Metroid Database.com

Gamasutra has just posted an interview with Yosuke Hayashi conducted by lead editor Christian Nutt. Hayashi-san gives some fantastic insight into the development of Ninja Gaiden 3, as well as his experiences with collaborating with Nintendo. On collaboration, Hayashi says developers shouldn't collaborate simply to collaborate, but to make sure the end product is greater than the sum of the parts. "When you collaborate with someone, it's almost like you're learning at twice the pace, because you have your own experience and you have their experience as well. So it's a very valuable experience to have, so definitely we'd like to do it in the future."

Nutt also asked Hayashi-san some pointed questions about the collaboration with Yoshio Sakamoto and his reflections on Other M. Despite responses to the game, Team Ninja certainly seems to have become a better team as a result of its collaboration with Yoshio Sakamoto:

[Y]ou worked on Metroid: Other M with Yoshio Sakamoto from Nintendo. I'm only guessing, but I'd expect you could learn a ton of stuff from him, given his history.

YH: Within Team Ninja it's very much "This is fun / this is not", and there's a clear line. Do it. Boom. Sakamoto-san is much more fuzzy, and very delicate and very detailed, when trying to think about lots of different things. So we learned a lot from that style of thinking, and that way of thinking. So yeah, it was definitely a very valuable experience.

In the end, were you happy with how Other M turned out? Was it what you wanted it to be when you started?

YH: Other M was Sakamoto-san's idea and it's his creation, and we're just really happy to be a part of that, and that he asked us to be part of that creation. We talked a lot with him over the course of development, having very frank conversations about lots of different topics. But you can tell Samus Aran is his daughter; it's like that to him. So we're really looking forward to what else he might come up with in the future for the Metroid series.

And there you have it! The relationship between Sakamoto-san and Samus Aran is like a father to a daughter, which will undoubtedly spark all sorts of conversations given Samus's other father/daughter relationship with Adam. This can be both an asset through the great care fathers can give their daughters, and a bane, as fathers can tend to become over-protective.

One of the coolest parts of the interview though is where Hayashi-san mentions working with Masato Kanoh, the writer of not only the original Ninja Gaiden on the NES, but also one of the best RPGs ever created, Chrono Trigger. Hayashi-san developed his basic idea of where he wanted the story to go and brainstormed the details out with Kanoh-san. Considering how great the stories were to the NES Ninja Gaiden and Chrono Trigger, that's all I need to put NG3 on my oh-so-short list of day 1 purchase titles!

I also think there's something to be said here about collaboration - Hayashi-san recognizes his limitations as a designer, and has sought out the best talent in the industry to help him achieve his dream. I think if we look at Yoshio Sakamoto's history with writing game stories and his successes with Famicom Tantei Club, For the Frog the Bell Tolls, and Metroid Fusion, some of his best work seems to arise from his collaboration with Toru Osawa. As bad as Other M gets in some places, Sakamoto-san has clearly written some good stories in the past. Hopefully, he has recognized his strengths and weaknesses as a result, and the next Metroid will see a return to classic Sakamoto-style storytelling. Like Hayashi-san, I, for one, am looking forward to what Sakamoto-san will come up with next - so long as it's not another Other M, of course!

Yosuke Hayashi also leaves us with his hesitance to join Team Ninja, saying essentially, "I didn't want to be a ninja." If Hayashi-san ever gets stuck in a Christmas special, let's hope he still follows that up with, "I wanted to be a game designer!" rather than, "I wanted to be an elf!"

Until next time...
Captain Commando