of working with Bandai to create a new "Royal Road", a standard RPG, a major title that would carry the company for the next 10 years. The storyline and main character had a "Royal Road" feel to it. However, what we decided to do when we started planning "G.U." was to create a character that would make people want to draw fanzines at Comiket or Cosplay, and that would make people love the character deeply. With this in mind, I designed very unique characters, and I dared to push the details of the settings. (See "20,000-character memoir by Hiroshi Matsuyama" in "hack//G.U. Complete Setting Documents")

Niizato: Somehow, the president and I were able to create a work that was a concentration of our interests... a work that was chuunibyou within chuunibyou. That was "G.U." The message was stronger because of that concentration, and I think I was able to achieve my original goal. However, as you pointed out at the time, as the world became more intense and the story deeper, the target audience became narrower.

Matsuyama: Looking at the user base that actually played the ".hack//" series, the main character Kite was 14 years old, so the user base for the series was around 14 years old. The interesting thing is that the user base for "G.U.", which was released three years later, was more like 17 to 18 years old. This means that the users of ".hack//" were playing "G.U." as they were, and they aged 3 to 4 years together with the game. Incidentally, Haseo, the main character in "G.U.", is 17 years old, which is exactly in line with the user demographic.

Niizato: So it wasn't wrong for a sequel. It's appealing correctly to the former fans.

Matsuyama: Yes, I wasn't wrong. However, ".hack" cannot continue to grow older and become more and more adult-oriented. So, the third season project has two goals: First, to bring back the "Royal Road" feel of shonen manga, and second, to make the manga less maniacal and "too much" for adults. The second was to rejuvenate the user base, making it a work that could be enjoyed by junior high and high school students as well. Based on these orders, we decided on the concept of making a new ".hack" that could be played on a portable game console.

Niizato: On the topic of mania, you also mentioned the vast amount of ".hack" related works that had been created up to that point. The content of manga, anime, and novels had become so abundant that there was a concern that people might not be able to enjoy ".hack" if they had not read "A." I think that was the beginning of the concern.

Matsuyama: However, these past works are also an asset. Furthermore, the characters from past works, such as Haseo from "G.U.," were very popular and well received by users. In the end, we came to the conclusion that even if people started with "Link" as an entry point, we should be able to create something that covered the appeal of "hack//", "G.U.", and all the manga, novels, and other works that have been developed from various perspectives.

.hack//Link (PSP) Key Visual Illustration by Kikuya Megane

Niizato: In other words, we needed something that would appeal to both new customers and old fans, which was not as easy as it sounds. This was not as easy as it sounds. It was an incredibly difficult order. At first, I had no idea how to approach the creation of a new work, and to be honest, I was confused. As I mentioned earlier, if I made a new work based on the assumption that people knew the story of each of the previous ".hack" works, there would be too many things that had been accumulated, and the more new works I made, the more maniacal they would become. The vast history and body of work from the past has become a weak point here. When we first came up with the idea for this project, we had the bold idea of creating an original story in which the characters from each work would appear in a parallel world, and the story would go back and forth between them.

Matsuyama: Also, didn't you have an idea to make it into a simulation RPG?

Niizato: Yes, the past characters were very popular among fans, and there was talk of utilizing those character assets as units.

Matsuyama: But in the end, I thought that a simulation RPG would be too radical. We went back to the idea of keeping the action RPG feel, where you control and move the characters by yourself.

Niizato: That's right. From there, we came up with a lot of ideas. How about an action RPG with a male and female twin as the main characters, where you use both characters to progress through the game?

- I had a hard time with the scenario.

Niizato: As for the scenario, through repeated discussions, we came to the conclusion that it would be an omnibus story that would encompass all the ".hack" works up to this point. The history and works of the past...the stories of the heroes are experienced through the new protagonist, Tokio Kuryuu, who eventually grows up to be a hero.

Matsuyama: As long as it is an RPG, "Drama" is important and is the top priority. Furthermore, since it is a ".hack" game, no one wants to have a random setting, and if the setting and technology are not realistic, the game will wake up from its dream and become uninteresting. We needed to create a scenario that would serve multiple purposes: to allow the audience to experience the story of the past protagonists, and to allow Tokio's own story to progress at the same time, while taking care to avoid this. I was thinking of a simple time-travel story, but it didn't seem like ".hack" and the time-travel itself seemed ridiculous, so I came up with the "dive into server log data" scenario. By diving into the log data at the time of the incidents that occurred in "The World" in the past, the main idea of getting involved in the incidents that occurred in each work was established.

