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Nintendo, Next Level talk Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon development, struggles, multiplayer and MUCH more

by rawmeatcowboy
15 March 2013
GN Version 4.0
The following info comes from a Kotaku interview with Next Level Games...

On multiplayer

"Miyamoto-san actually challenged us to say that this multiplayer will only be in the game if people will constantly play it, similar to Mario Kart." - Next Level gameplay engineer Brian Davis
"That was his (Miyamoto's) response: 'Put it in the game if people can play it longer than they play Mario Kart.'" - Next Level director Bryce Holliday


In the bottom-left rectangle were and Ryuichi Nakada, another supervisor who backed Ikebata up. Both men work out of Nintendo's Software Planning & Development Department and were sitting in a conference room in Nintendo's home offices in Kyoto, Japan. At least one other Nintendo official was off-camera.

In the top-right rectangle was a translator and another member of the Nintendo team at the company's U.S. headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The translator, Jonathan Yeckley, would interpret my questions and the Next Level guy's answers for the Japanese developers and would translate what was said in Japan for the rest of us.

- development of the game began in 2009
- this was before Next Level Games knew what the 3DS would be

"Nintendo usually keeps a lot of secrets. Even being the developer, after learning about the project, we didn't know what we were building it for or on. We had to kind of envision what system this would be for. So we just started writing paper designs, researching the old game and coming up with new ideas. We pitched a detective game, and then we were working on a little Gauntlet-style paper design to kind of shift the series and then eventually we started getting more details from Nintendo about where they wanted to go with the framework." - Next Level director Bryce Holliday

- Nintendo thought Next Level Games would be a good fit for Luigi's Mansion, so they got them on a video conference call the next day

"We were developing something in secret, like we usually do working with Nintendo. There was a conference call very similar to this one where it was kind of announced to us that we would stop working on what we were currently doing and start—they even added a little drum roll—to work on Luigi's Mansion." - Next Level director Bryce Holliday

On the 3D and multiplayer tests with the original Luigi's Mansion...


"The original GameCube director, Konno-san, explained what the 3D tests looked like using the GameCube hardware. I believe there were some problems with 3D viewing technology then, so they didn't keep working on it. But through that explanation we kind of reverse-engineered what the idea was. The first concept to come out was just using a dollhouse perspective, which is the camera kind of static on one side to just have Luigi running around in an environment to see how it would stand out in 3D. And we proceeded to [make] a tech demo and then a full on demo after that." - Next Level director Bryce Holliday

"In the development of the first game there were actually [multiplayer] experiments done on the GameCube. Actually, Mr. Miyamoto had very positive impressions with how it worked but for various reasons it didn't make it into the game. So when the development of this game started out, the director of the original game, Mr. Konno, had very strong feelings about definitely including multiplayer in this title. So multiplayer was a decision that was made from the very beginning of development." - Yoshihito Ikebata, the supervisor for Luigi

On the rules of working with Luigi, and not allowing him to jump...

"We have a set of rules that we can explore within each character. Different characters like Toad we were restricted on. Well, he can only do certain things in the game. [For example,] he's supposed to look like he's having fun when he's with Luigi. There are situations in the game where, if he's not connected with Luigi, we try to make him look scared or frightened, so that the player feels an emotional connection with him when you leave him." - Next Level gameplay engineer Brian Davis
"Ikebata-san and Nakada-san kind of the gatekeepers of the rules of the game and of the [intellectual property]. Then we push the boundaries through concepts and proof of concepts and then they'll keep bringing us back. So we're kind of given creative freedom to explore within the framework and test the boundaries—and they're kind of the ones who always bring it back and keep it cohesive." - Next Level director Bryce Holliday


"As for why Luigi can't jump, that's simply a carry-over from the game design that was established in the GameCube version. But as to why in the GameCube version Luigi wasn't able to jump, unfortunately I'm not able to answer that.

Luigi's Mansion [Dark Moon] is not so much an action game as it is an adventure game. With the limitation on jump, it helps stress the adventure elements of the game. And I imagine that the same reasoning went into the design decision to not let Luigi jump in the original Luigi's Mansion." - Yoshihito Ikebata, the supervisor for Luigi


On the process of getting things started...

"The game started out on a new system, so first there was technical [matters] of just getting everything running. And then we were working with Miyamoto directly, which came with its own differences from earlier groups, which were a little bit more third-party. We were getting a little bit closer into the family, and that provided some different relationship-building that we needed to do and different kind of characteristics that we weren't quite used to.

Then the game was about adding value. Because the first game was notoriously short. And Miyamoto himself would play the game even a year into development and say, 'No we need to keep adding more. Let's keep experimenting with new gameplay ideas.' So [there was] almost 16, 18 months of, I would say, prototyping phases of just let's just try a slide game, let's try ballooning, let's try different things with the vacuum. We threw away a lot, maybe enough to make another game, but it's that kind of commitment to experimenting that was trying to satisfy his need to add a lot of value to the game. And I think the multiplayer eventually ended up being that value-add component." - Next Level director Bryce Holliday
"As we were experimenting, we had all the different mansions and we wanted to make sure that all the mansions were up to a certain level of quality as well. That obviously takes a bit of extra time to do." - Next Level gameplay engineer Brian Davis


On thinking they were finished, only to have development continue...

"Throughout the three-year development time there were a number of points where we stopped and were like, 'Well, we're done. This is good to go.' But there were places that we found that were good enough that we actually wanted to take advantage of them a bit more and expand upon those discoveries throughout the development. So that's another factor as to why it took three years." - Ryuichi Nakada, supervisor

- Luigi's Mansion was originally going to be a fishing game

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