Earth Defense Force: World Brothers' producer discusses voxel design challenges
Series producer Nobuyuki Okajima spoke to the difficulty of reimagining EDF history in World Brothers' style and which creature posed a major challenge.
For Earth Defense Force: World Brothers, making a fun and lighthearted game is only part of the equation. Another major part is taking the striking visual style and applying it to familiar EDF characters, weapons, monsters, and more in a way that comes across as recognizable. In a recent conversation with longtime EDF series producer Nobuyuki Okajima, he spoke candidly of the challenge of pursuing World Brothers’ unique style and aesthetic, as well as the challenges it presented and the one creature in particular that proved quite difficult for the team.
Nobuyuki Okajima spoke on the matter of Earth Defense Force: World Brothers’ voxel style and its challenges during a recent hands-off demo session for the game. According to Okajima, the voxel style was quite the learning process for D3 and Yuke’s. The team had to find a shape that served as the best building block for the team in sensibly creating representations of EDF’s iconic features, be the soldiers, monsters, weapons, or other structures.
“The team had to do a lot of experimentation with the shape of building block they used and it led to a lot of early failure,” Okajima revealed.
What was one of the most difficult challenges? According to Okajima, it was Saurous: a kaiju from the original Monster Attack and Global Defence Force games. As Okajima puts it, the process of learning to build references to EDF’s long history was one of patience and experience over time and Saurous was a prime example of that process.
“Saurous from EDF 1 and 2 was a situation where the team tried to make the kaiju and it didn’t look anything like what it was based on at first,” Okajima told us. “But as the team became better and better at using the style and crafting, they eventually made a Saurous that I think fans will really enjoy.”
Truly, the team seems to have found their way around the style because characters, monsters, and big figures like Gigantic Unloader Barga from EDF 5 are looking gorgeous in the recent demo we saw of the game. You can learn more from our full hands-off preview, as well as how Okajima, D3, and Yuke’s worked to design World Brothers as a game that appeal to newcomers and franchise fans alike. Earth Defense Force: World Brothers comes out on May 27, 2021on Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PC via Steam.
-
Shacknews
replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers' producer discusses voxel design challenges
