Continuing to be Brave: A Development Story panel at PAX East was a packed house! Fans of the Bravely series of JRPGs really wanted to be at this gathering because of Masashi Takahashi, the co-producer of Bravely Second at Square Enix was in attendance along with John Townsend, localization lead at Square Enix and Rob Tunstall who handled localization of Bravely Second at Nintendo of America.
The Bravely Second panel was a great look into the creation of the newest Nintendo 3DS game (released April 15) and what it took to keep the nature of the game when it was eventually localized for the rest of the world.
UPDATE: The Bravely Second panel at PAX East was uploaded to YouTube by NintendoEverything and can be watched below.
Takahashi began the show looking back at Bravely Default and how the reception overseas really shocked and moved him.
“With the release of Bravely Default, one of the things that was a wonderful surprise was that the reception overseas,” Takahashi said through a translator.
Takahashi elaborated on how Bravely Default was created as an ultimate JRPG for the Japanese audience because there was no plans to bring the game overseas.
“But with the support and cooperation at Nintendo, they brought the game to the rest of the world and even though I never had a chance to meet you guys till today, seeing the support makes me very happy.”
Another important part of Bravely Default that helped in the creation of Bravely Second was the feedback that was given. They felt it was very important to listen to users and their feedback, so much so was that the Japanese versions of Bravely Default were released with six or seven demos so they can get as much feedback as possible.
A video was shown that compared the early demos of Bravely Default with the final product and you can see the differences. Some aspects that were specifically mentioned by the Bravely Second team were:
You can see all the changes we made like we buffed up the walking speed.
And also you couldn’t get up to the faces of the NPCs
The timing of the maps zooming in and out were polished.
Even minor points in the game like sleeping were sped up in-game.
A slide that displayed a bunch of Japanese feedback was shown. To be exact, there were 100 pieces of feedback and the team was proud to have implemented 80 of them to the game. There were 13 pieces of feedback that they decided not to do and seven that they just couldn’t do.
Takahashi was then asked how the experience making the first game help with the second and the creator talked about how they focused on making Bravely Second easy, intuitive and stress-free. The game is meant to be fun for new and returning players.
“We had internal test play and we spent half a year for internal test play to get the battle system just right,” Takahashi said. “One thing we made sure to take care of is we made sure to include internally new players who have never played Bravely Default. We thought the original game was smooth but we refined it and I look forward to hearing what you guys think and see if you noticed some of the fine tweaks.”
Players familiar to Bravely Second should notice that some of the battle features changed like the implementation of chain battles. Players can take on consecutive battles without leaving the battle screen. The longer you go and win, the more experience you can earn.
“We think it's not only a way to get your power leveling groove on, but the real two aspects of second is the job system and the,” Takahashi said. “ It will get the players to think which combination of jobs to defeat a particular enemy.”
How Bravely Second jumps from Bravely Default is that BS takes place a couple of years after the first game. There’s a prologue movie when you boot up Bravely Second that explains the events of the first game and what our main characters have been up to.
“When the story begins, Agnes has been promoted from to the Pope of the Christian orthodoxy and she is getting a peace treaty done,” Takahashi explained. “Right on the verge of this historic moment, this masked figure, Kaiser Oblivion throws a wrench into the work and takes her away. Our new protagonist Yew sends forth on a quest to rescue Agnes from Kaiser.”
Some character designs for Bravely Second were shown starting with Magnolia. She’s one of the new characters and the first new character they designed. Magnolia was designed like she was raised abroad and they had the most variations of her design of any other Bravely Second character.
She’s the oldest and acts as the big sister of the group but she also has an adult sexy look.
Yew is the new main protagonist and is the son of a luxurious family. It didn’t take long to the final design down but they experimented with giving Yew long hair but thought it made him look like a girl so they decided on shorter hair.
Edea is pretty much the same character as the first game but her design has changed a bit. Those of you who played the first game recognizes her outfit resembles Ringabel from the first game. The design is supposed to get players thinking what happened between the two to make her outfit reflect his and if you look closely, there’s an elephant imprint on her back instead of a bear from the first game.
Tiz is another returning character and some may be surprised how he looks since it's a large departure from the first game. After Tiz fell to a coma at the end of the first game he's spent his time in a pod and his look is based on a prisoner or a patient at a hospital.
