An Interview with Toshimichi Mori of Arc System Works

Date: 2017 November 13 16:25

Posted by Lee

Rooster Teeth recently invited Otaku News to attend London's first ever RTX (Rooster Teeth Expo). While attending their animation panel we were surprised to see our good friend Toshimichi Mori of Arc System Works was also in attendance to announce that Weiss Schnee of RWBY will be appearing in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle along side Ruby Rose!

We couldn't miss the opportunity to catch up with him again so we rushed to see him after the panel and had the honour of performing an exclusive interview where we talk about BlazBlue, it's collaboration with Rooster Teeth and the future of the series.

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What inspired you to collaborate with different Anime series for BlazBlue?

BlazBlue the game itself kind of reached a good ending point in it’s arc so we wanted to do something that was a little more casual, a little more light hearted and take it out of the world of just BlazBlue. When that had happened we were going to work with some of the companies that we are very close with. We are very close with Atlus because we helped them build their games in the past and Under Night In-Birth, the guys at French-Bread. Those two companies alone, although still very significant, we felt like we could do one more final punch for impact and that’s when I said we should work with Rooster Teeth too.

Is this likely to be the last entry in the franchise for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle?

I think BlazBlue is BlazBlue and it’s it’s own standalone thing, where as this is a separate experience, it’s designed to be a lot more fun and casual and light hearted, so I definitely want to continue building more of Cross Tag Battle.

When we last spoke to you a few years back you said that Guilty Gear was going to be the more hardcore stream and BlazBlue would be for more casual players. Is that still the vision of the game where you want to tap into that casual audience and what do you think helps it do that?

That’s exactly correct, it’s in the same spirit of that philosophy. The very first thing that I wanted to do with Cross Tag Battle, especially for the casual user, was the game needed to be playable on a gamepad not a stick. When I went to EVO 2017, which is an event in Vegas where a lot of the fighting game players gather and see who is the best, I saw them playing Smash Bros and of course Smash Bros is designed to be played on a pad and it made me realise that everyone needs to start at the same starting line. I think the arcade stick is a huge commitment and I know that it’s an expensive investment as well just to have one, so I didn’t want to alienate any part of the population. So again, going back to the philosophy it needed to be playable on the gamepad.

With controllers in mind, this is your first collaboration with the Nintendo Switch. What were the challenges with incorporating the game onto this new console and the different ways of playing the game?

I definitely have some ideas for some things we can do with the Switch and the potential the Joycon unlocks. As developers we have to be really careful about our priorities, we’re very tight on resources and that being said you are able to separate the controllers, so it would be kind of fun (this is just an idea) if two friends could actually tag team with each other, so you would have two groups of people playing against each other. That would be really cool. It’s a work in progress!

So possible for the next game?

I’ll just say that we are certainly doing our best right now to make it happen. The team’s highest priority right now is getting the network play up to speed. Especially on the Switch. We have never developed network functionality on the Switch, so that’s a big thing for us right now.

So can we expect it in for the launch of the game?

I am going to do my best! Really do you think we could release a game without network play on it?

With that in mind, what do you think is the next evolution of the BlazBlue series?

I think in terms of a form of expression, really BlazBlue is at the best it can be. Where we go expression wise is just to increase the resolution even more. Guilty Gear is really exploring different forms and ways to depict certain emotions or certain actions and as far as BlazBlue I think the next evolution or innovation will probably be in the game mechanics and the way the game functions itself. Take Tag Battle for example, that took BlazBlue and fundamentally changed the system and the mechanics of how the interactions happen so I think that’s the kind of innovation. One of my big goals, for me myself personally as well as my team, is to place as many people as I can at the same starting line.

Regarding your collaboration with Rooster Teeth, what was it like collaborating with them on this game?

Honestly, all joking aside, I think it really is a fascinating partnership and really inspirational as well. As far as the working relationship goes, a lot of what’s been done is we develop a lot (I mean, it’s a fighting game, it’s what we do!) and do the heavy lifting there and we will show them things and say “Hey, this is where we want to take this character” or “This is what we want to do with this” and they will sign off on most things and give us some advice. Sometimes they might say “why don’t you guys try out this thing” and then we will try and integrate that into how were designing the game itself. Rooster Teeth is very open to new ideas and interesting ways to connect dots so I feel like with some of the things that we’re doing inside Tag Battle right now, some of the RWBY team have been toying with ways they can bring it back into the anime. That actually came up in some of our recent conversations.