Interviews// SoulCalibur V: Hisaharu Tago

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I was waiting for my interview with SoulCalibur V’s producer, Hasaharu Tago.

During my time at Namco Bandai’s very accommodating Japanese headquarters, I spoke with developers about their past projects and what they feel about the gaming landscape.

However, with Tago-san, SoulCalibur V is top of the agenda, and the enthusiastic producer is really keen to let as many people see it as possible.

Having sat in a whitewashed conference room all day, I was surprised to see Tago-san burst through the door bring an assortment of props. An amazingly detailed SoulCalibur V framed art poster, artwork pages for practically every character in the game... and a rather stunning Japanese sword.

There’s little wonder he’s excited, though. The latest weapon-based fighter wouldn’t have even been in development if it wasn’t for the colossal feedback from fans asking the Project Souls team to deliver more brawling goodness. And as a SoulCalibur fan myself, seeing these images in close detail was a fantastic privilege.

Once it was established that Tago-san wasn’t going to cut me to pieces and we had all sat and calmed down, I began my epic interview with the charismatic producer by asking about perhaps the biggest talking point about the game in the West...


SPOnG: It was recently announced that Ezio (from the Assassin's Creed series) was going to be a special character for the game. How did that come about? What was the reason to approach Ubisoft to include him?

Hisaharu Tago: The guest character is always a big part of SoulCalibur, and the team always has a guideline in choosing who to include. That guideline is to always partner it with the best weapon-based character in the world at the moment.

In addition to that, we added two guidelines for SoulCalibur V. One requirement was that the character needed to come from the gaming world - we had Star Wars characters for SoulCalibur IV, and we didn’t want movie characters this time around. The second guideline was that we wanted a character that matched the world view of SoulCalibur V.


SPOnG: That’s interesting you mention the Star Wars characters - do you feel Darth Vader and Yoda were a bit of a mismatch for SoulCalibur IV?

Hisaharu Tago: I’m not saying that the Star Wars characters were a mismatch for SoulCalibur IV, no. In SoulCalibur IV we wanted to have a sword-based character that was the strongest and best at that time, and Darth Vader and Yoda fit that bill. So they matched the game world from that perspective.


SPOnG: From a design point of view it must be interesting to play around with Ezio as a character, with his close range Hidden Blade attack. How challenging was it to adapt Ezio for SoulCalibur V?

Hisaharu Tago: Actually, more than the Hidden Blades, it was a challenge to include all of Ezio’s weapons in general. As you know, in most SoulCalibur games, the characters only have a one or two-handed weapon, or maybe two blades. But Ezio has 5 different weapons, and thinking about how to put these into the game was quite difficult.


SPOnG: So you’ve actually found a way to incorporate all of those weapons into the game?

Hisaharu Tago: Yeah, Ezio’s weapon changes depending on the distance from his opponent. The Hidden Blades are used in close combat, but for long range he uses the Hidden Gun or the Crossbow. It was difficult, but we managed to do it.


SPOnG: You mentioned that one of the guidelines was to bring in the biggest character from the hottest game at the moment. Are you a big fan of Assassin’s Creed? Have you played much of the series at all?

Hisaharu Tago: Since we’re working in a gaming industry, and everyone is playing Western and Japanese games here, yes Assassin’s Creed is one of those cool games that I really like.


SPOnG: You’ve picked a Western character as opposed to a Japanese character. I would have assumed the guest character would have been from Final Fantasy or something. So has Assassin’s Creed made quite a big impact in Japan?

Hisaharu Tago: Assassin’s Creed is a very big title in the Western market, and in Japan it has a rather reasonable name value too but it’s still rather small compared to some of our hit domestic titles. The unique thing about SoulCalibur is that, even though it’s developed in Japan, it actually sells more overseas, which is the reason why we chose Ezio.


SPOnG: You’ve quite fantastically brought us a whole lot of concept artwork from the game. I don’t want to make any of this go to waste, so I’ll ask what were the inspirations you had for creating some of these characters?

Hisaharu Tago: The basic way of creating the characters is that there’s always a kind of broad background to each of them - how they look, their story and the weapon they use. There are multiple ideas for each character, and it’s down to Kawano-san (long-time designer of the SoulCalibur series) to take them and choose which concepts we should go ahead with.


SPOnG: This game in particular looks like there is a heavy emphasis on new characters. The last time this happened there was a name change to the series as well. Was there quite a lot of focus in making this feel like its own game rather than a sequel?

Hisaharu Tago: Well, we wanted to make it feel like a new game but still maintain its place in the series. Of course, you mentioned Soul Edge (the PS1 title that came before the first SoulCalibur game), and that storyline is very important this time around. We brought back many elements from past games, like the Critical Edge system from Soul Edge, and brushed it up so it will satisfy today’s audiences.