Agnes is another hero returning and is now the pope and this outfit is from a Bravely Default browser game in Japan. There’s a pope character in it and this outfit reflects that one.
Janne and Nikolai are the other two characters that join Yew as the cavaliers of the crystal knights. Jannes is kind of this sword expert with a wild look. He's an older brother mentor to Yew while Nikolai is the oldest member and the voice of reason. He’s a specialist in healing and the the story begins with these three.
Kaiser Oblivion is the main villain of Bravely Second and it was asked what his story was.
“We have our two main antagonist, Kaiser Oblivion and his fairy sidekick, Anne,” Takahashi said. “Just looking at these two, you probably have some ideas as to why he has and idea to kidnap Agnes and what is this fairy doing working with Kaiser? You’ll ask this question especially if you’ve played the first game and know what your fairy sidekick does in that game.”
The Job system in Bravely Second was brought up and how the team expanded the roles in the game.
Some examples were Catmancer which is very popular in Japan. Catmancers use cats to attack and even support your team. A lot of players who choose Catmancer don’t change their job afterwards because they love it so much.
Patissier is another new job that is geared towards veteran players as this job uses status effects to weaken foes. If you’re stuck on a really tough boss you may want to choose Patissier bc it can give some effects that can help.
Wizard was the last new job shown at the panel and as you can imagine, Wizards are adept at using magic. They have the ability to craft their own spell to modify their own magic and create spells suitable for different situations. It’s a job that you get fairly early but because you can craft other magic it can be useful throughout the game.
There are a lot of other jobs in Bravely Second including some jobs from Bravely Default.
John Townsend was asked how the localization of the game was done and he explained that the full Japanese script comes with 700 thousand characters which is about 300 different English words.
“It’s a joy to work on as a translator,” Townsend said. “All the characters have so much life and energy. So we tried to stay tuned to the original script and keep the light hearted tone and what makes this so fun is also what makes this so much fun.”
A lot of the fun of localizing was keeping the puns and pop culture humor in the game. Almost every side character's name is a pun. Names like “Mrs. I married him for the money” became “Mrs. Gold Digger.”
Even the main characters, like Yew’s spelling was changed from Yu in the Japanese version.
“We thought we could use the Japanese Yu but Yew is from the Yew tree that is grown in church yards and that’s how his name is spelled the way it is.”
Catmancer was almost Nekomancer but not everyone in the West is as japanese savvy as the audience and but the one who gives you the job is not from a japanese background so we kept it Catmancer.
There are characters that have dialects based on japanese dialects and it was really hard to translate. So in the case of one character, they thoughts she was a cute, tough and sassy character so they thought of Marisa Tomei from My Cousin Vinny as inspiration and gave her a Bronx, Jersey accent.
The voice acting took 50 actors doing double or triple duty and months to complete all of the recording for Bravely Second.
Before the panel ended, they had a quick Q&A but only a few questions were asked.
Bravely Third?
“Company policy prevents me from commenting,” Takahashi said. “But speaking personally, the Bravely series, these are the first game i've worked on since working at Square Enix and they are dear to me.”
How was it to balance the jobs in Bravely Second?
“In Bravely Second it was really tough to find the perfect balance in the jobs,” Takahashi said. “For example we introduced the Wizard job, at one point the Wizard job was too powerful that you didn’t need anymore jobs. So hours and hours of test playing we came with the right balance and we didn’t nerf the wizard but actually buffed the other jobs. So yea you can be able to enjoy the game with any job.”
How are some of the side characters still alive in BS?
“There is a reason behind that but unfortunately can’t say here,” Takahashi said. “ After you finish BS some of you may get a sense as to why that is. You may be able to get some clues if you pay attention to the dialogue from the side characters.”
Takahashi also had some closing thoughts for the audience.
“Thank you so so much for coming today. It was just a wonderful experience at Pax and I always follow feedback from the Bravely Second game but this was the first time I got see what you guys thought of the game,” Takahashi said. “We were actually nervous if we could fill the room but to see everyone here today is an amazing overwhelming experience. We really want to keep making games that you guys will love. So we hope you look out for our future projects and we hope to bring more fun games. To everyone who loves and plays our games we hope to meet you guys soon. Thank you very much.”
