Yu Suzuki & Kenji Eno on Shenmue, D2 and Game Development | October 1999 (Famitsu)

In the October 1999 edition of Famitsu DC magazine, an extensive discussion was published between two great figures in the games development industry: Yu Suzuki (SEGA) and Kenji Eno (Warp Inc.), about their much-awaited upcoming titles that would see release in Japan a few months later in December of that same year.

Yu Suzuki and Kenji Eno, 1999

The article starts with the following introduction, suggesting a mix of reactions from gamers at the time: anticipation for the upcoming releases, and frustration at delays:

Shenmue and D2: two titles that have been part of the Dreamcast's lineup since the console's announcement. However, these two games have been continually delayed, much to the disappointment of many. While some devoted fans have waited patiently, the number of frustrated fans has also grown.

These two epic titles have finally begun to reveal their full scope. The timeline for their release has almost firmed up. The more you see and learn about these games, the more you realize that they're not the kind of projects that could be developed in just a year or so. Both of these games employ realistic, cinematic CG that is animated in real-time. Picture ten years from now, for example: it will be clear that these creators are writing a new chapter in the history of games as interactive entertainment, and that these two titles have irreversibly raised the bar for both quality and quantity.

Standing at the brink of history in the making, this is something we should humbly appreciate.

This extensive discussion totals 6 pages - thanks to SkillJim for providing the page scans.

Let's get started!

Yu Suzuki - Profile

Director of Sega Enterprises' Second Software Research and Development Department. A game creator with a large fan base, who made "AM2" (his old department name) common terminology in the industry. He has worked on 3D fighting games like the Virtua Fighter series and has created arcade hits such as Hang-On and Space Harrier. In his private life, he is a guitar enthusiast, with a deep love for his Peavey Eddie Van Halen* model and a collection of large Marshall amplifiers.

* Note from Switch: the Peavey Eddie Van Halen Wolfgang guitar series is a collaboration between guitarist Eddie Van Halen and Hartley Peavey's company, Peavey Electronics manufactured between 1996 and 2004.

Kenji Eno - Profile

CEO of video games development company Warp, with his first hit game being D. Afterwards, he worked on titles like Enemy Zero and Real Sound: Kaze no Regret. Three years ago, he started on D2. Its originally-planned platform, M2*, was canceled, so the project had to be entirely reworked for the Dreamcast. In addition to his duties as CEO, he also took on production, direction, composition, and performance. For D2, he was responsible for all of the music.

* Note from Switch: the Panasonic M2 was a planned video game console platform developed by 3DO and then sold to Panasonic. However plans to release as a console were canceled in 1997 and instead Panasonic released M2 as an Interactive Media player in 1998. 

Kenji Eno passed away at the age of just 42 on February 20, 2013, due to heart failure brought on by hypertension (Wikipedia).

Establishing the Grammar of Games in 3D

Suzuki:
I feel very sleepy. I'm like this all the time now. I'm pretty exhausted at this point. But even so, I'm gradually recovering. When it was at its worst, I couldn't even stand. I could attend meetings, sure, but afterward, I couldn't stand for a while. Recently, though, I've been able to climb stairs on my own again. Lack of sleep really takes the biggest toll.

Eno:
I'm at my limit too. I haven't been sleeping at all recently.

Suzuki:
You take breaks sometimes, right? Honestly, I'd rather just lounge around at home, but I make myself go to the seaside, and that makes me feel better. It seems like sweating it out by the sea does me good. It's like the stress leaves my body along with the sweat.

Eno:
Yeah, maybe I should hit the sauna too. After a massage, though, the soreness always comes back, and it ends up hurting more.

Suzuki:
I'm really hoping Shenmue gets released soon. Honestly...

Eno:
I feel like that too. With games like D2 and Shenmue, we aren't just making the main game itself. We're also developing the tools, libraries, and everything else alongside them. There's so much to do.

Shenmue

D2

Suzuki:
There's also work on arcade games. But we really can't take too much time. While I've been working at Sega and making various things, I never used to think about how many more games I could make. But this time, I did. If it's three years for one game, then even if I spend over 30 years, I'd only be able to make 10 games. That's definitely a sad thought, so from now on, I’m determined to make games within one year.

