We write the endings so that everything wraps up tidily in the end, you see. The choices make a small impact—maybe making things a little easier, or a little harder. However, there is one really big choice to make. We did our best to make it as big as possible. (laughs) I think it will get players' chests pounding.
Explaining that although Dragon Quest VI has many choices, almost none of the in-game choices affect the ending or the ultimate course of the main story.
We had just ported DQI&II to the SFC, and for the first time in quite awhile, I got to play DQII again. I thought it was fun how many different places you have access to. That's why, for DQVI I suggested we craft a world that, while still retaining a dramatic story, allowed higher degree of player freedom and let you do things in the order you wanted.
On creating a game with player choice and input and a well-defined dramatic story.
trying to avoid contradictions with these two opposing goals was tough.
This line from Yuji Horii, the producer of Dragon Quest VI, references the tension between creating a game which gives the player freedom of action and creating a game with a well-defined dramatic story.
Our company tends to draw a lot of detailed, realistic characters, and it turned out that lot of the designers had privately been waiting for an opportunity to draw characters in this style, but were reluctant to say so.
Apparently many artists at Capcom in the 1990s secretly wanted to draw chibi characters but were afraid to say so. I addressed the humorous anecdote from this 1996 interview here.
Nimatron
