¡When we decided this was what we wanted to do … we had two concerns, and number one was is it just us?¢, says Zimmerman. ¡Because people haven¢t been making samurai games like this, so is it just us that¢s excited about this but nobody else is going to be? And it was really a relief when it became clear that this is something that a lot of people feel like, ¡Why isn¢t there a game like this already?¢
¡And the second part was are we gonna be allowed to build this? Is a Western team… does this make sense? Are people gonna feel like we should be the ones to make this game? And again it was a relief when both our partners at Sony – the people that we¢ve worked with since forever – and also the Japanese consumers were open to the idea of a Western developer working on a game like this. And we take that responsibility very seriously.¢
¡We work very hard to find the right people in Sony, and outside of Sony, to help us make a game that respects this culture and this time and place, to get the details right. So we have layers of experts helping us with combat and with religion and with history… and we have a dialect coach to make sure the Japanese is actually ancient Japanese and we make sure the kanji is actually 13th century kanji. All these things that would be easy to get wrong we¢re trying to get right.
¡We¢re not going to make a samurai game that¢s the same as a Japanese team would make. This is an American-themed take on that. We¢re just going to surround ourselves with as much expertise as we can and they help us a lot in making sure we get things right.¢
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