That being said, I think both D2 and Shenmue will be good games when they're finally released. Because of the delays, we've faced a lot of harsh criticism from fans. There are times I feel like I should stop reading online comments. We're working really hard, so it stings when there's that much criticism. Especially with the demo version [What's Shenmue], there were a lot of negative opinions. But, you know, for a demo version, I think it turned out pretty well. The story about Director Yukawa is different from the main game, so I hope people don't judge Shenmue as a whole based on just that demo.

What's Shenmue was released on the first game's originally-announced release date of 5th August 1999,  following its postponement, as a gift for those who had pre-ordered.

Oh, and let me say this - the controls in the main game are much better compared to the demo. You'll even be able to move around in Ryo's room, and you'll be able to move smoothly without any stress. There was feedback from people who played the demo saying that it was difficult to face the direction they wanted, but I think that’s because they weren’t used to the controls. When you hold the B button, you can turn freely. If you don’t, you'll rotate automatically to 22 and 45 degrees.

Eno:
The player's own skills getting better is also part of progressing, right? Even people who complain about how difficult it is to walk around at first, can move around easily after playing for 30 minutes.

Suzuki:
In the main game, we improved the controls and added a certain level of intelligent assistance. The game will recognize, "Oh, you wanted to turn this way," and then help you face that direction. That kind of help wasn’t in the demo version.

Eno:

How are things going right now? How's the development progress?

Suzuki:
Progress? (Fetching several long rolls of paper from his desk) This is how things are going. We have different people play the game, mostly first-timers, and we're measuring how much time they take for each internal [story] step.

For example, (looking at the papers) the time for this section here is unusually long, right? I can't say too much right now, but it's about hunting for a certain item.

Yu Suzuki with a log sheet that has recorded players' behavior and play time.

Eno:
(Repeating) "I can't say too much, but it's about hunting for something"... I like it!

Suzuki:
Right? So, when something takes a long time like this, it stops being fun, so we're thinking about giving stronger hints. Or, on the other hand, these parts are quite tightly spaced, see? In this kind of case, you don't always need to have flashy moments.

Alternatively, for this action scene, it's noted on the paper that the player succeeded on their 22nd try. We try to set the difficulty so that players can succeed within about 8 tries at most. But when it comes to 3D, a lot of people tend to miss the hints. Even if they're told to find the woman in red with sunglasses, sometimes they’ll wander off somewhere else, even though she's right in front of them. It’s like, "Hey, she's right there!" So, I think in 3D, there’s no need for extra trickery from the developers. People get confused enough as it is.

Eno:
So, how long does it take [to play the game through] right now?

Suzuki:
About 30 hours. But keep in mind that this is the time for a player who, even though it may be their first time playing, has someone around them with a Daily Routines chart.

To explain what a Daily Routines chart is... for example, if someone needs to talk to the old lady at the tobacconist's, the chart will show you that since it's 3:30, she must be on her way to Sakuragaoka Park. So, you can sprint to catch up to her. It helps with solving it as quickly as possible. Playing in the normal way would take much, much longer.

The other day, we held an intense camp at Lake Yamanaka* for the whole weekend, Friday through Sunday, and even playing consecutively without stopping we couldn't get to the end. We kept working on it the following week, and finally, we were able to complete it. That generated a list of about 1,000 bugs that need to be fixed in Shenmue. Currently, there are around 5,000 to 6,000 items to fix. These range from things that absolutely need to be fixed to things we'd like to fix if possible. It's not good if that list keeps growing. These are the kind of things we're working on now- making fixes and adjusting the difficulty.

*Note from Switch: Lake Yamanaka: an area near Mt. Fuji where Sega had a company facility.

Suzuki:
How long is D2 in terms of playtime?

Eno:
I was aiming for around 15 hours, but it has ended up at about 20 hours. The first world alone takes 6-7 hours. If you take detours, it takes even longer.

Suzuki:
I also originally thought I’d keep to within 12-15 hours of playtime, but it has ended up exceeding 50 hours. It has really expanded too much. D is the only story-based game I've watched right to the end.

