Earlier this month over at the Australian Penny Arcade Expo, PAXAus, us here at Capsule Computers were able to get an interview with the director of the latest Dynasty Warriors game, Dynasty Warriors 8. Atsushi Miyauchi is the director of the Dynasty Warriors 8 video game and has been working on the franchise since the second Dynasty Warriors game in the franchise.
Dynasty Warriors is an action game based on the Simulation game from Tecmo-Koei called Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It’s an action game where players take on the role of a lead character and battle hordes of enemies. It’s a unique series with a large fanbase.
CC: Could you please introduce yourself?
AM: My name is Atsushi Miyauchi and I am the director of Dynasty Warriors.
CC: What was the inspiration at the start of the Dynasty warriors series? And how far has it deviated from that initial vision?
AM: Originally at Tecmo-Koei we have a simulation game called romance of the three kingdoms and it about 14 years ago there was a talk about where the users would prefer action games, so we thought an action game based on romance of the three kingdoms so that’s how the game came to be. The company also created an action team called omega force, which is the teams name, and they were created specifically for the purpose of creating action games.
CC: You’re the director for Dynasty Warriors, do you think that directing an action game is much different to directing, say, an RPG or an Adventure game?
AM: Since my experience has only been as the director of dynsasty warriors i cant say much for directors of other genres, it will probably be a bit different. Previously I worked on a project called blade storm which is more of an adventure, it had action, but it was definitely more of an adventure game and from seeing that and the way the team worked was much different to the way the team works now. So I can sense that there is some kind of difference between the styles.
AM: As for Dynasty warriors itself it’s probably, as an action game, its probably its own genre of action game itself; so its probably even separate from other action games.
CC: With Dynasty Warriors, there was a tie-in with Hokoto No Ken (Fist of the North Star). Did you have any kind of role with that?
AM: Not directly involved with the project as I’m with another project team, but we did help review the game internally.
CC: As a game developer, do you play games yourself?
AM: Of course!
CC: What is your favourite game franchise of all time?
Note: Translator uses ichiban here.
AM: Ichiban?
AM: Gran Turismo or Uncharted.
CC: Final Question: Do you have anything else that you would like to promote with Dynasty Warriors or anything else that you’re working on?
AM: For Dynasty Warriors 8, what we’ve added to the game, we’ve added an additional storyline a what if storyline for all four of the Kingdoms. It’s an alternative storyline that what-if certain characters or officers hadn’t died in battle. What would have happened then in the course of history. So it’s definitely original, originally made by us, so definitely can’t be seen anywhere else.
AM: We also have 77 characters available in this game, 10 more from the previous version, so it’s the most characters in a Dynasty Warriors series, so everyone will definitely enjoy it and find at least one character that they can enjoy.
CC: Thank you.
AM: Thank you
T/L: Thank you.
If you haven’t already checked it out, we have a review for Dynasty Warriors 8 up already. The game is out now for both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 devices. Dynasty Warriors 8 is published and developed by Tecmo Koei.
