The staff behind the Xenosaga games, Disaster: Day of Crisis, and Xenoblade are working on a Wii U title. This will be Monolith Soft’s first HD game, but the Nintendo owned studio has been doing research on HD games and are excited to show fans the results of their work.
Toshiaki Yajima, one of Monolith Soft’s programmers on the Xenosaga series, says since they have been doing technical research the transition shouldn’t be a problem. As a programmer, he thinks this is an opportunity to use techniques like shaders and refine physics for their game. Fellow Xenosaga alum Michihiko Inaba is particularly interested in the Wii U’s controller. He says its interesting to play with the TV and a second screen, a technique he hopes to try soon.
Inaba says he hopes to surprise everyone with Monolith Soft’s first HD title. He wants to show the world that Japanese technology won’t be beaten by America. Inaba hopes to match Bethesda Softworks and the Fallout series (Fallout 3 pictured), but he said, in a joking way, that target may be a little bit too much.
The real reason why Monolith Soft did this Iwata Asks style interview was to recruit programmers for their Wii U project. To make games realistic, it is absolutely necessary to use external libraries. Katsunori Itai who worked on Disaster and Xenoblade hopes to add staff who are familiar with this style of programming to the team. Yajima specifically mentioned young staff with experience with Havok and Shaders are a good fit.
Hirohide Sugiura, Monolith Soft’s CEO, says with his company’s first HD game he doesn’t want to be defeated by titles developed overseas. He looks forward to applications from developers who have experience and are ready to put effort into Monolith Soft’s upcoming Wii U title.
Published: Jul 12, 2011 03:12 pm