D was an interactive FMV-movie style horror game that was released in 1995. D2 would feature the same protagonist, Laura, but with an unrelated story. (Screenshot from the Sega Saturn version)

Eno:
Make sure you play this one too.

Suzuki:
You know, giving players just enough hints to solve it is really the best way. The feeling of accomplishment is totally different when they finally get it. But in fully 3D games where you can go anywhere, the way you give hints is completely different. You have no choice but to provide information according to the rules of the game. Anyway, since you can converse with 200 people, you have to figure out which person will give you the information you need. If you get lost, it becomes a big problem.

Eno:
That's incredible. I'm glad I went with only about 20 people in D2 (laughs).

Suzuki:
That’s the kind of design we’ve created. We've made the characters live out daily routines.

For example, you might wonder 'Where did that person go?' They aren't at the park, either, so you keep looking, and then you realize, "Oh, it’s New Year's Eve, so they must have gone back to their home town." Or, for example, someone starts a certain quest on New Year's Eve, but they aren't able to complete it until January 3rd.

Some things happen in real life, but would be boring if you put them in a game.

And if the game is smart, normally that's fun, but if, say, the security guards are too smart, it makes sneaking in somewhere too hard. But if you reduce the number of guards, it becomes too easy, so maybe you have six of them who are all a bit lazy.

The thing is, when you aim for realism, people start complaining about everything. Like, "Why don’t you use the bathroom?" Well, of course they can't. You can’t program every single thing into a computer. You don’t need to show unnecessary things. You never see the main character in a movie go to the bathroom, right?

"You never see the main character in a movie go to the bathroom, right?"

By the way, when is D2 coming out?

Eno:
Well...

Suzuki:
When it’s finished? (laughs)

Eno:
(laughing) No, no, it's not that. December 23rd. The development schedule is still the same, but we’re just giving ourselves a bit of a buffer.

Suzuki:
Even if the PS2 comes out, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me.

Eno:
Yeah, it doesn’t matter. People don’t buy games by comparing hardware. They buy them because they want the game. It’s not about the hardware, really.

Suzuki:
Yes, the priority is to make good software. It has been delayed this much, and I don’t want to release something that's half-baked. The staff is also important. We’re at the point where we’re waiting to see if the final product will bring us joy.

At first, it's like we’re holding a large flower bulb. We think, "This is going to bloom into a big flower, this game is going to succeed." But then it felt like we had buried it too deep, and maybe it wouldn’t sprout at all. Finally, though, it’s starting to sprout, and after three years of absorbing nutrients, it’s forming a big bud. I think we’re going to see something great come out of it. And, not just with Shenmue and Shenmue II, but with the techniques we’ve acquired while making Shenmue, we could make about 10 more games. We now know what needs to be done. It feels likes things will really get going from here, at last. I feel like people might say, "Hasn’t it been three years already? Shouldn’t it be done by now?" But all the groundwork takes time, you know?

Eno:
Yes, exactly, when you develop some new technology, one or two months pass by in a flash. While a lot of games follow a pre-established flow, those who try to do something new end up taking an additional three months or more.

Suzuki:
But thanks to that, we’ll be able to keep food on the table for the next ten years or so. We’ve tried out about 50 different technologies, and developed and tested about ten times that amount compared to what remains in Shenmue. We’ll be able to use it for Shenmue II and other games as well.

Eno:
I’m looking forward to what comes next. Since the early days of Shenmue, I’ve been shown bits and pieces, and every time I think, "I need to work harder," and it feels like hell. Like, "So that’s how they apply textures? And that’s how they handle shadows?" The more I find out, the harder it gets. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t seen it at all.

Suzuki:
Actually, Shenmue is still evolving. That's because it's going in a direction that no one expects.

(Suzuki plays a video. During the several minutes of the Shenmue video screening, Eno and the interview crew watch breathlessly, without speaking. Since we're prohibited from disclosing any part of it, I can’t write anything about it here, but I can tell our readers with confidence: you can look forward to it).

Eno:
(Amazed) Wait, you're recording voices every week?

Suzuki:
Every week, for years.

