One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 includes the Dressrosa arc and adds Shanks as a playable character. Since the Dressrosa arc is still ongoing in the One Piece manga Bandai Namco had to go beyond the source material and create an original story for the game.
"The Dressrosa arc was not completed in the manga while we were developing the game. But, given that there are so many characters in the arc and fan interest we decided to include this in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. Dressrosa is the final stage in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 and we created an game original storyline for the end," said One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 producer Koji Nakajima in an interview with Siliconera.
"Yes, we came up with an original storyline for the Dressrosa arc. We came to this decision because rather than not having the Dressrosa arc in the game, we think fans would be excited to see the storyline even if parts of it were original for the game," Hisashi Koinuma, Koei Tecmo’s general director and One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 producer added. "We waited until the very end of development so the manga could go as long as it could until we needed to work on it. After that date, the story was created by the development team."
"Although, we do not have direct communication with Oda-san, we worked closely with Toei and Shueisha. All of the planning documents were submitted to Toei and Shueisha who approved the story we created. These decisions go to Oda-san for his approval too," Nakajima explained.
Shanks joins One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 as one of the new playable characters. We asked Nakajima his thoughts about adding the red-haired pirate into the game.
"We know Shanks is a popular character for fans, but we chose not to include Shanks in earlier One Piece games because some of the moves Shanks does were not fully described in the manga," Nakajima replied. "Only Oda-san actually knows what Shanks can do so there were restrictions when we created Shanks for One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. But, we tried our best show Shanks and to create his actions for our game."
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 comes out for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PC this August.
