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Credits
Updates |
| Information |
| Answers
by: |
Published:
April 26th, 2007 |
| Keehwan Her - Producer |
| Conducted
by: |
| Anthony Romero |
|
| Interview |
Toho Kingdom:
It was previously mentioned that you have been a fan
of the Godzilla character since childhood. To follow
up on that, what film started you off on the series
and which would you cite as a particular favorite
from the long running franchise?
Keehwan Her: I
was pretty young when I first started seeing Godzilla® films on TV, so I can’t
remember the first one that I saw. I do recall that
they were all black and white back then. One of my
favorites was clearly, Destroy
All Monsters, because it featured a battle
royale that included all of the classic kaiju such
as Godzilla®,
Rodan, Anguirus (one of my personal favorites), King
Ghidorah, and Mothra. It blew my mind to see so
many giant monsters in the same movie all battling
each other.
Toho Kingdom: In 2002, Kirby Fong produced both
the Gamecube version of Godzilla:
Destroy All Monsters Melee and the Game Boy
Advance title: Godzilla:
Domination!. This time around, there are
three titles all related to Godzilla: Unleashed (Wii,
DS, PSP) in the works. Will you be producing all
of these, or have the responsibilities been divided
between the three offerings?
Keehwan Her: I
am currently producing all three versions of Godzilla® Unleashed
for Atari. One of my main responsibilities is
to provide the overall creative direction for
these games. I think it’s important
to have a unified and coherent vision of the project
as a whole. Even though each of these three versions
is unique and different from one another, they
all share the same basic premise: There are giant,
mysterious crystals transforming all of earth’s
cities. These crystal formations are wreaking
havoc with nature and creating freakish weather
patterns all over the world.
Toho Kingdom: The
Wii has been selling fantastically since its launch,
to the point where the system could very well become
the top selling console, on a worldwide level,
by the end of the year at its current rate of sales.
However, leading up to its release many publishers
saw the system as a questionable variable, coming
off of Nintendo’s lowest console market
share with the Gamecube; in fact, many analysts
had predicted the system would get lost in the
shuffle against the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
So what led Atari to pick the Wii as the home console
for Godzilla:
Unleashed before the system had debuted?
Keehwan
Her: It was clear to us from the very beginning
of this project that the Nintendo Wii was the
perfect console for this game, because Godzilla® Unleashed
will take advantage of the Wii’s unique features
like no other game has (so far). When I first heard
about the Wii-mote and its unique capabilities, I
immediately thought that a fighting game would be
perfect for this kind of controller interface. The
wireless motion sensors in conjunction with the accelerometers
in the Wii-mote (plus nunchuk) allow us to map many
of the monsters’ moves directly onto our own
natural body movements. This intuitive aspect of the
control scheme allows the player to almost literally
become the monster. At the same time, we did not want
to lose the complexity and responsiveness that a player
demands from a deep fighting game, so we’ve
combined this gesture-based input with button-based
input that will sometimes initiate and other times
modify the player’s moves. The result is
this game will be easy to play and yet hard to
master.
Toho Kingdom: We know that Pipeworks is developing
the Wii version of the game, while Santa Cruz Games
is creating the DS title. However, it has not yet
been stated who the developer is on the PSP version
of Godzilla: Unleashed. Is it possible to divulge
this information at this time?
Keehwan Her:
Pipeworks is also developing the PSP version of
Godzilla® Unleashed.
Toho Kingdom: On February
21st, 2007, IGN gave a report citing that “more than 16 different”
playable monsters would be found in the game. Consequently,
this figure became controversial due to past experience
with the fighting game franchise, where it was
stated that Godzilla:
Save the Earth was going to feature “18+”
characters when the intended total was 19 (before
Biollante was cut). In particular, a lot of concern
has arisen that the game will slash a lot of Save
the Earth’s roster, or that there won’t
be many new Toho characters included. Without
going into much detail, would you say that the
figure was around the intended total or that
Atari took a more conservative approach in estimating
the total this time?
Keehwan Her: That figure
is our conservative approach to announcing the
number of playable monsters that will be featured
in Godzilla® Unleashed. We were
so excited about this game that we wanted to release
some info about it, but since we did not have
a final confirmed number of monsters we had to
be careful about how we announced the monster
count. However, it should be clear that 16 is
only the minimum
number of monsters that have been officially confirmed
for the game. We will definitely have more than 16
playable monsters when this game is done.
Toho Kingdom:
The two “original monsters”
in the game has become a heavily debated feature
since its unveiling, sparking very passionate arguments
at a variety of forums, including this site and
ones unrelated to the fandom such as IGN and GameFAQs.
Had Atari anticipated this type of initial reaction
to both the feature and the designs, or did the
response come as a surprise?
Keehwan Her: We
were very excited when Toho gave us permission
to create two brand new “original
monsters” for Godzilla® Unleashed. This
was our opportunity to introduce something new into
the Toho-Godzilla® Universe. Toho was completely
supportive of this idea and would not approve anything
that they felt would tarnish their Godzilla® brand.
That is why the designers at Pipeworks have been working
in conjunction with Toho to make sure that these monsters
fit appropriately into this very prestigious line
up. Personally, I’m very excited to see brand
new monsters in this game, especially because they
will have Toho’s stamp of approval on them. We
were somewhat surprised by the initial reactions
to the new monster concepts, but after reading
and responding to many of the comments posted on
various message boards, I realized that most of
the criticism could be boiled down to two misunderstandings:
(1) “Were these names the official names of
the monsters?” No, they were merely placeholders
until the final names are approved by Toho. Do you
think that Toho would approve a name like “MagMouth?”
Me neither.
(2) “Were these two original monsters replacing
two classic Toho monsters that would otherwise have
been in the game?” No, we have already slated
all the classic Toho monsters that we can feasibly
put into the game. When the final roster comes out
I think that Godzilla® fans will be surprised
and pleased by both the number of monsters and
the variety of monsters that make it in. However,
there will inevitably be those fans who are disappointed,
because of the fact that we simply cannot have
all of the Toho monsters in the game.
The two new
original monsters are being designed independently
from the classic Toho monsters since there is no
pre-existing model or film archive to base them
on. |
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