Eno:
That’s the thing that stood out the most to me as I was watching just now. I’ve never seen a voiced game evolve this much before. Usually, once the voice recordings are done, that’s it. The story and direction are usually set at that point.

Suzuki:
It's not quite like that. We make changes after watching the voice recordings, you see. There are so many elements in a game. In some ways, I think movies are easier. You know, there’s an inverse relationship between the expressive power of the visuals and the amount of dialogue. With low resolution you have to make the characters talk a lot. At the other end, with a real actor like Ken Takakura*, even if they don’t speak, they can express so much with just the movement of their eyebrows or the shine in their eyes. So, when the quality of the CG changes, of course, we have to redo the voiceovers as well**.

Notes from Switch:

* Ken Takakura was a Japanese actor and singer who appeared in over 200 films.

Ken Takakura

 

** The changing / improving quality of graphics may be referencing the multiple versions that Shenmue underwent: a version targeted at the standard Saturn, "accelerated" Saturn and finally the Dreamcast.

Eno:
I wish I could evolve too. No, I’ve already given up on that (laughs).

Suzuki:
Even if the game’s delayed a little, that's ok. I think it’s better to release a good product. Absolutely. Even if it’s delayed by a few months, it's got value that will last for years. People who buy it will be playing that game for a while. I think Shenmue will be the kind of game that won't easily end up in second-hand stores. With an RPG, once you’ve experienced the story, it's likely it’ll go to a second-hand shop, but once we show people that (referring to the secret video scene earlier), I think they'll really love it. I’m sure it’s going to be everyone’s favorite scene (laughs). Around September or October, I’m thinking of releasing more information about it.

Eno:
But in my case, the music still isn’t finished. It’s delayed. If you ask what’s the most delayed part of the game, it’s definitely the music. I’m doing all of it myself this time. With the scenario, you can kind of zone out a bit, but with composing, you can’t. If your mind isn’t clear, it’s impossible. Even if I book the studio for 24 hours, sometimes I can’t finish a single track.

Suzuki:
When it comes to music, you really have to do it yourself, right? Maybe I should try it too. (Holding an Eddie Van Halen model guitar, and imitates the sound of playing). A heavy metal version of Shenmue. But guitars take up a lot of data, you know? Drums, piano, and bass, you can manage somehow, but guitar and vocals are really tricky.

Eno:
Does Ryo play the guitar?

Suzuki:
No, he only knows karate. He’s the kind of guy with no hobbies, sort of like Hiroshi Motomiya's Ore no Sora*. But if he had too much personality, it’d ruin the audience’s emotional immersion. Still, while playing a whole song would be tough, I might try playing a few bars (laughs).

*Note from Switch: Ore no Sora (The Sky is Mine) is a manga series published from 1975 to 1978 that follows the story of Yasuda Ippei, a young heir to the wealthy Yasuda family. On his 18th birthday, he is given one year of complete freedom to explore the world. However, there's a condition - he must return with a wife approved by his entire family to secure his inheritance. A movie based on the series was released in 1977.

Manga "Ore no Sora"

Eno:
The amusement arcade is pretty packed with games, isn't it?

Suzuki:
Yeah, it is. It's perfect.

The You Arcade

Eno:
For me, just playing games at the arcade until I run out of money, then working part-time at the harbor, buying a cola, and going back to the arcade - that's enough for me. That alone would be fun.

Suzuki:
Exactly, it's totally worth the 6,800 yen* just for that. I wish I could show you it.

*In 1999, 6,800 yen (Shenmue's retail price in Japan) was the equivalent of around $60 US

You know, the darts has gotten incredibly fun. With the real rules. Endlessly trying to aim perfectly wouldn't work, so there's a bit of a random factor involved. And there's a time bonus, so the earlier you throw, the more points you get.

There are also slot machines. We really made these properly, too. They have a payout rate, right? We've made it adjustable. And since they couldn’t fit in the arcade anymore, we ended up making a slot house for them.

Eno:
Seriously?

