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HAL Laboratory

イシダ HAL_Laboratory

09/07/2016 1:50 PM

Kirby: Planet Robobot Ask-a-thon - Round 3

Satoshi Ishida from HAL Laboratory here. It's time to begin round 3 of the Kirby: Planet Robobot Ask-a-thon! Mr Kumazaki, please take it away!

クマザキ

09/07/2016 1:52 PM

Thank you, it's nice to be back again. I think today will be the last of our Q&A sessions. And we'll be discussing some topics for the die-hard fans this time!

イシダ

09/07/2016 1:53 PM

OK, here's question number one: Some copy abilities from the previous game aren't present in the new one. How did you decide which abilities would make it into the game?

クマザキ

09/07/2016 1:55 PM

In the past 5 or 6 years, we've gained over 10 new abilities so we're always struggling to balance out the old and new ones. We were also restricted by development time and hardware limitations. But even from the perspective of game balance, once you go over 25 copy abilities, you start to see an effect on the frequency of each ability per stage and on the balancing for the new Robobot elements. Even with the limited number of abilities that made the cut, the command inputs make up for it with a wide variety of actions so it isn't such a problem.

イシダ

09/07/2016 1:57 PM

You'd think having more copy abilities would be more fun, but it actually seems like a lot of hard work. Now then, I wonder if you could tell us about these track names that people have been wondering so much about!

クマザキ

09/07/2016 2:05 PM

Alright, let me address them in order of their numbers in the Jukebox. [Literal translations of the Japanese titles follow:]

006　Venturing into the Mechanized World 021　Bountiful Star 029　VS. The Wicked Company 033　Dried-up Sea

Most of the questions are concerned with the first half. 029 is a personal favorite of mine! Next, here are the tracks that really heat things up as you approach the climax of the story. [Again, these are literal translations of the Japanese titles.]

083　L86 086　Crazy Rolling in Money 091　VS. Star Dream 092　 Fatal Error 093　Intermezzo Without a Leader 094　First Cry of a Newborn Star 095　Vagrant Counting Song of Retrospection

I put a lot of effort into these particular final boss themes. Here's a small piece of trivia for you: for track 094, I wanted a voice that sounded like a baby's cry, but somewhat different and inhuman. What you're actually hearing are the meows of my pet cat. The sound of the weathervane during battle in track 095 comes from chickens that a member of the sound team keeps at home.

イシダ

09/07/2016 2:07 PM

That came from chickens?! That's quite a source of inspiration. Alright, the next question is related to previous titles: Kabula and Landia both feature in Planet Robobot, but Heavy Lobster doesn't show up, even though it's a machine. Why is that?

クマザキ

09/07/2016 2:08 PM

We got a lot of questions about Heavy Lobster. It's nice to add some flavor from Kirby Super Star (Kirby's Fun Pak in Europe) but we always have to think about which enemies from the previous games we want to include while considering the game balance. In this case, we settled on using Kabula because it fits the shooting sequences well and because it's a mechanical boss. As for Landia, a 4-player co-op medieval-style RPG minigame wouldn't be the same without a dragon now, would it?

イシダ

09/07/2016 2:10 PM

While we're on the topic of character appearance, King Dedede hardly featured at all this time. The Dedede Clones did make an appearance, though. Why did you decide upon using clones and not a modified version of the character like Mecha Knight?

クマザキ

09/07/2016 2:11 PM

We wanted a lot of characters to feature, and I think that main characters like King Dedede and Meta Knight are finally starting to gain some recognition. We felt that for players who've played several games in the series, reusing King Dedede in the same way was becoming a little bland, so we worked in the clone angle to work alongside new characters like Susie and Taranza and fit in with the direction the series is going.

イシダ

09/07/2016 2:14 PM

Now for a question about the main character Meta Knight - specifically, about the color of his eyes. In the moment that Mecha Knight+'s mask cracks, the player gets a glimpse of Meta Knight's eyes, which appear to be yellow. Were they always this way? I was sure they were white before...

クマザキ

09/07/2016 2:16 PM

That's quite a thing to spot. In Kirby's Adventure on the Famicom (NES), Meta Knight's eyes are indeed white. At that time, there was a limit to the number of colors you could use, so I think that white was chosen because it stood out more. They were also white in Kirby Super Star (EU: Kirby's Fun Pak), but when we created the 3D model for this game, giving him white eyes somehow didn't feel right. And besides, his eyes have always shone with a yellow glow from behind his mask. We were worried about how old-school fans might react to this, but for the purposes of the design, we settled on yellow eyes.

イシダ

09/07/2016 2:18 PM

I'd like to group the next three questions together. No. 1: Did you increase the overall difficulty level for this game? No. 2: There seem to be a lot more cinematic effects this time. Was this deliberate? No. 3: The opening movie sequence was a lot shorter this time round. Why is that?

クマザキ

09/07/2016 2:20 PM

All right, I'll explain. Regarding the difficulty, I think that you should still be able to complete the main game with relative ease (easy enough for a developer's 4-year-old daughter to defeat the bosses in levels 1-3). But for the modes that are unlocked after completing Story Mode, we cranked the difficulty right up and challenged players to try and give it their best shot. Next, we used movie-like camera angles to reinforce the sci-fi theme. And during boss fights, we utilized pauses and moments of foreboding to give players with less experience in the action genre more time to orient themselves. And as for the opening movie, the reason why it's so short is because last time we depicted key items and daily life in great detail. We decided to forego that this time because players are already familiar with those kinds of stage-setting scenes from the rest of the series. We instead chose to leap straight into the moment of the disaster.

イシダ

09/07/2016 2:22 PM

And now for the final question, which concerns Kirby's partners, the Robobots. A Robobot weeps tears at the end - can we take this to mean that it has become sentient? And will Kirby ever meet one again?

クマザキ

09/07/2016 2:23 PM

What you saw was coolant leaking from the Robobot's eyes. This scene, depicting a tender-hearted Robobot, stands in direct contrast to Star Dream, who wanted to erase the hearts of the people trying to control it. Each Robobot that Kirby controlled was different from the last, but whenever Kirby was registered as a pilot in one, the memory data would be linked and carried over, and that continued till the very end. As for whether they'll meet again, I'll leave that up to how passionate the fans are for such a reunion.

イシダ

09/07/2016 2:25 PM

What exactly happened to the Robobot after that? I'm curious to know myself. But now, after three rounds of questions, our Kirby: Planet Robobot Ask-a-thon draws to a close. Many thanks to everyone who stuck with us this far!

クマザキ

09/07/2016 2:26 PM

A big thank you from me as well, and I do hope we'll meet again some time!

#robobo #en #robobo en

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