“Xenoblade Chronicles 2” is undoubtedly one of the hotly anticipated Japanese role-playing games (JRPG) coming to the Nintendo Switch this holiday season. But there is also one thing that makes its upcoming release to Nintendo’s newest gaming platform quite intriguing - the special involvement of “Kingdom Hearts 3” game director Tetsuya Nomura in the design of the key characters in the game.
It wasn’t long ago when reports confirmed that Nomura created the characters for an in-game organization known as lira in Japanese or Torna in English version.
However, the game director had not said anything about this project outside Square Enix studio for the development of “Kingdom Hearts 3.”
Nomura explains
Luckily, Japanese magazine Weekly Famitsu had the honor to talk with Nomura about the details of his involvement in the making of “Xenoblade Chronicles 2” for Switch. In that interview, he dished what is his contribution to the game and reason to take on this important role.
First off, he revealed that Tetsuya Takahashi, development head of game developer Monolith Software, was once his senpai (someone who is a senior at work, school or any organization) and a mentor to him. Their relationship transcends time and space that when he was called for the special job, he cannot turn it down.
He further went on to explain that he is not bound to the business divisions of the company (Square Enix). Thus, he can freely accept other jobs he wants from friendly companies like Monolith Software.
It is noted that if one works in a company’s business division, the employee is hired full-time and mostly constrained from working with another organization.
Other secret projects
Nomura also took the chance to tell the fans that though he is just handling directing jobs for “Kingdom Hearts 3” and “Final Fantasy 7 Remake,” there are a number of projects that he also worked on besides “Xenoblade Chronicles 2.”
However, he didn’t go into specifics and just said that he doesn’t have an idea when these games will be revealed to the public.
According to Nomura, the character designs he did for the Torna organization in the Switch version of the game was already finished for a long while now. He created more than just two characters that were revealed in previous reports.
Nomura also took part in designing not just their image but including the characters’ weapons and the like.
“Xenoblade Chronicles 2” will hit as an exclusive title for Nintendo Switch and will be launched in the North American region this holiday season 2017.