Suzuki:
Seriously. It has 16 machines, and there’s both a manager and staff. You can bet 1 coin, 5 coins, 10 coins, or 20 coins, and each machine has a different payout rate. Every 1 to 2 weeks, the machines are switched around. If you don’t have information about them, you won’t make any profit. There's 6,800 yen of value just in this.

At the Slot House

Oh, can I mention one more thing? There’s also gacha gacha. It’s the best! I’ve got tons of characters suited for gacha gacha. People say it can be stressful when you end up with lots of useless items, but that’s not the case! Your collection keeps growing, and that makes me happy.

Eno:
Hey, I wanted to ask you something. Can you buy meat at the butcher?

Suzuki:
No, but you can buy fish at the fish shop. Like tuna.

Eno:
(Laughing) What’s the reason for that difference?

Suzuki:
Heh heh, that’s a secret. You can also buy dried sardines, but let’s keep that under wraps.

Fishmonger's Uokichi on Dobuita Street. (Note from Switch: Suzuki hints that fish would be available here, although this is not the case in the release version)

You know, it’s okay even if the player doesn’t solve the story. I spent three years on it, and I think it came out alright. I think it's worth playing through once, but when it comes to how to play Shenmue, it’s deeper than that.

You can’t start doing part-time jobs right away after the story begins, so if you plan on playing a lot of games right off the bat, you might find yourself running short on money. It’s kind of like the old game Little Computer People, but on an expanded scale. The demo version [What's Shenmue] was small-scale, so we couldn’t capture that aspect of the charm. Small just isn’t interesting. (Pointing to a high-end studio monitor in the room) Even with a big speaker like this, unless you feed it appropriately-large sound, it doesn't capture the atmosphere. In a similar way, you can't get a good result without a city that's large enough to create an atmosphere.

Little Computer People (1985) was a game where one man and a dog live inside the computer.

Eno:
What kind of part-time jobs can you do?

Suzuki:
Forklifting at the harbor. You know how we have a job-related series of arcade games*? I’d love to do a forklift game with that.

* Note from Switch: Sega produced a number of job-related arcade games in the late 90's including Emergency Call Ambulance, Crazy Taxi, 8 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker and Airline Pilots. The idea of a Forklift arcade game was also recently been mentioned by former Sega developer Morio Ashizuka, who relates that a stand-alone forklift racing arcade game was floated.

Eno:
Can you move around the city in the forklift?

Suzuki:
No, you can't.

Eno:
That’s a shame. I wanted to take the forklift to the flower shop or something.

Suzuki:
It would be quicker just to run there, wouldn't it? In Chapter 1, the only things you can ride around the city on are a bicycle* and a motorcycle.

With a forklift, normally, you just drive up to a crate, insert the forks under the load, lift it up, and move forward, right? In reality, this is something you probably couldn’t do, but there's a technique where you move forward while scooping up the cargo without stopping, and it's incredibly satisfying. So I wanted to do a forklift race. Battling with opponents at 20 kilometers an hour sounds fun, right? Since I had just made F355, I thought a race at a snail-like pace would be cool too. When you steer a forklift, the rear swings out, which adds another layer of fun to it.

*Note from Switch: Unfortunately, for the release version of Shenmue, Ryo's planned bicycle-riding ability was cut. It is interesting that this may have been a late decision, given that the date of this interview in October 1999 was only a few months before the game's Japan release.

Eno:
Do buses run in the town?

Suzuki:
Yeah, the buses run right on schedule, and of course, you can ride them.

Eno:
How about taxis?

Suzuki:
They run, but you can’t catch them.

Eno:
Wait, why not? You should make it so you can.

Suzuki:
Well, part of the challenge is figuring out what to do when there aren’t any buses, right? If taxis were available everywhere, it’d make the game too easy.

Taxis: "If taxis were available everywhere, it'd make the game too easy".

Eno:
Shenmue must be the game with the greatest number of programs* compared to any other, right?

*Note from Switch: Likely referring to mini-games or unique in-game activities.

Suzuki:
Yeah, I think so. Compared to past big titles, I think it has about ten times more.

Eno:
Is there a funeral in the game?

