Part 4: Sakurai Says - Part 1
Masahiro Sakurai is a pretty well-known guy as far as Japanese video game developers go. His name hasn't achieved the level of recognition that Shigeru Miyamoto has, but it did become memetic on the internet during the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, when he became the public face for its development team and the focus of impatient fans' ire. Among his other accomplishments are the entire Kirby franchise and a close working relationship with Nintendo of Japan's CEO, Satoru Iwata.
Kid Icarus originally started out under the supervision of Yoshio Sakamoto. He and Sakurai have a fair few things in common: they're both Japanese game developers who worked at Nintendo overseeing big-name franchises involving flying blobs (and their surnames start with "Sak"). The big difference lies in their philosophy regarding game design, game stories, and characterization. If you've enjoyed the LP thus far, you'd probably agree that Sakurai's approach is pretty interesting. But what drives it? Why does Sakurai do what he does?
To answer that we'll have to look to the extensive writing he's done on the subject. In a recent issue of the popular Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, Sakurai wrote an article about the subject of stories and characterization in video games. Specifically: how he hates most of them.
Game news/reviews site Polygon translated a few choice tidbits from the article for your viewing pleasure:
Masahiro Sakurai posted:
As a player, as someone who's been playing games for a long time, the stories that get told in video games are honestly irksome to me pretty often. For example, games that take forever to get through the intro and won't let you start playing, or games that go through the trouble of being fully voiced and wind up having their tempo all messed up as a result. I just want to enjoy the game and I think I'm just intolerant of aspects that block that enjoyment. I can enjoy a story in any other form of media; I just want the game to let me play it already.
For example, let's talk about how, in RPGs and things, a character that you spent the game raising dies or leaves your party for the sake of the story. From a gamer standpoint, that's dreadful; it's totally unreasonable. In games where you're fighting against enemies, you're playing from the perspective of the hero, and you're being asked to basically win every time. If players wind up in a predicament because of what the story calls for, that's like penalizing them even though they made no mistake. As gameplay, it's lacking.
Sakurai is a pretty firm believer that any story elements must first and foremost balance themselves against the need for gameplay. In the Iwata Asks segment for Kid Icarus: Uprising, Satoru Iwata and Sakurai discuss how this imperative shaped Uprising's plot:
Iwata Asks (not linked because of spoilers) posted:
Sakurai:
…It isn't usually my policy to put in a story within a game.
Iwata:
That's right, we've worked together for a long time, but rather than strengthen the story, you tend to put other elements as the priority.
Sakurai:
I've hardly ever had the main character speak.
Iwata:
Kirby has a voice, but never said anything with meaning.
Sakurai:
It's nothing more than shouts. But we do the opposite this time.
Iwata:
Why did you put in so much that was contrary to your usual doctrine?
Sakurai:
Because that was the role of this game. Like I said earlier…
Iwata:
Oh, right. When you looked at the lineup of games for the Nintendo 3DS, you thought you should make something with a story in which the main character talked a fair amount.
Sakurai:
Right. Actually, I wrote the whole script myself this time. What I paid a lot of attention to wasn't so much about telling a story, but rather continually changing the situations of the players.
Iwata:
In other words, generating continually changing circumstances for the players?
Sakurai:
Yes. For example, when it comes to the pacing of scenes, the air battles are truly rich. Even in the same chapter, scenes keep changing one after another during five minutes of a battle.
Iwata:
Yes, when you're fighting an enemy and flying through the sky, the situation changes from one event to the next.
Sakurai:
We also tried to create the biggest changes possible in the atmosphere of the settings for each chapter. I thought up all kinds of dialogue so that when the players enter a new chapter, even if they suddenly encounter a situation they haven't experienced before, they can easily slide right into the game world.
Iwata:
Usually when faced with a new phase in a game, you run a cinematic to explain the new situation and goals.
Sakurai:
This time, I wanted to avoid that as much as possible. If a cinematic unfolding the story runs long or you make the players read the story, it ends up wrecking the tempo of gameplay. For example, there aren't any briefings before beginning a chapter. Pit is thrown into a battle and hears that chapter's goal as he fights an air battle.
...
Iwata:
In other words, you adopted an approach to dialogue that allows players to handle each situation as the dizzying events unfold.
Sakurai:
There was definitely a lot of fun in that approach, so I really delved into it.
Going back to the Famitsu article for a second, Sakurai elaborates on why he decided to write everything himself:
Masahiro Sakurai posted:
I did it so I could write a story that jibed with the game, one that took advantage of the game's advantages. Every character, including the bosses, had their personalities shaped by their roles in the game, or the structure of the game itself. That let me develop the dialogue to firmly match the developments you encounter in the game. If I had had someone else write the story, I'd either have to keep explaining things to the writer whenever anything changed in-game, or I'd have to partition it away from the game and lose on that consistency. Especially with a game like Kid Icarus, which features air battles where the gameplay, dialogue, and music needed to fully mesh with each other, it was vital that the story and game were one and the same and could easily be fine-tuned.
A game's story absolutely needs to match the content and the gameplay. In an ideal world, we could take advantage of this to provide new story developments that you'll never be able to see in other media.
To conclude, let's look at another interview Sakurai gave with the site Metro shortly after Uprising's release:
Masahiro Sakurai posted:
The game’s depth and variety is there because of my ideology regarding game design. This large number of weapons and tactics is there in order to produce different results each time you play, and to allow you to try different ways of playing.
Regarding the humour… the previous game came out in 1986. In Japan, this is when games like Metroid, Castlevania and Dragon Quest were being released. The ROM sizes got larger, and amidst all other games where you had a serious adventure, you had Kid Icarus which had a slightly comical side.
I think that recent games feature depictions of characters that make their way through battle, whilst enduring pain. We have decided to go with what we have now [in Uprising], as this follows the original [game], as well as giving it character, something a little different from the rest of the games out there...
However, the conversation is not there to progress the story, but something to consistently give the player a context for what they are doing.