Tokio Kuryuu, the main protagonist of .hack//Link

Niizato: Then the next question is, who is the first character from the past that Tokio meets? Then I started to think about who is the first character from the past that Tokio meets. In terms of the timeline, Tsukasa from ".hack//SIGN" ("SIGN") is the first main character, but I thought that the symbolic main character would be Kite. In the beginning of the ".hack//" story, Kite was just an ordinary junior high school student and an ordinary player, but by the end of the series, he has become a "hero", and that growth is fascinating. I wanted the hero of the new story to meet the grown-up "Kite the Knight Hero" at the beginning. When I decided to place Kite in the position of the "hero", I gradually came to the conclusion that the new protagonist should be a boy who admires Kite. He was 14 years old, the same age as Kite at the time. An incomplete and immature boy. Resulting the creation of Tokio Kuryuu.

Matsuyama: From there, original characters such as Saika and Schicksal began to emerge, and the story of "Link" slowly began to take shape. The relationship between Tokio's own case and the cases in the past also began to gradually build up.

Niizato: We managed to start working on the scenario, but we had to renew each of the past stories, and then we had to work hard to combine each of them to make the stories fit together. This time, Sano Masayuki, a member of our staff, was in charge of the writing scenario, and he really scraped the life out of it.... He played, watched, and read all of the ".hack" games, and as he conceived and re-edited the scenario, he ended up being the most knowledgeable person in our company about the series in general.

Matsuyama: However, the finished script was, well, long and drawn out. The scenario was too long, which was not surprising since it contained a lot of information. But if we had cut it down, it would have been too wordy and the meaning would have been lost. But I supplemented it with an e-mail system unique to ".hack"....

Niizato: Sano himself, who wrote the script, had a hard time because "Link" was his first job as a main game writer. Unlike novels, game scenarios require short sentences, effective use of dialogue, and other such tricks. I wasn't able to do that from the beginning, so I had to do a lot of redrafting.... I had a lot of trouble with the scenario (laughs).

Matsuyama: The length of the scenario was two to three times longer than what we had originally envisioned. It was more than I expected.

- Kikuya Megane-sensei and Seiichiro Hosokawa

The difference of Tokio Xth Form design from Seiichiro Hosokawa and Kikuya Megane

Matsuyama: Along with the scenario, we are also refining the artwork at the same time, and this is where Kikuya Megane, who did the artwork for this project, comes in. I have known Kikuya Megane-sensei since her manga works for ".hack//XXXX" (2 volumes), which was serialized from 2006 to 2007, and she has a good understanding of my work. We were also able to ask her to include the work of manga version, which had already been planned. As a result, she was deeply involved in the development of the game and was a very important figure in the creation of the characters and direction.

Niizato: Since we were aiming for something that could be accepted by a wide range of people, we thought that Seiichiro Hosokawa's drawings would be too aggressive. We discussed who we should ask, and it was decided that Kikuya-sensei, who has Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's design lineage, would be the best person to do the main artwork. We decided to have Kikuya-sensei to draw the main artwork, and Seiichiro Hosokawa was in charge of refining the original character design, but I guess Hosokawa is not good at drawing simple pictures with few lines, so no matter how many times he refines the design, there are still many lines (laughs). (Laughs.) When I handed Hosokawa's design to Kikuya-sensei, she would often say, "There are still too many lines!" I often had to tell him, "There are still too many lines! Especially...Haseo (laughs)."

Matsuyama:

Haseo in .hack//Link which has drastic change from his design in G.U

The number of belts wrapped around Haseo's body hasn't decreased at all (laughs). No matter how many times we refined the design around his neck, it was still covered with countless belts. Well, that is one of the characteristics of Hosokawa's designs, but in the end, there was only one belt. Also, Hosokawa's designs are so distinctive that when I drew them with other designs, I would think, "What's wrong with the balance? Is there something unbalanced? Is it different from the design? It's different from the design". I think Kikuya-sensei had a hard time with that. So, I asked Kikuya-sensei to refine Hosokawa's design, and then she refined it further to complete the final design.

