The Last Remnant marked a major first for Square Enix: using an externally-developed engine in one of its own games.
Sitting down with Edge Online, Hiroshi Takai, the game’s director, and Yusuke Naora, its art director, the latter described what it was like using the engine, and what we can expect from Square in the future regarding its use.
It was the first time we’d used the Unreal Engine, so work was certainly slow going at first. But as we got the hang of it we were able to do a lot of things that would’ve been harder with our traditional tools. That said, the decision on whether to use Unreal for future projects will be decided on a case-by-case basis; we’re not going into game productions thinking we want to use this or that middleware. Rather, we’ll examine what it is we want to achieve with a game and then decide on the best tools to use in reaching that goal. — Yusuke Naora, to Edge Online
Also of note: Ever wonder why so many JRPGs star teenagers?
Most contemporary Japanese RPGs star teenage lead protagonists. As many of Square Enix’s fans are now into their late 20s and early 30s, would you like to create a game with older, more diverse leads?
YN: The format of the RPG lends itself well to having a teenage protagonist. Usually you’re playing for many hours, taking a character on a journey from a relatively weak state to one of power and maturity, a gameplay journey that mirrors that of a teenager moving into adulthood. That’s certainly one of the reasons it works well having young protagonists. That said, what you say is true not only for fans who are growing up with the RPG, but also for developers who were working on titles such as Final Fantasy V when we were much younger, but who are now more mature people. We sometimes wonder what we’re doing dealing with such young protagonists in our games, characters who don’t necessarily speak to us as adults. There’s no pressure internally on how you have to make a character. But you do find that there’s an expectation of how a protagonist must look for Japanese gamers.
It makes sense, but surely they can do more than that. Older people must face change, too.
