ZUN Interview page 1

Compared to the ones released until now, challenging breakthroughs have been made on various aspects of LoLK. We interviewed ZUN on this and that about this newest game. Although, do mind that we also touch on the game's endings a bit, so there may be spoilers for those who have yet to clear them all.

Interviewer: In the previous game, Double Dealing Character, the theme was "Going back to the roots" gameplay-wise and "Two-facedness" in term of the characters, but this time the story has a "revenge drama" vibe to it, and the worldview gives one the feeling of a "triple-deadlock" between opposing sides. Also, from connections to Chang'e, a great person on the Moon who had been name-dropped before, a Chinese and a Greek goddess have entered the scene, giving off the impression that the scope of the world has really widened.

ZUN: This time, when making the game the first thing I considered wasn't the story. As time passes, the people who play my games also change, and I want the style of the game to change to match it, or "chase after" it, if you will. So, while the previous installment was "Returning to the roots", this time it is "Challenge". It was the first thing I decided on, or to put it another way, the foundation of this game. Only then did I get to "Now what kind of story would fit these new changes", and writing the plot.

Interviewer: It's really rare for the plot to not truly wrap up until one clears the EX stage as well.

ZUN: Eh, there wasn't that much of a story anyway. I think you're golden just getting a general feel of the atmosphere.

Interviewer: ...but, it would really feel "left hanging" and unsatisfying, don't you think?

ZUN: Well, at its root this whole story is a "left hanging" one anyway. (laughs)

Interviewer: ... To think of it, this time none of the kanji in the game's name appears in the characters' names...

ZUN: And whoever said they have to be in the first place? (laughs)

LoLK's "Challenge"

Interviewer: By "challenge", do you mean the new Pointdevice Mode?

ZUN: I did think that putting such a thing in will probably attract criticism, but I wanted to do it anyway.

Interviewer: You also touched on an unreasonable difficulty exemplified by "I Wanna Be the Guy", and a retry system where you can come back immediately and do over again and again in the Omake text.

ZUN: Recently there has been a lot of games like that, I feel like they've grown as a genre. But I have never seen a game where the die-then-retry mechanism makes sense story-wise, so I wanted to challenge that.

Interviewer: You are talking about how being able to retry has no meaning outside of gameplay.

ZUN: I just thought "If it integrates perfectly with other parts of the game, then what kind of game would come of it?"

Interviewer: And so you came up with the Blue Gem Medicine.

ZUN: That's because powerful enemies and strange persons just kept coming. But well, even with everyone saying it's hard while playing, in the end it ended up being the Touhou game with the most people clearing it, which was my original goal. "This part is so hard!", "You're mean.", everyone told me so, but in the end it was played by lots of people so I'm cool with it. I've been told that I make a name for myself with games that few people play, but I wanted to avoid that. There were lots of complaints, but when I thought which kind of game would be played by many, I ended up making this one. But, this time there was a chance for me to pull off such an experiment. Back then I would have to worry about whether such a thing would succeed or not, but now I can simply test new things when I want to. I did the same with the plot, and so it has a relatively adventurous feel to it. I didn't want to divorce completely from "traditional" Touhou, but I wasn't aiming to recreate it either, it was a weird feeling. That fantastic feeling is the story, the world of Touhou, I wanted to create something that would bring that to mind. Whether I succeeded or not, is another story entirely though. (laughs)

Interviewer: The endings of this game feel more clearly seperated between characters than before, how to say it, like everyone fills a different role. Like there's a message in each one of them. Reimu feels the most traditional though.

ZUN: Reimu's ending feels not completely finished, isn't it. But well, since the enemy is untouchable, such a thing is only to be expected. In that regard it is very similar to "Silent Sinner in Blue"'s ending .

Interviewer: "I was beaten up good, but eh, that's okay", like that?

ZUN: LoLK, if you ask me, falls in the same line as "Imperishable Night" and "Silent Sinner", so it becomes like that. Ain't no helping it.

Interviewer: "It's all the Lunarians' fault", right? (laughs) . But with Reimu in mind, so many possible links to the future are embedded in the endings, it's really exciting. Especially Marisa's, where so many bonds that have remained in darkness up until now have showed their face. (T/N: the word "bonds" here reads as "Yukari", same kanji as her name and all).

ZUN: You could also say that it didn't end, but opened up from there (laughs) . But it's after all Marisa's ending, so who knows how much of it is true.

Interviewer: But to know the Power Stones that intimately, it can only be her isn't it.

ZUN: Yeah, more or less. You could even say Marisa's story here is a continuation from "Urban Legend in Limbo". After all, the urban legends arcs in Scrollery and Horned Hermit had been mostly about her anyway.

Interviewer: What about the other two?

ZUN: Reisen of course had to show up in this story, and her ending was completely explained, for a moment she was like the main character of all this.

Interviewer: I never thought the roots of a character could influence what they would know and talk about.

ZUN: Matters closely related to the Moon, of course only someone like her would know well. But the story's logic still wouldn't be clear with just that, and so we need the viewpoint of an outsider character with no relation to any of the factions, and that's where Sanae comes in. While Reisen tells us what goes on at the heart of the story, Sanae makes observations on what she sees as she goes along - the outer layers of it.

Interviewer: After getting Sanae's 1cc ending, I get the feeling there's a deeper plot going way back to Mountain of Faith...

ZUN: Actually all of that boils down to the fact that Sanae is an awesome person. After all, she did prevent a godly descendant from coming down. In Sanae's ending, the folks at Moriya Shrine struggled to figure out just what the guys on the Moon actually are. Then it dawned on them, over there is the land of the gods. The player and those who read the lore probably knew that already, but it was something breathtaking to them. And so the story was connected to the Moriya crowd, if only a bit.

(Cont.)