Niizato: "Link" features all the characters from the past, and since the game, manga, and anime are all mixed together, we had to unify the design taste of all the characters... This refinement was necessary for that reason. There was also the opposite pattern of "simplify".

Matsuyama: Yes, anime characters. For example, if you mix the anime character Tsukasa with the game characters as they are, one of them would look plainly dressed. So in "Link," the decoration has been increased to make it more luxurious. The reason for the refinement was also a problem with the PSP's graphics specs. And so, in the end, we had to redesign all the characters, prepare Xth form designs for each character, and restructure the scenario to make it consistent...the most thorny path to take, I guess.

Niizato: The original concept was to make use of the existing assets, but when we realized that, instead of making use of them, we renewed all of them, which resulted in an increase in the amount of work. But it was worth it, because we were able to create fresh artwork that is unique to "Link.

- [.hack//Link] Demonstration of the Unique Expression

Comic-Based Style 2D Cutscene .hack//Link

Niizato: Another area where Kikuya-sensei was heavily involved was in drawing the comic demo. We decided early on that we would not do a simple polygonal puppet show (demo) for the PSP, so we decided to use 2D drawings. We didn't want to do it in 3D, but we also didn't want to make it an event scene with only 2D standing pictures talking. When we were trying to figure out how to make the expression richer, the digital comic techniques that were becoming popular at the time were quite helpful.

Matsuyama: One of the reasons we didn't use 3D was due to that the PSP has polygonal joint limitations and resolution issues, so moving polygons could make the screen look cheap.

Niizato: In order to express the aforementioned huge scenario in a comic-demo, the amount of original drawings by Kikuya-sensei was also enormous. Unlike the conversation demo scenes, where only a few patterns of standing pictures were prepared and displayed in different ways, all the pictures were drawn by Kikuya-sensei himself. The workload for Mr. Kikuya and the CC2 staff who were in charge of coloring was also quite heavy.

Matsuyama: Kikuya-sensei is in charge of the original drawings for the comic demo, and when he converted the original drawings he received into data, he did the coloring with CC2. Even though the layout was in comic format, it had a strong anime-expressive image, so I had him unify the finish with a lot of so-called anime-like post-processing. Rather than a single picture or frame, I tried to create an image of a film comic cut out of a scene from an animated film. If a film comic is made by cutting out frames (still images) from an animated movie, this method is the complete opposite, drawing a picture from scratch that reminds one of an animated movie... As you can imagine, this is very labor intensive (laughs).

  

Haseo vs Azure Kite in 2D Comic Style Cutscenes 

Niizato: I added movements and effects to the frames. At first, I was groping my way around, but I found a lot of reference in bishoujo games on PCs. These games were the first to adopt the expression technique of moving manga-like 2D pictures. I used them as references while seeking an animated comic demo that would be unique to "Link".

Matsuyama: The technique we tried in the comic demo, where illustrations are processed in post-processing to create an anime-like effect. The staff who created this technique were later assigned to the "Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series" development team and began working on high-end animation for the PS3, and their experience with the comic demo was a big help. The comic demo was a lot of work, but it was very beneficial from CC2's point of view. I don't think there is any other 2D illustration for games where so much effort is put into the animation process for each and every frame.

Niizato: Since the event scenes were to be expressed in comic form, there were many occasions when I discussed the direction and storyline with Kikuya-sensei. I was also serializing ".hack//Link: Twilight Knights" in "Monthly Kerokero Ace Magazine" at the same time, and we had meetings for this manga once a month, but I had entrusted most of the original elements of ".hack//Link: Twilight Knights" to Kikuya-sensei, so great that I had a lot of trust in her.

Matsuyama: Of course, Shinri was also involved in the creation of the serialized comic story, but Kikuya-sensei was a big part of that. I guess you should ask a manga professional about manga, and as time went on, there were no more and more areas that CC2 had to ask for correction. Toward the end, there were so many one-shot OKs that Kikuya-sensei said, "Didn't I do most of the drawings by myself? (laughs).

