New AC7 interview

New interview with Kazutoki Kono (translated from Japanese):

December 3rd to 4th, 2016 (local time), Playstation Experience 2016 (PSX 2016 below), Anaheim, America. We talked with Ace Combat’s brand producer [1] at Namco Bandai on location about Ace Combat 7.
Caption: Ace Combat brand producer Kazutoki Kono (referred to here as Kono)
==——The latest trailer was released at the opening showcase. As far as you’ve seen, how have people around here reacted?==
Kono: I was livetweeting while watching the event. Like, on the official account. I was doing my best to update the all the images and stuff. People got exited at the Ace Combat name, and all the responses to the trailer when it was shown made me profoundly happy. I’m always hunting down tweets, but I was wondering how everyone was gonna react to the return of the numbered titles, so I was pretty relieved. Everyone was thinking it was just gonna be a PSVR demo, but thanks to the trailer leading things off, everyone knew it was a straight and proper Ace Combat 7.
==——Hadn’t you written a bunch of tweets on the official twitter beforehand though?==
Kono: I thought it'd be a good idea to let everyone know when we announced that we were going to be giving a demo at PSX that what we were going to be showing off this time was VR.
==——I’m sure you’ve been asked this many times, but could you tell us a bit about Ace Combat 7’s VR?==
Kono: Ace Combat 7 will have a full length campaign, and we’re planning to have the parts where you can play using PSVR as separate VR-specific content. Both the campaign and VR are joined by the concept of “becoming an ace pilot” that lies at the heart of Ace Combat, but their methods of expression [2] and development are simply incompatible. VR is different on the level of presentation and graphics rendering, and also the things on which the experience focuses. Plus when it comes to the full campaign mode, the gameplay and storytelling which form the basis of the narrative are inextricable from each other. The camera can’t be just first person - it has to be used cinematically in cutscenes, right? If you do that in VR, then your immersion is instantly broken, and it can cause VR sickness. VR is just what you the pilot can see with your own eyes, and we’ve made the game with the purpose of not breaking that illusion. As such, even if the campaign and VR are both the same at their Ace Combat roots, their design goals are simply too different. Their optimal forms are different.
==——You showed us the VR content demo, and it was incredible how well suited for Ace Combat it was. The ability to look up and down and all around while moving forward felt liberating.==
Kono: Everything in the PSVR demo is designed around the pilot’s point of view. In Ace Combat games to this point, you could optionally use the right stick to move your view around. But when you think about it, isn’t using input to pick the direction you want to look a weird way of going about it? Instead of using the right stick, I’ve always wanted the ability to just look where I wanted to look, which would be really natural. Since with VR you can now check around just by looking where you want without using the right stick to control your viewpoint, it makes controlling the game simple and intuitive.
==——I think perhaps those intuitive controls are highly suited for Ace Combat [3]==
Kono: Up till now, a major pillar of gameplay was keeping situational awareness by relying on your radar and instruments, but with VR you can get a good feel for where the enemy is and where they’re coming from. Seems like the biggest impression VR makes is how free and natural it is.
==——How has the media response been for the PSVR content demo?==
Kono: This is just what I’ve heard going around, but everyone seemed pleased. I heard that some people even felt G force instead of dizziness, which was pretty relieving (laughs). I was like wait, for real? (laughs) I was joking, but if your fighter were to go off in a direction you didn’t intend, I think you would feel uncomfortable for sure. Compensating on the system end with something like a novice control scheme, on the other hand, is problematic. As such, people who have a grasp on how the aircraft moves with their control input rarely feel dizzy. I think people who’ve played Ace Combat before are going to be just fine.[4]
==——Was there anyone who noticed that the instruments are animated?==
Kono: Who knows? I still haven’t heard back in detail so… But the cockpit is quite extensive. It'd be pretty hard, but since the instruments are animated correctly according to what’s happening, I bet you could fly on instruments only if you really tried (laughs).
==——That’d be so cool! Like a simulator.==
Kono: Funny you say that, because Ace Combat is casual flight shooting. It gives you a taste of what it’s like to be an ace pilot, so if it were flavored like a sim, it’d be too spicy. The PSVR content puts an emphasis on the sensation of flying in the skies.
==——By any chance is the framerate 60fps?==
Kono: VR needs to be 60fps, so the framerate will absolutely be locked at 60fps. You’ll see on the flatscreen monitors on display here that it keeps 60fps while maintaining good visual quality.
==——How is PS4 Pro support?==
Kono: We’re in the middle of testing that.
==——So about the content of that trailer you showed at PSX…==
Kono: The things that fans want from a numbered Ace Combat title are the core components of flying freely around the sky, defeating enemies at their own volition, a story, and the experience of becoming an ace pilot. We wanted to let them know they could expect these things. In a very rough sense, you might say that you get stronger by fighting like in an RPG, and that’s the narrative which really draws you in. VR’s sensationalism in the media and impact is undeniably strong, so it’s not like we can ignore that, but we wanted to explain that we’re aiming for quality with the gameplay and story, and that the numbered title style campaign is the point around which everything else revolves.
==——Is there any part of the trailer we should pay attention to?==