Suzuki:
There’s no funeral in Chapter 1. But I think it’d be nice to include a wedding or a funeral at some point. Though, I’m not sure it needs to be set in Japan. Maybe in Chapter 2 or later, we’ll include a wedding or funeral that isn’t Japanese. In Chapter 1, there is someone who gets married, but there’s no wedding scene.

Eno:
In D2, there’s hunting, you know. It’s a pretty brutal game.

Suzuki:
Wow, so there’s hunting. What do you hunt?

Eno:
Caribou, moose, grouse, and hare.

D2: hunting a hare

Suzuki:
Grouse goes well with red wine, doesn’t it? Hunting in snowy mountains, huh. Venison makes good sashimi. But with rabbit, you can’t eat them if you've crushed the innards - they smell bad, you know. It makes you want to go to that level of depth, right? If you have the player prepare a rabbit and they crush the innards, Shenhua would get mad at you (laughs).

Eno:
And once you start creating all kinds of things, it becomes way too interesting. That’s why you have to tone it down a bit, or the whole game could fall apart. We had the same issue with the snowmobiles before. Once you start working on them, you just get too absorbed in it. The programmers start researching things like, “Oh, so this kind of technique exists?” And then, before you know it, it turns into something as fully-fledged as snowmobile racing. That's not good.

●

Eno:
For me, portraying the mountains was really tough. Creating mountains where you can freely walk around anywhere is difficult. It’s important that you can see far into the distance, and I believe it’s essential that there are no missing parts or gaps.

Suzuki:
You could design mountains by dividing them into those you can walk on and those you can't.

But the sea is even more challenging. There are no obstacles at all, so the only thing you can do is add fog.

Eno:
With snowy mountains, the rendering and ground interaction are different, right? You sink into the snow. Plus, you have to leave footprints.

Suzuki:
Ah.  When I said, "Let's add footprints in the snow!" everyone groaned. On a snowy day, I thought we’d make a town full of footprints left in the snow. But then there’s the issue of what happens if Ryo wakes up at 4 AM and no one has left any footprints in the freshly fallen snow. We’re a bit stuck on that (laughs).

Eno:
Shadows are a real challenge as well. D2 is also really well-crafted, but if you handle shadows properly, there's a lot of slow-down. We reduced the polygon count to lighten the load, but we still need to use about five different types of shadows to make it work.

Suzuki:
Yeah, we’re using about five different types of shadows. Some are very detailed, and others not so much. In the end, you could make everything super detailed, but it would be a waste. It's a trade-off. If you use too much CPU power in areas no one notices, you won't be able to use them elsewhere. It’s about what makes the user happiest.

Eno:
Exactly. Someone noticed that, in a scene where a truck is moving, as soon as Laura gets into the truck, it stops snowing outside.

Suzuki:
That’s alright. It’s like in a famous old movie where a guy takes off his tie when he enters a hotel, but when he comes out later, he’s wearing the tie again. And yet, it's not a problem at all.

Eno:
But as a result we made snow just for the truck, and had it fall. But then, due to gaps in the truck's polygons, the snow leaked through. It was a bug, but I was impressed at how realistic it was.

Suzuki:
Yes, that kind of thing happens, doesn't it. Like when I praise the team for something, and they quietly say, "It’s a bug."

You know, for Shenmue, we researched all of Yokosuka's weather and embedded it into the game. So it started raining, but we had this issue where the characters weren’t using umbrellas. We had to think about when characters should put up their umbrellas, and if it should be at the same time for everyone, but that would look weird. Or how many raindrops should fall before they put them up.

And then, there’s the thing about shutters, like at a vegetable shop. The shutters close at 8 PM, but what happens if the player is inside?

Another challenge was figuring out what happens if you’re holding an umbrella in your right hand and carrying something in your left hand - how do you open a door like that? You’d have to close the umbrella first, tuck it under your arm, but then how do you close the umbrella? So, we decided to make the umbrellas in Shenmue close automatically.

Then there’s the question of where people leave their umbrellas - do they put them down inside the shop or outside? If you leave them outside, you could tell how many people are inside the shop. You could even tell if they’re men, women, or children based on the patterns on the umbrellas.

Umbrellas in Shenmue

And then, for the people working at the harbor, they eat lunch outside, so we had to consider what to do if it starts raining. Should we build a cafeteria or put up a tent?

