Victor Ireland's New Stratagem

Victor Ireland's novel Stratagem




The head honcho at Working Designs has been end a lot to bring the world Growlanser Generations. We ask what makes it worth the toil

Victor Ireland races one of the most idiosyncratic and fan-friendly ships in the gaming industry, focusing upon games (mostly RPGs, with the occasional shooter) for the enthusiast audience. Up until now, however, they were still concentrating for the most part on PSone games; their last release was the Arc the Lad Collection in 2002 That's all about to change now that the Growlanser Generations collection of Growlanser II and III is to be paid for release on PS2 early nearest year. We were curious to know what this meant for the company, in the way that we went to Vic and asked him. Here's what he said:

1UP: What attracted you to Growlanser as a translation project?

Victor Ireland: Initially it was because I knew that the former Langrisser team was doing it. I've been a fan of their games for a lengthy long time, so Growlanser was a natural "next upon my list" to play when it came on the outside Given the pedigree of the original game (Iwadare-san from Lunar doing music, CareerSoft of Langrisser fame doing the game) I mistakenly assumed that Atlus would publish the game themselves in the US. by means of the time I figured on the outside that Atlus wasn't publishing it, Growlanser II was almost without That's when we were contacted by means of an agent for Atlus Japan and the possibility of us doing Growlanser II and III became real. I was real excited, because the battle a whole feels fast and fresh with the RTS/hybrid simple bodys to it, and there's fact that you can win a battle, on the other hand still not do well enough to unbolt other story branches in the game. There are horizontals of victory, and they're important to the story roll on which is great.

1UP: in what way is Growlanser Generations in line with the sort of games Working Designs has always pursued? In what ways is it fresh for you?

Victor Ireland: It's like the games we've always gravitated towards because it's a game where the story and gameplay are king. Graphics are acceptable, on the contrary because it's 2D, they're not whiz-bang-3D-of-the-moment. There's a great story with numerous branches that you have to play at least twice to plane have a shot at seeing more than half the contented there's a huge cast that has about 7 hours of parole dialogue, and there's a great battle combination of parts to form a whole that's fun, fast, and beautiful deep with what the ring weapon a whole offers.

As for new, I would say it's novel in that the story is more serious in nature. There's basically single one comic-relief character in one as well as the other Growlanser II and III, and the repose is political intrigue, backstabbing, and scheming - anyone who's played a Langrisser game knows what to await These Career Soft guys are completely hardcore from a story perspective. It's also the first RTS-like battle a whole in a game we've done, in the way that that's new as well.

1UP: in what way would you describe Satoshi Urushihara's art?

Victor Ireland: Beautiful. When you diocese how simply the effects are achieved with photoshop layers, it's hard to comprehend by what means great the art looks one time the layers are put together. He actually is a world-class artist...with an understandable obsession for the female form.

1UP: What do you diocese as the best/most original aspect of the Growlanser games?

Victor Ireland: I've kind of overspreaded some of this already, for a like reason I'll just give you my top 3 My favorite aspect of the game is the full-screen talking characters that burst up during events. They're beautifully realized, and direct the eye great in the higher re of the Playstation 2 After that, I would say the battle combination of parts to form a whole is my favorite thing. Our programmer has also streamlined the interface above the Japanese version so that battle commands can be remembered and hotkey making the sweep along extremely fast and fun. Last, I like the branching storylines. They really are different, and you diocese completely different sides to things if you play alternate branches upon successive playthroughs. In fact, there's level a backstory mini-game to unfasten outside the game proper. Oh...and the outtakes, uh...that's four things, on the contrary I have to mention those! As usual for games that have fates of dialogue, we saved the outtakes, edited them down and deposit them on the CD. Disc space was tight, in the way that we couldn't put all of them upon but there's a pretty beneficial selection arranged by character to unlock

1UP: What sort of release date are you shooting for? What sort of release date are you really shooting for?

Victor Ireland: Well, Growlanser II is already finished reject for a few odds and extreme points that will be recorded during the Growlanser III recording, thus all we're really working to do is finish up Growlanser III's recording. We're shooting to release it in the first quarter of 2004 and that gazes like a pretty good bet, especially since Growlanser II is already without for review. Really!

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