“As for Drakengard 3’s characters, well, I pretty much used so-called ‘Medieval Europe’ as an inspiration when designing for Drakengard 1 and 2,” says Drakengard 3 art director, Kimihiko Fujisaka, in a promotional video for the game. “But for Drakengard 3, especially for the main characters, I designed them to be, how should I say, more modern without focusing too much on the medieval aspects.”
“On the flip side, in terms of other NPC characters such as knights and monsters, they are still somewhat medieval-inspired,” he adds.
“Not for Drakengard 3 in particular per se; I would say this is more of [director] Yoko-san’s general method but he is the type of director who checks out the character design and based on their appearance, he intentionally changes their personality to the opposite of what they look like,” Fujisaka says later in the interview.
“Because of this, I don’t really design characters based on their personality, or I wouldn’t design facial features in a certain way because they’re supposed to be cynical… etc. There’s none of that. In terms of the look of the characters, I design them without worrying too much about their personality, and it’s actually the other way around—details of the characters like their personality aspects get decided afterwards.”
Additionally, Square Enix have announced the last wave of pre-order bonuses for Drakengard 3. If you order the game between now and launch (May 20th), you’ll get six free PlayStation Network themes featuring Zero, her dragon companion Mikhail, and the four Disciples: Cent, Octa, Decadus and Dito.
The aforementioned themes will also be available to you if you’ve already pre-ordered the game. Additionally, Square Enix say that another pre-order incentive, exclusive to Amazon.com and “other participating retailers,” will allow players to download three costume colour variations for Zero.
Finally, the Drakengard 3 official website now features the chapters Two, Three, Four and Five from the prequel novella, and you can read them there.
