Timed with today's release of The 3rd Birthday, Famitsu.com has posted an online version of a recent development staff interview that recently appeared in the print Weekly Famitsu. I summarized sections from the print version a while back, but here are a a few additional bits.

First play throughs of The 3rd Birthday will average 12 to 15 hours, said director Hajime Tabata. However, your game data will carry over to subsequent play throughs, allowing you to start with a stronger Aya all beefed out with high level Over Energy. The game's higher difficulties were balanced with the idea that players would carry over their data. (This seems to suggest that if you start on the hard difficulty settings, you're pretty hardcore!).

In addition to having a stronger Aya, subsequent play throughs will allow you to use "Cheat Codes" that you unlock as you play through the game. There are two types: codes that help Aya and codes that make things more difficult. The helpful codes includes things like infinite ammo and speed ups for Aya's auto recovery. Tabata didn't give any examples of the codes that make things difficult, but said that there are far more of these.

The 3rd Birthday has a "Liberation" system, which is basically a burst attack mode that you can unleash once you've built up your "Liberation Gauge" (more details here). Parasite Eve had a special skill called "Liberate." Famitsu asked if these have any relation to one another.

Explained Tabata, the use of the term "Liberation" came about because there was a person on the 3rd Birthday staff who'd made Liberate in the original Parasite Eve. However, because Aya doesn't transform here like she did with Parasite Eve's Liberate, they changed the name a bit and made the system into something that matches The 3rd Birthday. This is similar to "Parasite Energy," whose name carries over partially to The 3rd Birthday as Over Energy.

Regarding the Over Energy system (read details about it here), if it seems like something you're not interested in spending your time on, you won't have to... as long as you play easy mode. For normal and hard, you'll need to strengthen defensive OEs or things will get tough.

Now on to the topic of Aya's costumes and shower scene.

Art Director Isaumu Kamikokuryo says that the game's costumes were designed by someone other than himself. However, he gave precise orders about the quality and color of Aya's base underwear. After trial and error, they determined that black underwear was best.

Scenario head Motomu Toriyama came up with the idea of having Aya's voice change with each costume.

As for the shower scene, for the effect on how the inclusion of this scene affected the game's rating, see this story.

Famitsu will post part two of the interview tomorrow, hopefully with lots of additional trivia bits.


fonte: http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/12/22/3rd_birthday_interview_part_1/

Tradução feita por mim: Hoje é o lançamento JP de 3rd Birthday. Algumas info:

-O jogo tera duração media de 12-15 horas
- Existe um sistema 'Liberation', que é basicamente um atk que vc dispara quando a sua barra 'Liberation' enche
-Existe um sistema de customização, que pode ser usado para encher sua barra de energia ou ganhar skills. Vc pega isso em inimigos mortos ou outras maneiras
-A roupa de baixo dela é preta !
-Vai ter cena do chuveiro e garantiram que a qualidade seria OTEMA

E amanha eles continuarão a parte 2, ai eu posto aqui, e desculpe se tem algo faltando, pois estou com pouco tempo, mas isso só fez eu querer MT mais o jogo !