Siliconera met up with Guilty Gear creator Daisuke Ishiwatari to talk about transitioning from sprites to 3D models in Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN. The 2D fighting game also uses Unreal Engine 3 at its core and I asked Ishiwatari why they picked this engine in particular.
“Which engine we used really didn’t matter,” Ishiwatari answered. “We had to come up with a new way to express our art style in 3D. It was really hard to achieve that effect, but for the artists that put the data into the game themselves Unreal Engine 3 was really helpful.”
“We had a limited amount of time to work with the characters and a limited budget. I had to choose which characters to make first,” Ishiwatari explained while we were talking about the character roster in Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN. “In the future, we are planning to expand the roster, but it will take time because we have a small team. Using this new art style, it takes a lot of effort to make a character.”
“How does making a character compare to the previous Guilty Gear games,” I asked.
Ishiwatari replied, “It’s quite hard to compare because we’ve never worked on sprites this big being in 1080p, but the 3D artwork takes about the same amount of effort to make one character as past entries. In some places it’s easier, in some places it’s harder, so it kind of balances out.”
Ishiwatari said one of the important goals for his team was to include cross platform play, the ability for PS4 and PS3 owners to fight each other, as a feature in Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN. “It was a high priority,” he said.
Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN is being made by Team Red while the BlazBlue series is being developed by a different team led by Toshimichi Mori. Since both teams are internal in Arc System Works, we asked how the teams compare in size.
“It’s hard to define the actual number because it depends on the development period,” Ishiwatari commented when talking about Team Red. “It’s about the same, I guess, maybe a little less. Team Red is working on Guilty Gear at the moment and we have limited resources so we can’t work on anything else right now.”
“I have a lot of other ideas for a FPS, RTS, and many other genres. But those probably won’t have the other Guilty Gear characters!”
And will there ever be a BlazBlue and Guilty Gear crossover?
“I’m busy with Guilty Gear and Mori is busy with BlazBlue so it’ll only happen when we’re both not busy anymore,” Ishiwatari replied with a laugh.
