At the 2019 Taipei Game Show, Katherine Full Body producer and director Kenichi Goto officially announced that the ps4 Chinese version of the game will be released on April 25, 2019. This topical piece has received a lot of attention and support since its release in 2011, and now it has not only added a lot of new elements to the ps4 platform, but is about to meet us in a Chinese form.
At the Taipei Game Show, a9vg and tgbus interviewed Mr. Kei Hashino and Mr. Kenichi Goto about the development concept of the game, the new additions, and some topics about atlus' other unlisted works.
△ Kenichi Goto (left) and Katsura Hashino (right) producers
In a previous interview, it was mentioned that Catherine Full Body will have more than 500 levels, but the original's 28 story levels, 128 rapunzel (Rapunzel levels) and 4 babel (Tower of Babel levels) add up to 160 levels. What are the specific aspects of the new levels, and are they divided into more than 500 levels after adding new levels to the original game and then dividing them into two different levels: standard and arrange?
Kenichi Goto: In addition to the standard mode, this time Catherine full body also adds a new organ arrange mode, and not only this story, like the Rapunzel level you mentioned also has an extra arrange mode, so all levels add up to more than 500.
——This time "Catherineful Body" has added a new character "Lynn", the plot will become more complicated, what different experiences will the new characters bring? What kind of intersection will the three heroines in the story have?
Katsura Hashino: The previous two heroines, Catherine and K Catherine, are actually a bit aggressive and strong, this time the new Lynn is a gentle character, and the previous triangle relationship has become a four-corner relationship is more complicated - feeling a bit tired old lover, a very exciting affair, plus a gentle new role makes the story change in a new direction, so it will make the male protagonist very confused. Lynn and the other two heroines will also have some intersection.
- Some people speculate that Lynn may be a cute boy, is there anything the producer can reveal about this?
Katsura Hashino: No comments. However, as an atlus game, if you just add a gentle and cute girl, the whole story will not have much breakthrough. It is now an era of multiple and diverse views of life and love, and 2019's "Catherine" will also be strengthened accordingly in line with the times.
- Will the new character Lynn also have multiple endings and her own true endings?
Kenichi Goto: Rin added a new ending after joining, and there is more than one. The addition of Lynn expands many possibilities, and also has an impact on the previous two heroines, so that their endings will also have new changes.
The character "Erica" in the original game is a very special character, will there be more stories about her in the new work?
Katsura Hashino: Because of the addition of a new character, Rin, there will also be content in the interaction section with other characters in the bar, so you can see some new content from the people in the bar.
——This time, some auxiliary features have been added to reduce the difficulty of the game, what is the reason for adding these functions?
Kenichi Goto: Although the previous game has made many players addicted to it, after all, this is an action puzzle game, it is still difficult, and some levels are really difficult for some players who are not very good at this genre but are very concerned about the later plot. So in the production of "Catherine full body" when the development team hoped to let players get a very good experience and did a lot of discussion, but the action puzzle game is difficult to say how to adjust to be simple, so simply made a function that can directly skip the puzzle level.
Whether you are good at it or not, or some people are just not good at a certain level, so players can choose to play automatically in a place where they are stuck, and after this period, if they feel that they can play, they can switch to manual play mode. These features are designed to allow players to enjoy the game.
——Designing such functions can also help overseas players better experience the game, have these functions referred to some other experiences?
Kenichi Goto: This part is based on past experience, and I have also participated in the adjustment of the difficulty of the battle part of the "Persona" series before. Although the difficulty has been adjusted, it will not affect the game's ending, and we hope that more players who are good at it or not good at this genre will enjoy this game, so the difficulty range is set from simple to difficult, and there is a large choice range. In addition, if any step is accidentally taken wrong in the game, there is also an "undo" function, and pressing the l1 button can cancel the previous step.
——The original game was released 8 years ago, and now compared with the society at that time, it has changed a lot in terms of the times. Has the upcoming release of Catherine Full Body changed accordingly?
Katsura Hashino: This game does have some changes that adapt to the times and add some new plots, so this game should be a more complete state of Catherine.
——The original game has profound significance for the discussion of the relationship between men and women and the exploration of values, what considerations did you decide to restart this work?
Katsura Hashino: (after a long period of thought) The opportunity to restart is actually related to the timing. In fact, for a short time after Doing Persona 5, we thought about whether to do something new, and since the RPG game we were working on might take a while to complete, we thought it would be an appropriate time to update the previous Catherine at this point in 2019. In addition, in the eight years since the launch of the original game, there have been many players who have greatly hoped to see Catherine-related works or new content, and these feedback have also contributed to the opportunity for this remake.