To be frank, we stuffed a whole year of progress into a span of 60 seconds. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve rewatched it, and it makes me so happy to be able to see it all in front of me. The planning was done in a hurry though (laughs).[5] While jamming all that information in, we didn’t end up divulging all the key elements of the story. There’s a lot of mysteries in the trailer, and a lot of compelling things, so I think you’ll have to pick it apart shot by shot. It’d be nice to see people having fun speculating about the main plot. Ace Combat 7 is swimming in attention to detail by way of Sunao Katabuchi, director of the anime film In This Corner of the World, who picks up his role as writer from 04 and 5.[6] Since I knew Katabuchi from long ago, the first thing I did was to contact him and ask, “We’re currently making a new Ace Combat. I’ve heard that you’re busy, but if you so please, would you be able to recommend an available script writer knowledgeable about military matters such as yourself?” To which he replied, “I’m afraid I’ve not been acquainted with any such individual. I will accept your offer myself.”
==——So that’s how it happened? I look forward to enjoying his story. Continuing on, could you tell us about your next steps?==
Kono: It’d been a year since the first report, so we might’ve made everyone worry a little bit.[7] First of all, we wanted to tell everyone “We’ve been making progress. Please remain calm. We’re keeping a steady pace.” We announced a 2017 release date, so we’re planning on releasing information more frequently from this point onwards.
==——Could you give us a hint a when in 2017? Will it be during a warm season or a cold season? (laughs)==
Kono: (laughs). It will not be at the start of the year.
==——I look forward to your next report.==
Kono: Right now we’re hammering out the story,[8] and we’re at a point where we can show off our visuals. We can show off environmental variation, clouds, and the feeling of floating along in a realistic sky. Of the three pillars which constitute your experience as an ace pilot - the flight action, the large bosses, and rival aircraft - we've only shown but one, so in the future we’ll show you the other two.
==——Is there anything you’d like to say to your Japanese fans?==
Kono: I’ve got a few things. …how about providing a chance to play the demo together with you guys at Famitsu?
==——A PSVR content trial session? Woah! We would be most pleased to work with you! [9]==
Kono: I’ve been wanting to reach out to our Japanese fans, so by all means.
==——By the way, I wanted to ask you something about the fans. Why are they all so weird? Which region’s voice is the loudest?==
Kono: Naturally what reaches my ears most easily is that which I can understand in my native Japanese, but if you really consider the numbers, the number of voices from North America is overwhelmingly large. However, I think everyone worldwide was in agreement about wanting us to go back in the direction of the numbered titles, and that’s how Ace Combat 7 took shape. I’m quite relieved that everyone can get behind this one. (laughs)
==——Will the Japanese version have a Japanese voice track?==
Kono: We’ve chosen the cast and have begun recording. We’ll announce that information in the near future. Only…it’s a great challenge. It’s a fighter game, but it’s also got a story. If this were an ordinary game, we’d focus on just the parts that are used during gameplay, and we be okay with just doing what we can for everything else.[10] We could use the same assets both in the game and in the cutscenes. Ace Combat 7 also requires us to make fighters and maps, but even though it’d be easy to go with a design where we can complete it for you to play with just those, that wouldn’t be Ace Combat.[11] It wouldn’t be proper to a numbered game. Sometimes while flying around in the skies of these immense maps in your plane, there'll be a character closeup…we even have to make eyebrows… For a character-focused game, if we made the characters and your sense of surroundings the focus, we could finish it efficiently, but the assets require for Ace Combat are truly immense.
==——I felt that when I saw the trailer. There’s dogfight scenes, and there’s character closeups…==
Kono: It really is. We’ve used the idea of representing the story with anime still frames before (which was a bit of a curve ball), we’ve used straight up CG, and we’ve seriously used real time rendering, but we wanted to focus on the essential parts of the game. We want the cutscenes to look sufficiently nice for telling the story. As such, this time we’re taking on incorporating yet another new technique. This PSX, we had a strong desire to pack as much information in as possible, rather than slowly but surely releasing incomplete information, so we decided on going with this style of ultra dense content.
==——There’s no way you were holding off on releasing more info until the launch of the PSVR and PS4 Pro, is there?==
I think that it was good timing. That said I wonder what everyone’s level of surprise is at “7” coming along to save the day. We’d decided not to issue any information until we were ready. By pressing ahead and showing the teaser last year, I think we made our intentions obscure. We wanted to show with complete clarity the shape of Ace Combat 7. This year what we wanted to get across first and foremost was to show off Ace Combat 7, a game in the 20 year old Ace Combat series, and that there are continued supporters for this franchise after 20 years is really cool - both the people who’ve been supporting us unflaggingly, and those who are enjoying it with their children. Naturally there will be new people playing as well, but we wanted to show off Ace Combat 7 for everyone who’s been continuing to support us, and that we feel their support every day we work on it. That there are people worldwide who were waiting for a return to the numbered games. As such, our job is to give back to our supporters with entertainment content. For those who pick up Ace Combat 7, we want it be the best possible repayment for those 20 years.
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==Translator notes==

