Digimon Survival It’s been on the radar for years at this point, and eventually, the title is almost here. Bandai Namco is set to bring the long-awaited mod to shelves at the end of July. Fans’ eyes also turn to ambition Digimon The game, no one is more keen on getting the title on the air than its lead producer Kazumasa Happo. And not so long ago, ComicBook had the opportunity to talk to the guy about his love Digimon.
As you can see below, the creator has taken out a lot of details about Digimon Survival We also chatted about its features. From the roots of the animation to the customizations of the visual novels, this upcoming game has plenty of excitement for fans, so you can read on in our conversation with Kazumasa below:
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I’m sure a lot of people have said this, but I’ve been waiting for years for Digimon Survive to go live. How do you feel now that its release is on the horizon, especially after seeing how excited the fans on Bandai’s board are for the game?
Kazumasa Happo: I was very happy to see everyone was excited about the project, especially on the committee. We have a lot of great games here including One Piece: Odyssey. Hearing people get so excited about Digimon Survive was a very good experience for me. The game has been in development for a long time and especially with the pandemic, it gave me an incentive to make good Digimon games in the future.
On the other hand, what is one thing that all of you in Digimon Survive yearn for fans to see firsthand? Or are you particularly proud?
Kazumasa: The most important thing I want the fans to enjoy in this game is this story. I started with an idea that started when I was creating a Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. This was the first time that I or even other producers were able to create a game with an original story based on the Digimon anime, settings, and stuff. Due to the huge success that I had, I figured that people really want to have an original story in the game and be able to make new interactions with the different characters and get a taste of the original drama of the game in the game. That’s why I wanted to create another game that really focused on the story.
Especially if we are talking about the story of the anime series. All characters are teammates and heroes. I think the target audience for the original series was teens, and since those teens who watched the anime have grown up over the past 10-20 years, those people have become adults. They might want a different story from the original anime so I wanted to create a story that these adults could enjoy and have a more mature feel to. Digimon Survive is very different from previous titles like this, and I also have more interaction with their digital partners. It’s not just with an RPG that raises these monsters’ stats or makes them go into battle with stronger skills or something else. I want people to understand that monsters are more closely related to their partners than humans so that their actions and rhetoric have a big, big impact on how monsters grow.
That’s why I decided to go with the visual novel genre, to make sure that people would be able to have different options with their stories. They will be able to create their own stories and make their digital partners evolve according to their choices.
During yesterday’s session, it was said that the tone of Digimon Survive’s story will be darker than most. What led to this decision? How did this narrative appear to the game?
Kazumasa: Looking at all the trailers released as well as the demo, fans feel the game is kind of dark, but I wasn’t really trying to do it that way. The idea for the game came to me while watching the animated movie Digimon Adventure. I was already an adult, and in the anime, I think all the characters are basically written as protagonists and that makes them very positive and focus on all the positive things between the human characters and digital monsters. The characters will have their challenges, they will face their difficulties, but they will always make the right decision.
But in the real world, that doesn’t work. I thought, “If I was an adult and plunged into such an unknown world, how would I respond?” I think as a real human being, people have their weaknesses, and people are afraid of the unknown. Not everyone will be able to make the right decision when they are afraid, especially when people find that these monsters are coming for them wanting to kill you. In these dangerous situations, many people don’t really make the right decision. I think humans make mistakes, and I wanted to explore this story.
This is how this story came about. Sometimes, you don’t have to try to be a hero. You just need to feel what is real and do whatever feels right. That is why, in this game, the characters are real and make real decisions that can lead to death or life. Then, the interaction between human characters and their digital partners becomes very important as monsters are a reflection of the human heart and mind.
And while digital partners are basically a reflection of their human being, they will sometimes make different decisions because monsters will always choose according to how their trainer raises them. However, humans will try to hide their fear or show their arrogance and will make decisions that are dishonest with their hearts. I want fans to be able to enjoy all the possibilities that can happen at work.
Obviously, Digimon Survive puts a lot of emphasis on its story. So for fans of the series, how does this game expand on animation if any? Is it taking a different direction from the show?
Kazumasa: Aside from the story, the other thing we put a lot of effort into explaining in this game is what Digimon is and why it’s called that way. In fact, we don’t call them Digimon from the start, we call them monsters. why is that? That’s because while creating the game concept, I had several conversations with the director of the Digimon Adventure animated series, Hiroyuki Kakudo. We’ve talked a lot about what a Digimon are, and Kakudo-sensei’s understanding of Digimon is that they are more of a spiritual being rather than a digital one. For people who have played with Virtual Pet, they understand that Digimon only exists in the digital world so they are basically a type of data. However, Kakudo-sensei believed these Digimon – these monsters have always been there. They were around humans in a more spiritual sense. It’s not just such a thing as data. Based on this, Kakudo-sensei believes that Digimon have always been their partners, so they have a great bond and interact with each other a lot.
While I was making Digimon Survive, I wanted to work around the idea that digital partners live in the digital world in some small gadget if those devices didn’t exist…what if monsters already existed before humans entered the digital world? What will they be called? This is why we start the game with humans seeing these monsters in the real world for the first time, and they don’t know what they are. They only call them monsters because it’s the first time they’ve seen these creatures.
So when people see these monsters for the first time and these monsters come to attack them, people will be afraid of them. In this game, we see people who encounter Digimon for the first time. So according to some ancient tales, sometimes people are like monsters, ancient spirit guides.
This game was also made with the understanding that fans come to the Digimon community in different stages. They have different understandings of Digimon. For people who have played virtual pets, their understanding is that these monsters are basically artificial intelligence systems. So for them, Digimon eat data and make themselves evolve into different forms. However, in Digimon Survive, monsters are mostly seen as a spirit being and are more similar to anyone the monster is surrounded by. Even in Digimon Survive, monsters have different feelings and the choices players make will give their partners different types of feelings. All of these feelings will eventually influence how these Digimon grow and evolve into different forms. However, even if they changed their shape, the heart of these monsters would remain the same regardless of their appearance.
Digimon Survive is one of the many games under the banner of the franchise. In your opinion, what is so special about this title that sets it apart from previous Digimon games?
Kazumasa: There are two things that I think stand out. One is that in previous games, mostly RPGs, you usually upgrade your Digimon to give them better prestige and battle skills. However, in Digimon Survive, it is not the leveling that dictates the stat growth parameter. It is the interaction between human characters and their various partners. Therefore, as a visual novel, the choices a character makes are the most influential elements of Digimon’s evolution. So please look forward to this part. The second thing is that in previous games, there is always one main character who interacts with a Digimon and one or three of them at most. In this game, you will consist of eight characters at the same time interacting with eight Digimon.
It’s not just individual pairs of characters that fans will interact with. They will all be together – mortals with mortals, digimon with digimon, and mortals with digimon. There will be a lot of drama which is why I decided to use a combat system with a tactical bar that allows you to use all the characters on the battlefield instead of just one. All of these changes are very different from previous Digimon games, so I hope fans can enjoy this expansion.
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