On December 29th, the NHK, which is our government TV channel for Japan, hosted a documentary special for the 30th Anniversary of Dragon Quest, and as a special peek into the development of Dragon Quest XI.
The special had a corner in which super famous actor Takayuki Yamada (gamers may notice him from some PlayStation ads, and as a voice actor in Dragon Quest Heroes II, he had roles Thirteen Assassins and numerous anime/manga adaptations like Arakawa Under the Bridge, Gantz, Jojo; overseas fans may also remember him from Densha Otoko). He interviewed series creator Yuji Horii with questions taken online from people.
One question was from a 42-year-old woman who calls herself Kokin (in fact, I noticed most of the questions they chose were from women, Dragon Quest has a very high female fan base). Translated, Kokin had this to say:
It's been on my mind for a long time, but the hero enters people's houses, doing amazingly bold things like opening their cupboards and breaking their pots and barrels, while walking around like nothing happens, and even Yoshihiko the Hero uses it as a joke. What do you think of this? (laughs)
(Yoshihiko the Hero is a recent live action Japan comedy TV show that pokes fun at fantasy stereotypes.)
To which Horii answered with his nasty male privilege that I'm sure allows him to steal from the welfare of all women (wink wink) by saying:
I'm actually the type of guy who will go around opening people's refrigerators at their houses.
Everyone, including Horii himself and the camera staff start laughing. Takayuki asks if he's serious and Horii says, "Yes, even though you'd expect it would be rude." Takayuki responds by saying he doesn't do that. Horii then says, "I wonder what's inside." Takayuki extends his understanding, "It does sometimes make you wonder." Horii agrees and then gets to his actual point:
Because it's inside a game, it's okay to do such things.
Takayuki then says, "That's right, I think so too." Horii agrees again. Then Takayuki reads the part of the letter that says, "What do you think" in a dramatic tone and says:
Because it's a game, it's okay. It feels good, because you can't do go around in the real world breaking barrels and pots.
To which again, Horii agrees.
Even though it's not all uproariously funny, I just thought it was a light-hearted counterpoint to all the arguments about games influencing anti-social behavior in real life and given some of the nasty recent tragedies, I thought this board could use a little jokey fun.
You can see the whole special on YouTube in the link I provided above and if you can understand it's a really fun special. Some other highlights include a portion where they allow Akira Toriyama to be surprisingly candid and he elaborates on how he feels that character and monster designs are more creatively restricted these days, and then how Horii says the most important thing in developing a game is to empathize with how the player will enjoy it or not and create it from their perspective so they can enjoy it more. Essentially Horii argues that a creator ought to put themselves in the perspective of the player and thinks that more successful creators learn this, while less successful creators try to put too much of themselves in there and force themselves on the player. If you'd like translations of those sections or any section too, ask away and I shall oblige!
(P.S. I hope I'm not violating a rule by posting this here, but I thought it may be nice for this board.)
Submitted January 06, 2017 at 04:21AM by RyanoftheStars http://ift.tt/2hWkqqt KotakuInAction
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