Kenichi Goto: In the past, many overseas players were very keen to play the original battle mode, so we hope to make its functions more fulfilling at this point in time, such as adding online online, battle elements, and some new characters that can be used when playing online, which is also an opportunity to restart.
- Is it possible that this game will also be animated like "Persona"?
Katsura Hashino: I hope to have such an opportunity but I haven't had it yet, so there are no actual plans yet. It may also be related to some adult elements.
——This time, sekai no owari was invited to sing the impression song "re:set", can you introduce the connection between the theme of the game and the song?
Katsura Hashino: The lead singer of sekai no owari, Mr. Fukase (Kei Fukase), is a player of the original Katherine, and it just so happens that the song he made this time is very much in line with the mood of the game, so we want to see if there is an opportunity to cooperate to make this happen. But sorry this song only appears in the Japanese version of the game, the Asian version of the game does not contain, like sekai no owari everyone can take a look at the pv solution.
The word "full body" is a red wine term, and the choice of it as a subtitle this time should have many meanings, can you explain it in detail?
Katsura Hashino: Probably the word full body sounds a little erotic. In addition, it is like the grapes have matured into red wine, so this work is like a brewed work. It would sound a bit vulgar if you used "erotic" as a subtitle, but it might sound more elegant if you used "full body" as the title.
This time I chose this red wine term to make a subtitle because in the original work, although I ordered wine in the bar, there was no red wine to order, and this time I chose a term related to red wine, which feels that the type of wine has also increased, and the image of the game has also changed. When we developed the original, we wanted this game to be a work that men play while drinking at night, so this time you can try to play while drinking red wine when playing Catherine's body, even if you are accidentally drunk, you can skip and automatic mode to use, so don't worry (laughs).
Have you considered developing a ps vr version of Catherine?
Katsura Hashino: There are no such plans at the moment, but what kind of attempt do you want to make in VR mode?
- All kinds of attempts are hoped (laughs).
Katsura Hashino: Although there is no such plan at present, you can discuss it with the development team after you go back.
——This time invited a lot of female voice actors to voice Catherine, asking so many well-known voice actors should be a very difficult job, players may only choose to listen to one person's voice during a game, I would like to ask what is the reason for this?
Katsura Hashino: The only person who can change the voice is the male protagonist's affair object c Catherine, because it is an affair, so there may be many different imaginations of the external object, the player can choose their most easily tempted voice as c Catherine's voice, so they made this attempt. There is also an appreciation mode in this game, in which you can also switch between different sounds when playing events, where you can enjoy different sounds. This time asking 11 voice actors to dub is actually not too difficult for the development team, the only complaint is the producer in charge of the recording, because he has to listen to the plot 11 times, and each voice actor dubbing is not one or two sentences but the whole script, so the recording supervisor is quite painful this time.
- After changing different voice actors, will Catherine's personality be fine-tuned?
Katsura Hashino: There is no change to this.
- What are the criteria for selecting these voice actors? Have you considered asking Riki Tanaka to voice it, so that the topic may be higher.
Katsura Hashino: First of all, many of the team members who produced "Katherine" were members who had previously done "Persona", and "Persona" had a selection of voice actors, so from the voice actors who had worked or been selected before, they chose the voice actors who were suitable for the game, rather than having a specific standard. Although Catherine's personality will not change, but by different voice actors to interpret will also show different feelings, in order to let everyone feel different charm we try to choose different feelings of sound, so there is no deliberate choice or deliberately do not choose which voice actor.
——For the recently released "Persona 5r", do the producers have any news that can be made public? I believe that there will definitely be new plot aspects, so are there any aspects that we can't think of?
Katsura Hashino: Although I participated in the development of Persona 5 before, atlus is currently divided into two different development teams, I am mainly working on project re fantasy, and it is not convenient to say anything because I was not involved in the development of Persona 5r.
- So what is the current development progress of Project Re Fantasy?
Katsura Hashino: The development progress is quite smooth (laughs). Although there is still relatively little information that can be published, it can be said that players who like Persona 5 and Catherine will definitely like project re fantasy, which is a super fantasy work.
- Is there a rough percentage of project re fantasy's development progress?
Katsura Hashino: It's not even halfway through.
Is there an expected point in time that will allow us to see more new information about Project re fantasy?
Katsura Hashino: When the time comes, it will be announced (laughs).
——Finally, please say something to the Chinese players.
Katsura Hashino: Thank you for the fact that many players have paid attention to the atlus game, and I hope that you will give you more advice in the future. Don't forget Catherine full body oh (laughs).
Kenichi Goto: We just mentioned that the battle mode of the original game has a lot of overseas players who are very enthusiastic, and this time we have added a lot of new elements. We have also received feedback from Chinese players in the previous works, this time the "Catherine full body" is very good, I hope you can support more, thank you.