Keeping Ichin company as he ate some fruit, Yukino glanced at the computer screen.
"Architectural references? Are these for a game?"
Ichin nodded. "I mentioned this to you before—the architectural style I want to use in Bloodborne. Same goes for the clothing. This whole style line fits really well in games. But once you actually design it, you still need to make some minor tweaks and adjustments. I didn't know much about this before, so I need to do a lot of catching up."
As he spoke, Ichin opened a few photos of men's clothing from the Victorian era and showed them to Yukino.
After looking through them, Yukino thought for a moment. "This clothing style is completely different from Dark Souls, though. Didn't you say the two games are of the same type? Is this kind of outfit really suitable as character armor?"
"It's a game—no need to worry about that much," Ichin said with a smile. "In Dark Souls, if players aren't very skilled, equipping a shield greatly increases their margin for error. Aside from a few particularly punishing areas, most zones can be pushed through steadily. But in Bloodborne, I plan to encourage aggressive play, so I'm not giving players shields at all. Instead, they'll get a firearm in their left hand. As for the exact gameplay—once I finish the demo, you'll understand."
Yukino nodded and curiously continued looking through the clothing references with him.
She had only ever seen this British Victorian-era style in movies and TV dramas and didn't know much about it. This was a good chance to learn more while browsing together with Ichin.
After the release of the GARO game, once sales broke 300,000 copies, the growth rate naturally began to slow. That was normal—and it had already exceeded the expectations set together with Toei.
Riding on the game's popularity, Toei's new GARO TV series aired soon after, drawing a lot of attention and strong viewership. It could be said that both sides benefited.
Discussions for the sequel's collaboration also began without delay.
However, given current player tastes, the sequel needed careful planning. It couldn't just have a different story—the gameplay itself needed some breakthroughs compared to the first installment.
That said, none of this was urgent. The planning could be done slowly.
The Monster Train project officially kicked off as well. The art team began drawing monsters and card illustrations, while the balance designers started designing the effects for various cards.
On the programming side, Ichin had the programmers proceed on their own. With Slay the Spire's codebase to reference, there wasn't much difficulty overall—just some adjustments needed in the combat logic.
As for Bloodborne, although Ichin had already begun familiarizing himself with architectural and clothing references, the project wouldn't officially start until Tales of Berseria finished development.
It was currently mid-May. Tales of Berseria was scheduled for release in October, but if nothing unexpected happened, given the current progress, they could even pull off a reverse delay and release it early, in September.
When Ichin arrived at the Berseria team's area, he saw Hazuki and Yagami Kou standing together behind Narumi's computer, watching something.
Walking over, Ichin realized they were watching a newly completed CG cutscene—one from the later part of the game's story.
Hearing footsteps beside her, Hazuki turned around and said to Ichin, "You're here too? This CG was just finished—you haven't seen it yet, right?"
Ichin nodded. "I really haven't. It looks pretty good. The smoothness is fine, right?"
"Don't worry, of course it is!" Yagami Kou said with a grin, giving a thumbs-up. "All in-game CG cutscenes are made at 60 frames, just like you asked! And of course, the real-time rendered cutscenes are already 60 frames by default."
In many single-player games, story CG cutscenes are pre-rendered, and since they're often made at 30 frames, there's a noticeable drop when transitioning from gameplay to cutscene. Whether it's a console locked at 60 FPS or a PC running at high frame rates, suddenly dropping to 30 frames is something players can clearly feel.
Even though 30-frame animations usually don't look choppy on their own, dropping from a higher frame rate to 30 is still noticeable and uncomfortable for players who are used to smoother motion.
That's why, for non–real-time-rendered cutscenes—whether 3D or 2D—Ichin enforced a 60-frame standard across the board.
As for some of the 2D cutscenes, they weren't produced in-house but outsourced instead. Even so, the results met the required standards, with no corner-cutting.
After taking a look around at the bustling atmosphere in the development team, Ichin said, "Hazuki, you haven't forgotten, right? June is when Tales of Berseria's marketing campaign begins. At the end of June, during E3, we won't be attending in person, but Tales of Berseria will appear in Nintendo's Direct."
"Of course I haven't forgotten," Hazuki replied confidently. "The demo for on-site E3 play is currently being debugged and optimized. It should be fully adjusted by next week and sent over to Nintendo."
"OK, I'll leave that to you."
Ichin nodded, then headed over to the Monster Train development team.
They said it would take a week, but in reality, after just five days, the E3 playable demo for Tales of Berseria was completely finished. Optimization had reached the best level possible at this stage. Without cutting too many effects, the frame rate on the Nintendo Switch was stabilized at 60 FPS.
After testing it himself, Ichin was very satisfied. "OK, send it over like this."
For this iteration of Tales of Berseria, Ichin planned to release a public demo. Since the game focused heavily on action and had a huge amount of investment poured into that aspect, he really wanted to win over a group of players as early as possible.
The current demo, paired with E3's hype, was the perfect opportunity to push this new IP and pave the way for the subsequent release marketing.
Hazuki nodded. "The optimization team is already testing and adjusting it. Before E3 starts, it'll definitely be finished, submitted for platform review, and launched on time. But, Ichin-kun… are you really not going to the show in person this time?"
Ichin responded, "Yeah. There's no need to reveal the new game so early. Just putting it in Nintendo's Direct is enough. Our games have contributed so much sales and profit to Nintendo—they're more than happy to help us out. Several of their own titles can't put out demos in the next few months, so our game fits perfectly. We'll leave the rest to them. That said, we'll still attend Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom, and The Game Awards later on."
Especially TGA—he hadn't attended last year, but this year he definitely would.
By the end of the year, Ichin could put together a promotional PV for Bloodborne, add in some combat footage, and get the players who were still waiting for a Dark Souls sequel excited ahead of time.
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