Yoshiki Okamoto: One of the missions behind the game is defeating the Folks, and capturing the Folks and pulling their souls out. And that has to feel good to the players while they’re doing it. Initially, in the very beginning, the Sixaxis wasn’t actually included in the PlayStation 3 development kit - it came a little bit afterwards – so we worked on ways to make the gameplay fun using the a different kind of control design.
When we implemented this however, it didn’t quite feel right and we didn’t think people would enjoy playing the game in this way; but when the Sixaxis came along we thought, ‘Yes, this fits in perfectly with the concept of the game’. So at that point we changed certain elements of the control and programming to adopt the motion sensing technology.
SPOnG: You mentioned that there could be support for online quests, is this something you will continue to support with the online community?
Yoshiki Okamoto: Yes, at the moment we plan to have quests downloadable, such as additional Folks and so forth. We’ll keep on supporting that, as long as the players are still interested in it… at that point if they continue their interest and we decide to make a sequel then we may take the concept further.
Yoshiki Okamoto: We don’t know if we’re going to create a sequel or not, but if we did we would probably want to incorporate a lot more online features than this title. So we’d have maybe… I dunno, multiple players doing quests together perhaps.
SPOnG: With a concept as original as Folklore, were there any challenges you came across that you had to overcome in order to realise it in any way?
Yoshiki Okamoto: All aspects of the development were difficult! (Laughs) It always is when you’re developing a first generation console game. Folklore isn’t exactly a launch title but it’s being released a few months after its launch, which means we had to achieve a certain level of quality for gameplay using the Sixaxis that was not achieved in previous titles, not only in PS3 software but any other next-gen hardware. So we had to try and achieve a certain level of… perfection, I guess, for the timing and schedule that we had to release the game by. It also meant sorting out the online features, graphics quality and everything else, so all aspects were challenging given our timeframe restrictions.
Yoshiki Okamoto: The event that I remember the most is when we were working on Genji on PS2, and development kits had begun for the PlayStation 3. With Genji we felt its beauty was in its graphics, and the first title really took advantage of the PS2’s hardware. Because we felt Genji was a good title to develop for the PS3, we asked Sony if we could make a sequel for the next-gen hardware, and to hit the launch window. That was the goal that Game Republic had when pitching this idea.
At the same time this was going on we were developing Folklore, which was separate from the Genji team and was also being made for the PlayStation 2. But we all felt that the game would also benefit from being released on the PlayStation 3 instead. When we asked Sony if we could do this as well I remember when Sony said “Sure, you can make Folklore for the PS3”. That was the most memorable moment and a pivotal point for the game’s production.
SPOnG: Was it a difficult transition going from the PS2 to the PS3?
Yoshiki Okamoto: Yeah, as it turned out we had to start again from zero. We had to work on it all over again from scratch and re-use old models and re-create the stages because everything from the PlayStation 2 we couldn’t use, and the Sixaxis added more challenges to that so we had to throw everything out and start all over again.
SPOnG: Okamoto-san, thank you very much for your time.
Yoshiki Okamoto: Thank you very much.