Before Lily Bergamo was revealed, Siliconera already spoke with Kazuki Morishita, GungHo Online Entertainment CEO, and Goichi Suda from Grasshopper Manufacture about the game. We caught up with Morishita-san to see if we can find out more about the PlayStation 4 hack and slash game.
Lily Bergamo is still sort of a mystery. You said it was kind of like ramen… but not like ramen during the PlayStation presentation? What is the game going to be like?
Kazuki Morishita, President: [Laughs] The ramen comment it was Suda51 who said let’s use ramen as a metaphor to explain it and I said that’s going to be complicated so I said let’s not. That was the manzai comedy part. It was a very Japanese style of comedy. Sorry that it was lost in translation!
It is the first title Grasshopper and GungHo are working on. It’s an action, hack and slash game. We hope that the game will have longevity and people will keep playing it months after its release. The keywords would be a very unique world concept, online features, and smartphone compatibility. Those three things are the main concept.
Can you give us another hint, that isn’t ramen?
The hints that you’re hoping for we want you to look at the teaser and look at the characters. In terms of the time period, it will be set in 2043. I really want to tell people more, but PR is telling me not to!
Action games and online features are hard to balance with each other. In Japan, I guess more people think of Monster Hunter…
No, it’s not like that.
But, for me I think of Anarchy Reigns and one of the challenges with that was making the quick response that you want out of an action game work with the netcode online. What are you doing to make sure the action game experience doesn’t distract from the online experience.
It’s a different type of online… the action latency shouldn’t even be an issue.
Suda seems happy about the opportunity and creative freedom. His name is often used to attach as a tag line on other projects too. How did your partnership with Suda start and how do you two work together?
Up until recently, he has been working closely with the publishers. They have their say in the game as well. Now that he is working at GungHo he has complete freedom and he gets to sell the things he creates. Suda’s expertise is creating unique worlds and his concepts are world-centric.
That’s what we wanted to focus on and work with him and his worlds, the ideas that he has. It’s hard to tell whether it’s going to be a new Suda or if he’s going to go back to his roots. We’re looking forward to working with him and his inspirations will inspire me as well since we work closely together.
