It’s been almost a month since Wild Hearts came out, and yet we can already see the success of Omega Force’s monster hunting game. With plenty of epic beasts to take down and a vibrant world to explore, Wild Hearts has proven to be a hit with fans and critics alike.
We recently sat down with game directors Kotaro Hirata and Takuto Edagawa to talk about how they feel about Wild Heart’s warm reception, the future of the game, and what it was like in the early stages of development.
After the first greetings and a brief congratulation on the success of Wild Hearts, we got down to business, asking both directors how they found the reception. Check out the transcript below:
“Well,” Hirata-san sa. – It has been very positively received by the market, the fans love it, and the development team is happy with the situation. But at the same time there have been some requests to fix things here and there, with updates and stuff like that. So there is a lot to do.
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It seems like a mix of both validation and a need to keep the work going, but Omega Force is no stranger to the monster hunting genre. The previous franchise, Toukiden, hasn’t had an entry in a while, but it’s clear that there was some influence in Wild Hearts.
“Toukiden is a great series, and the knowledge from developing Toukiden lives on in Wild Hearts. But Toukiden left something to be desired in terms of sales and outreach. With Wild Hearts, we wanted to change all that. First and foremost, we wanted to to create a great hunting action game that could be enjoyed by fans around the world, and our insight for that was Kemono, the prey that the player goes after.We wanted the creatures to be recognizable to the players, no matter who they are or where they come from.
Running along the same line, in Toukiden, many of the monsters we see reflect mythology, while Wild Hearts’ Kemono shows animals tied to nature. Can you talk a little more about the decision behind creating this strong connection to the natural world for Wild Hearts’ monsters?
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– When creating the loot in Wild Hearts, it was important that the kimono had a high sense of familiarity, while at the same time the players had to be afraid of them. We thought about many things, but eventually settled on nature and animals, as everyone can recognize the natural world, but it can also be something people are afraid of. These were our two motives.
The fear is an interesting concept as it almost makes it feel like a necessity to bring down these creatures rather than you just hunting them down for glory. Did you include any similar themes like this in the creation of the kimono?
– The design of the kimono came after the theme was established. There are many Japanese cultural elements put into the kimono, and our idea was “what would happen if all human artificial structures were swallowed by the natural world?” “
Among the kemono designs, do you have any favorites?
“I like the fury tail,” in Edagawa. It was the first kimono to appear in the game, and it has both the beauty of nature and it also has the menacing element. I also like the earthbreaker, with the artificial structure on the back as a house, the very unique design. Hirata, on the other hand, chose Kingtusk among the various creatures. “I like kingtusk,” where. “Because it’s the first Kemono we created, and we used Kingtusk to create the battle system. Without Kingtusk, this game wouldn’t exist.”
Next to the kimono that populated the world, something else stood out to me as exciting, Wild Hearts, and there seemed to be a lot more to explore outside of Azuma. Is there potential for us to explore these countries in the west and north in the future?
– Well, when we started the development of the game it was important for us to create a fictional but realistic world. To make it realistic, we looked at a lot of things, and actually started by creating a timeline. We knew from the start that Azuma would be a world, but by creating this timeline and comparing it to what actually happened in Japan in the story, we explored a lot of settings. There is potential for additional content there, but we didn’t intentionally ignore distant parts of the world because we have future content planned.
It was previously mentioned that karakuri was implemented to prevent Wild Hearts from becoming too difficult. Were there any other mechanics brought in or left out early in development that would have changed the difficulty?
“We knew from the beginning that this game had to be unique and offer a one-of-a-kind experience. One of the first things we tried was basing the game around hanging on the kimono, which you can do in the final game as a more subtle element. We tried also basing the game solely on shooting, and another idea had several hundred players working together to take down kemono.Through trial and error, we settled on the idea of karakuri because it can be creative and offer players a new experience.
There seems to be a way to counter each of the kimono with karakuri, was this rock, paper, scissors style also conceptualized early on?
– The counterplay is intentional, and we originally designed karakuri to expand the player’s actions and options, but the effect was greater than that. If you come up with the right approach with a kimono, you can give yourself a big advantage. This part of the design was established very early on, but it’s not obvious or easy to come up with the right approach and actions due to the kimono having many actions they can do as well.
Wild Hearts is the latest success for EA Originals, what was it like working with EA to create this game and was there much influence in the development?
“EA Originals as a label had their own guidelines, but in our case they really respected the developers’ creativity. They offered advice and support, but in the end it was up to us to make the final decisions. They didn’t handcuff us in any way and it was actually a very good collaboration and cooperation. For example, EA’s servers allow us to make cross-play a reality, and they helped us greatly in localization.