Weather is really tricky. We have actual weather data from the Yokohama Meteorological Observatory, so we wanted to use real data, but we also needed the weather to fit the events in the game. For example, we wouldn’t be able to do a scene where you look at the stars if it’s raining.

Eno:
You’ve got 200 people talking, plus narration, right? The sound must have been a huge challenge too.

Suzuki:
People might be surprised at how much data is used just for sound, but compression technology for audio is still behind. I don’t want to go below 14kHz (sampling frequency).

Eno:
We’re using 44kHz stereo, CD quality (laughs). Plus, we’re really focused on load times too, doing everything we can to shave off even one second.

Suzuki:
For long ones, you store them externally, or maybe transfer them in packs. We’re constantly splitting up and reading the data in small parts. So the game is always reading during play. It’s probably a good durability test for the Dreamcast.

Eno:
Same for us. For the real-time animation of event movies, we stream the data, so it's always reading.

Suzuki:
What’s important are the software technologies behind it. Then there’s the know-how. Both of these things won’t become obsolete even if the hardware changes. Technologies like those used in Shenmue aren’t dependent on hardware. Even if you don’t have a lot of polygons, if you have good characters, you wonder if more polygons are really needed.

What matters is the (cinematic) direction. We’ve put a lot of thought into unique camera work as well. It's not something that can be done just by bringing in people from Hollywood. It’s difficult. Things like handling long lines of dialogue, or how to manage scenes with three people. And so on. It’s not about the hardware. It’s not about how many polygons you can display. It's about completely different things.

Eno:
Exactly, it’s about the know-how. The artist’s know-how. For Shenmue and D2, if people heard the polygon count for the characters, I think they would be surprised. Normally, you’d think they’re using twice as many polygons. But it’s not due to cutting corners or lacking skill; it’s about know-how. After all, there are so many things besides the characters that need to move, right? If you calculate the polygon count based on the Dreamcast’s specs, there’s no way you could animate them properly.

D2 development screenshots using 3D Studio MAX software

Suzuki:
How many discs is D2?

Eno:
Four discs.

Suzuki:
I see, so four discs is the standard, huh (laughs). Nobody’s going for eight discs. I’d love to go for about 100 discs. It’s not about how many discs there are; that’s not what’s important. When I did the test play, it was on a two-disc version that didn’t include some event scenes. After I finished checking the first disc, I was amazed by how much was packed in there. It’s like magic plastic. If this were a movie, it would only hold two hours, but somehow we’ve packed in over ten hours. But, you know, we’re using the know-how we’ve built up here to think about all kinds of new ideas.

Eno:
I’m really glad I created it, and I’m glad I took the adventure. I feel like I’ve climbed up about three levels - I’ve really leveled up.

Suzuki:
For a creator, originality is the most important thing. That’s why, if we lose that, the work will lose its value. When new hardware comes out, you have to try new things. Even in Gundam, they always put Newtypes* in new machines, right? You’ve got to do what needs to be done. It’s only natural to create software that brings out the strengths of the Dreamcast.

*Note from Switch: In the Gundam universe, Newtype refers to a group of humans who have evolved heightened mental and sensory abilities due to living in space.

Amuro Ray, a Newtype and main protagonist of 1979 anime series Mobile Suit Gundam

On the other hand, if new hardware hadn’t come out, I think I still would have made Shenmue on the Saturn. The hardware doesn’t matter - it’s the concept that’s important. But I’m going to keep releasing new software using the technologies from Shenmue. We've made people wait a lot, so I’m going to pick up the pace. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s all about how many titles I can create while I’m still a creator. I’m going to increase the intensity and make up for the three years of delay. Besides the Shenmue series, I’m planning to develop other titles for the Dreamcast as well. And of course, I'll also continue working on arcade games.

Eno:
I’m also planning to make one light game and one heavier game for the Dreamcast. My programmers really want to work on the Dreamcast, too.

Suzuki:
Definitely, you've built up a ton of know-how.

-- End of translation --

Source: Famitsu DC Magazine, October 1999

Become a Patron!