Keeping Ichin company as he ate so fruit, Yukino glanced at the computer screen.
"Architectural references? Are these for a ga?"
Ichin nodded. "I ntioned this to you before—the architectural style I want to use in Bloodborne. Sa goes for the clothing. This whole style line fits really well in gas. But once you actually design it, you still need to make so minor tweaks and adjustnts. I didn't know much about this before, so I need to do a lot of catching up."
As he spoke, Ichin opened a few photos of n's clothing from the Victorian era and showed them to Yukino.
After looking through them, Yukino thought for a mont. "This clothing style is completely different from Dark Souls, though. Didn't you say the two gas are of the sa type? Is this kind of outfit really suitable as character armor?"
"It's a ga—no need to worry about that much," Ichin said with a smile. "In Dark Souls, if players aren't very skilled, equipping a shield greatly increases their margin for error. Aside from a few particularly punishing areas, most zones can be pushed through steadily. But in Bloodborne, I plan to encourage aggressive play, so I'm not giving players shields at all. Instead, they'll get a firearm in their left hand. As for the exact gaplay—once I finish the demo, you'll understand."
Yukino nodded and curiously continued looking through the clothing references with him.
She had only ever seen this British Victorian-era style in movies and TV dramas and didn't know much about it. This was a good chance to learn more while browsing together with Ichin.
After the release of the GARO ga, once sales broke 300,000 copies, the growth rate naturally began to slow. That was normal—and it had already exceeded the expectations set together with Toei.
Riding on the ga's popularity, Toei's new GARO TV series aired soon after, drawing a lot of attention and strong viewership. It could be said that both sides benefited.
Discussions for the sequel's collaboration also began without delay.
However, given current player tastes, the sequel needed careful planning. It couldn't just have a different story—the gaplay itself needed so breakthroughs compared to the first installnt.
That said, none of this was urgent. The planning could be done slowly.
The Monster Train project officially kicked off as well. The art team began drawing monsters and card illustrations, while the balance designers started designing the effects for various cards.
On the programming side, Ichin had the programrs proceed on their own. With Slay the Spire's codebase to reference, there wasn't much difficulty overall—just so adjustnts needed in the combat logic.
As for Bloodborne, although Ichin had already begun familiarizing himself with architectural and clothing references, the project wouldn't officially start until Tales of Berseria finished developnt.
It was currently mid-May. Tales of Berseria was scheduled for release in October, but if nothing unexpected happened, given the current progress, they could even pull off a reverse delay and release it early, in September.
When Ichin arrived at the Berseria team's area, he saw Hazuki and Yagami Kou standing together behind Narumi's computer, watching sothing.
Walking over, Ichin realized they were watching a newly completed CG cutscene—one from the later part of the ga's story.
Hearing footsteps beside her, Hazuki turned around and said to Ichin, "You're here too? This CG was just finished—you haven't seen it yet, right?"
Ichin nodded. "I really haven't. It looks pretty good. The smoothness is fine, right?"
"Don't worry, of course it is!" Yagami Kou said with a grin, giving a thumbs-up. "All in-ga CG cutscenes are made at 60 fras, just like you asked! And of course, the real-ti rendered cutscenes are already 60 fras by default."
In many single-player gas, story CG cutscenes are pre-rendered, and since they're often made at 30 fras, there's a noticeable drop when transitioning from gaplay to cutscene. Whether it's a console locked at 60 FPS or a PC running at high fra rates, suddenly dropping to 30 fras is sothing players can clearly feel.
Even though 30-fra animations usually don't look choppy on their own, dropping from a higher fra rate to 30 is still noticeable and uncomfortable for players who are used to smoother motion.
That's why, for non–real-ti-rendered cutscenes—whether 3D or 2D—Ichin enforced a 60-fra standard across the board.
As for so of the 2D cutscenes, they weren't produced in-house but outsourced instead. Even so, the results t the required standards, with no corner-cutting.
After taking a look around at the bustling atmosphere in the developnt team, Ichin said, "Hazuki, you haven't forgotten, right? June is when Tales of Berseria's marketing campaign begins. At the end of June, during E3, we won't be attending in person, but Tales of Berseria will appear in Nintendo's Direct."
"Of course I haven't forgotten," Hazuki replied confidently. "The demo for on-site E3 play is currently being debugged and optimized. It should be fully adjusted by next week and sent over to Nintendo."
"OK, I'll leave that to you."
Ichin nodded, then headed over to the Monster Train developnt team.
They said it would take a week, but in reality, after just five days, the E3 playable demo for Tales of Berseria was completely finished. Optimization had reached the best level possible at this stage. Without cutting too many effects, the fra rate on the Nintendo Switch was stabilized at 60 FPS.
After testing it himself, Ichin was very satisfied. "OK, send it over like this."
For this iteration of Tales of Berseria, Ichin planned to release a public demo. Since the ga focused heavily on action and had a huge amount of investnt poured into that aspect, he really wanted to win over a group of players as early as possible.
The current demo, paired with E3's hype, was the perfect opportunity to push this new IP and pave the way for the subsequent release marketing.
Hazuki nodded. "The optimization team is already testing and adjusting it. Before E3 starts, it'll definitely be finished, submitted for platform review, and launched on ti. But, Ichin-kun… are you really not going to the show in person this ti?"
Ichin responded, "Yeah. There's no need to reveal the new ga so early. Just putting it in Nintendo's Direct is enough. Our gas have contributed so much sales and profit to Nintendo—they're more than happy to help us out. Several of their own titles can't put out demos in the next few months, so our ga fits perfectly. We'll leave the rest to them. That said, we'll still attend Tokyo Ga Show, Gascom, and The Ga Awards later on."
Especially TGA—he hadn't attended last year, but this year he definitely would.
By the end of the year, Ichin could put together a promotional PV for Bloodborne, add in so combat footage, and get the players who were still waiting for a Dark Souls sequel excited ahead of ti.
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