The Last Story's Mystery Developer Revealed

Most Nintendo titles get one Iwata Asks column. A big title might get two or maybe even three.

We lost count of the number of times Nintendo Japan has posted an Iwata Asks for The Last Story. There have been quite a few, and today the latest one popped up.

Past Last Story Iwata Asks have contained the surprise revelations that Hironobu Sakaguchi is directing the game, marking his 18 year return to full director duty, and that Nobuo Uematsu is doing the music, although no one was really surprised by this. This latest column contains another surprise: the game's mystery development studio is AQ Interactive.

Similar to the Uematsu revelation, this actually isn't too big a surprise. You may not be familiar with the AQ Interactive name, but how about Artoon? Artoon was an AQ Interactive subsidiary along with studios like Cavia and feelplus. Earlier this year, AQ sucked up all its subsidiaries. While The Last Story is officially being developed by AQ Interactive, you can probably think of it as being developed by Artoon.

Sakaguchi previously worked with Artoon on the game that marked his return to gaming early this generation, Blue Dragon for Xbox 360. That game's director, Takuya Matsumoto, is heading up system/programming work on The Last Story.

Matsumoto and Sakaguchi were in the hot seat for Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata's questioning in this latest Iwata Asks. They discussed some of the early phases of The Last Story's development, and even provided some intriguing glimpses into a few features that didn't entirely make it into the final product.

The Last Story was originally started as a prototype showing rough blue and red characters referred to as "tofu" (like the food). Matsumoto and Sakaguchi spent about about a year using this tofu-based prototype to come up with many of the core gameplay systems, most notably the ability to give directions to your allied characters during battle.

One of the key systems in The Last Story is "Gathering." Main character Elza has exclusive access to this special skill, which he uses to lure all enemy sights away from allies and on to him. As an example of use, let's say you've instructed a spell caster to cast a powerful spell. The spell takes time to be cast, and if the caster is struck by an enemy during this time, the spell will be cancelled. In this situation, you can use Gathering to give the caster the required time.

Gathering was among the most difficult areas of the game to finalize during the prototype work, both Sakaguchi and Matsumoto feel. It took a lengthy trial and error period until they could make the Gathering system into something that players could actually use to their advantage.


Some systems didn't make it out alive from the prototype phase. Among these was a "replay" feature which would allow you to view the previous few seconds of a battle, letting you pick up on things that you might have missed due to all the typical JRPG battle chaos. Sakaguchi ended up giving up on this because it took away from the combat's tempo, but parts of the system still linger through the birds-eye view the game takes when you select to input commands. Like the replay feature, the birds-eye view allows you to get a better grasp of the battle field.

New gameplay systems were added even after the prototype phase. In fact, the game's default "auto attack" system is something that was implemented only once full development had started. During combat, your character will automatically attack foes as you move into their vicinity. Originally, the game was fully manual -- that is, if you wanted to attack an enemy, you'd have to press attack buttons. The manual combat system is still in the game, selectable as an option from the options menu, but the default behavior is now auto attack. Tuning the combat system to allow for both the manual and auto systems without having the manual system be too advantageous is one area of tuning that was worked on right through the end of development, Sakaguchi said.

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