NowGamer caught up with Shuntaro Tanaka and Ryutaro Nonaka, director and producer on Valkyria Chronicles, to talk about the inspirations behind the much-lauded J-RPG

What did you think of the critical reaction to Valkyria Chronicles? Was it what you expected it to be? 

NONAKA:Since there were so many features that we have not experimented with before, we were worried if the audience would accept the game. However, those worries are now gone, and the feedback and reviews were very, very positive. We got the impression that Western market really appreciates our new challenges, and we are very pleased.

Why was there such a big gap between Valkyria Chronicles and your last game, Skies of Arcadia? What was the team doing between the two games?

TANAKA: The members of the team were part of many different projects. They brought in their experience and skills from those years, such as working on different platforms, and these were effectively utilized in Valkyria Chronicles.

 Was it a particularly hard project? How did it compare to previous games you've worked on?

NONAKA: Having new graphics and a new game system made the development extremely difficult and involved so many trials and errors.  However, once the game shaped up,development sped up dramatically.

Did you set out to make a tactical RPG? Or did the story idea come first?

NONAKA: First, we had the concept of “human drama in the battlefield”. Then, ideas developed like doing math.

“Characters cooperating in battles = Tactical RPG”

“Strategic gameplay + tenseness of battlefield = BLiTZ battle system

“Warmth, hometown = CANVAS”

Did you have a hard time pitching the idea to SEGA? It was quite a commercially risky game...

NONAKA: Yes Valkyria Chronicles is a title different from the mainstream of the modern game market. However, when we did a demo of CANVAS and BLiTZ within SEGA, nobody had objections. We feel that SEGA’s spirit of“challenging the new” is what approved this project.

What were the ideas and inspirations behind Valkyria Chronicle's story and characters?

NONAKA: Many war-themed games are either from the perspective of a historical standpoint and/or the battles of “professional” soldiers.We thought that there was drama in “civilians raising in arms to protect their homeland”. Blend in fantasy to that makes the atmosphere of Valkyria Chronicles so original.

Why did you decide to include the Darcsen racism subplot? 

TANAKA: Even in the 21^st century, conflicts between ethnic groups lie deeply in the roots of wars. We thought that such themes can not be avoided as long as we have war as the game’s theme.

The Darcsens have different colored hair, and that is one of the reasons why they are persecuted. It represents that even the smallest difference, in this case the colour of hair, can lead to intolerance. Even in the world we live in,reasons of intolerance can be things that don’t matter much to a third person.

Was there anything you wanted to include in the game that you couldn’t?

NONAKA: I think we were able to include most, if not all, of the ideas we had at the beginning.

TANAKA: We did not have to subtract the story or the battles from the original plan, so we were able to include what we originally planned.

Do you plan on using the Canvas Engine for any other games?

NONAKA: CANVAS is capable to be used in other games,but we do not have a specific title that we can announce at the moment.

Why did you decide to focus on Edy for the downloadable content?

NONAKA: Our concept in DLC is to tell the story of the sub-characters which we could not do in the main game. The reason why we chose Edy and the characters surrounding her is simple; they had very strong characters.