Dragon Quest XI director Takeshi Uchikawa and producer Hokuto Okamoto were featured in Part 1 of the DQXI Dev Team Interview, where they answered questions from fans around the world.
Uchikawa and Okamoto start out with an introduction and they answer the first question about their respective roles and working with creator Yuji Horii, artist Akira Toriyama, and composer Koichi Sugiyama in the development of Dragon Quest XI.
The next question asks how long it takes to develop a game of Dragon Quest XI and Dragon Quest VIII’s scale, to which they gave an estimate of it taking about as long as the time between when the Olympics ends and the next Olympics starts.
When asked how involved is the Japanese development team with the Western localization process, director Uchikawa discussed the major policy about localizing Dragon Quest XI, which was to ensure that the world view is more naturally accepted by everyone. This involved working on incorporating a sense of regionality as well as appropriate character settings.
From there there are proposals to revise certain aspects, such as character names. Everything goes into consideration and is reviewed by the Japanese development team, including Yuji Horii and Uchikawa. Producer Okamoto then talks about the different accents you might hear in Dragon Quest, and the work that goes behind it.
Lastly, they’re asked about to share some information on the Switch version, or if the game was going to be coming out on 3DS in the West. The team is still in the midst of development for the Nintendo Switch version, including the Japanese version. Producer Okamoto says “In working on the title, we expect the development to still take quite some time. Therefore, we did our best to get the PS4 and PC versions in everyone’s hands as early as possible counting from its release in Japan, so we hope everyone enjoys Dragon Quest XI on PS4 and PC first.”
He followed with a quote for the 3DS version, “Next, for the Nintendo 3DS version, the PS4 and PC versions, currently announced for release, and the Nintendo 3DS version differ quite a bit when it comes to the overall construction of the game. In considering the release of the 3DS version, along with the PS4 and PC versions, in the West, it unfortunately didn’t meet the conditions needed from a business perspective, and we had to give up on the 3DS release.”
Unfortunately it didn’t work out, but there was a big part of the developers that wanted to show off the new Dragon Quest story with pretty visuals, so they felt that the PS4 and PC versions would be appealing for the new audiences, and that’s how they decided to release on those two platforms alone.
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is available for PlayStation 4 and PC worldwide. The Nintendo 3DS version is available in Japan, and the Switch version is in development. Check out our previous report on how to replace the game’s midi music for an orchestral score performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.