[1] Is he a producer? Is he a brand manager? Trick question he’s both! (Because Namco Bandai has no idea how to promote its products)

[2] Kono says “hyougen” here, which means “presentation” or “expression,” but he seems to mean more than just “visual presentation.” It’s more like “ways in which the game design goals manifest.” I’m probably overthinking this, but I figured I’d let you guys know.

[3] Famitsu with the hard hitting commentary

[4] This is pretty interesting from a design perspective.

[5] Note that while “katto-wari” looks like it should mean something like what we mean in English when we talk about “number of edits per minute,” it actually means making shot lists and storyboarding during the preproduction phase. Because >Japanese

[6] Kono only credits him as 04’s writer, but the truth is he also more or less created whole cloth the Yellow 13 story, to the point where 4C basically copied his storyboards verbatim. The more involvement from Katabuchi, the better imo. I should also mention that Katabuchi directed Black Lagoon, which is his most famous work in the west at the moment.

[7] It’s almost like that’s not a good marketing plan.

[8] You can also (mis)translate this literally as “the story is a katamari.”

[9] C_C

[10] No, neither you nor I missed anything. From this point on, he just starts talking about art assets after being asked about the Japanese voice cast. I don’t have a strong enough grasp on Japanese culture to say if there’s a reason for this tangent, or if Kono is just being…well…Kono.

[11]Well, no, that is how Ace Combat 04 was produced. But point taken.