Japanese publisher and developer Cygames was featured in an interview published on the latest PlayStation Official Magazine (June 2019, issue 162). There, Series Director Tetsuya Fukuhara discussed the upcoming foray of their Granblue Fantasy franchise, exceedingly popular on mobile devices, into the console space.
According to Fukuhara-san, the goal is to demonstrate the joys of console gaming to those who have grown up playing on mobile devices like smartphones.
The Japanese console game market is in a bit of a slump, and now only certain developers are capable of making triple-A titles. We want to showcase the fun of console games to smartphone users, who maybe didn’t grow up with console gaming, while also appealing to console gamers who don’t play much on smartphones. The thinking goes that bringing mobile titles to console can bring both camps together as one big gaming community.
We want to bring back some of the glory days of gaming from when we were kids but tailored to modern times. Relink and Versus are being developed with this spirit in mind. We’re going to work our tails off to create titles that will get the hearts of all game fans racing with excitement! Please look forward to it.
Fukuhara also discussed the hardships encountered by the development team when transposing the art and character roster from mobile to console in Granblue Fantasy Relink, the action RPG that was co-developed with PlatinumGames for some time.
We’re always thinking about immersion so that players can really feel the scale of living among the clouds. The art for characters and backgrounds of Granblue Fantasy has a distinct feel to it, and we’re trying to preserve that unique style in 3D. The 2D artwork, especially the backgrounds, was created with meticulous attention to detail. We needed a long time to translate this properly into 3D.
We know there are many fan favourites, so we’ll try to fit in as many as we reasonably can. It’s not possible to match the roster size of the original game, of course, and the development team has its hands full deciding who makes the final cut.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is currently scheduled to hit PlayStation 4 and possibly PC via Steam, as previously reported, though there's no release date yet. On the other hand, the fighting game Granblue Fantasy Versus (developed by Arc System Works) will hit PlayStation 4 later this year, and if you're interested you can apply for the upcoming Closed Beta testing phase.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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