Niizato: So it was truly a trustworthy and trustworthy member of the staff. Actually, because of our daily interactions, we received feedback on how the ending of the game should be developed. We had a storyline that we had already given them, but they said it wasn't enough. Since she was in charge of the comic demo, she had a deep understanding of the scenario, including each frame and each line of dialogue. Sometimes I would ask for suggestions because I wasn't satisfied with them, and I would adopt the direction or lines that Kikuya-sensei gave me. For the ending part, we worked out the detailed image with Kikuya-sensei and came up with that shape. Thanks to him, I think we came up with a better version.

- Reunion with the Past Voice Actors

Voice Actors Microphone (Just put a random pictures, sorry)

Niizato: Another memorable part of the game was the post-recording. "Link" is a game in which all the main members of the past ".hack" games appear in one game, and it is fully voiced. In order to achieve this tremendous volume of work, it took an enormous amount of time to record the post-recording. There were probably about 100 voice actors, and the number of people involved was quite large. It took almost half a year to record the post-recording. During the core period, I was away from the office for about two months and stuck in the recording studio. For the new voice actors who were working on "Link," such as Yuko Sanpei as Tokio, we only had to give them instructions on how they should act in accordance with the new scenario, but the voice actors who had appeared in our previous works, such as "SIGN" and ".hack//," were all gathered together. Then, the female voice actors who were teenage girls when we recorded the work about 10 years ago became adults by the time of the post-recording for "Link". In this case, the voice quality had changed, and it was sometimes difficult to reproduce the voice of that time.

Matsuyama: This is inevitably the case with works that have a long history. Of course, the voice actors age along with the production. But they are still professionals and do their best.

Niizato: Also, there are many people who take a long time to remember what kind of role "XX" plays. (Laughs) We would show them videos of anime or games in which they had previously appeared, so they could remember what they were doing back then. I would play videos of anime and video games that I had appeared in before and ask them to remember those times as they played the character. I had them recall their instincts. It was a lot of work, but it was like a reunion with all the voice actors from the past. During post-recording, I felt the history of ".hack" that has been built up over the years. I strongly felt that many people have been involved in this work.

- The Future of .hack

Guilty Dragon: Sin Dragon and the Eight Curses on Smartphone released in 2012

Matsuyama: With the movie ".hack//Sekai no Mukou Ni" and the PS3 ".hack // Versus" the 3rd season project is over for now, and the latest ".hack" related title as of 2013 is "Guilty Dragon: Sin Dragon and the Eight Curses" ("Guildra") depicts events in the year 2030, which would be marked at the very end of the .hack timeline, but because it is a smartphone title, the name ".hack" is not that visible. At events, we are often asked by customers if they would like to play the new title on a console, but let's say for example that they would like to play. If we were asked to make ".hack" for a console from now on, we would have a clear vision. We would like to take ".hack" apart again and see where we can compete. If we are asked whether we want to go broad or maniacal, this time we would like to make a deep and dense work in a different direction from our past works.

Niizato: I think so too, although the series has been going on for more than 10 years, there is still a lot of potential for expression that only ".hack" can offer. I am not tired of it. I answer that I am not bored at all. Personally, however, I don't think I want to do the "entering the network" thing anymore.... It's not that I don't want to do it, it's just that I feel like I've already done it. It's difficult to convey this, but in the past, "networks" and "computers" were a different world from the one I am in now, a technology that I admired, unknown, and at the same time mysterious and scary. It was a distant existence. It was a different world. I think it was because of this image that I was able to express it, but today, in 2013, technology is much more familiar and integrated into the world. Even the word "ubiquitous" has become so commonplace that we are tired of hearing it. I don't think it is the right time to focus on something that is already a part of our daily lives. In other words, we are already part of the network. In a sense, I think the world we are living in is the network world itself. When you think about it, I think there are ways of expressing ".hack" that are possible only now.

Matsuyama: For example, I don't think I'm thinking of doing another one involving heroes from the past, such as Kite or Haseo. If I do, the next one will be a new story with completely new characters. I want to be prepared to draw from a blank sheet of paper. It doesn't seem that ".hack" has any rules or restrictions, but rather, it allows for free expression. Of course, there are some keywords that are common to the worldview, such as "The World," but what I am envisioning now is not a "defensive" image at all. I am not imagining anything at this point, but I hope that one day I will be able to do so. Even if it is just a fantasy at this point, I want to be able to start working on it as soon as the day comes when I can actually give it shape. With your support, ".hack" has the potential to expand even further, so we must be fully prepared to keep that potential alive.