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Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 Interview

Tailoring gods, working network codes and how an idle query gave his team a heavier schedule: MvC3 Director Ryota Niitsuma talks achieving fighting perfection, vacations, and exactly why the hell Shuma-Gorath is back in the character roster.

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Capcom's London office is split down the middle today. On one end of a table the company's translator lies slumped wearily against the polished oak, decked out in a ruffled Marvel Vs Capcom 3 t-shirt. It's the fifth straight day on the interview circuit, and he admits to feeling bushed when asked about his general well-being.

You wouldn't know it to look at his companion though. Game Director Ryota Niitsuma sits attentatively awaiting the first question. He's initially formally polite, only to become increasingly animated as the discussion over the imminent release of his fighting game, now some three years in development.

There's an excitement to both gesture and speech that is infectious, and language divisions are rendered null-in-void when the talk is peppered with gestures that are recognizable to any Marvel fan. The hand motioning a sleeveless cut when talking about the Lightning God Thor's costume design, and expanding down the sleeve to indicate a small but important revision. Mentioning She-Hulk's name before drawing the number four on his chest. Meaningless to an outsider and everything to a fan, these gestures and the grins that come with them, followed by their soon translated explanations prove that this game has been a labour of love, despite the stress of collaborating with one of the biggest entertainment businesses in the world.

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
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How does it feel to be finished?

The main game is done but we're still working on DLC, and you know what that's like, so we've got to a point. But it doesn't quite feel finished, not yet anyway.

What was the last thing you were working on with the main game - balancing the characters?

Obviously the most important part will be the balancing. And considering the playability over the net, the network has to be nice and smooth as well. We have spent most of our time adjusting that as well as a few bug fixes. It's not really a flashy thing when you say balancing, but in fighting games, balancing and network, for obvious reasons, are quite essential.

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Even with all that, are you still worried about its debut on the public networks and people's reaction to the game?

We've done the best we can and we've used hundreds of people, and playing hundreds of matches a day over the past few months but that can't compete with a million people playing online. We have anticipated every situation possible but obviously, the future is always uncertain.

Can we talk about specific character selection? Thor had appeared as an NPC assist character in the original Marvel Vs Capcom, but this is the first time he's been playable. Is it coincidence, or did Marvel request his appearance to coincide with the upcoming movie?

Yes, Thor has been an assist character in a previous installment, but this time he's playable. There was a push from Marvel for Mighty Thor to be in the game, I presume in conjunction with the film. When we decide the characters, we categorize them into four lists. Speed, Technical, Power and Standard. We already had Hulk as the Power character from the Marvel side, but we had room for another, so we added Thor. We actually had him almost done and then Marvel wanted a design change. So we had the originally mighty Thor with his sleeveless vest, and then they wanted Thor to have a chain mail look. So we had to ditch the old design and re-create him.

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

Two questions roll off that. As you said marvel had suggestions of character inclusions in the game, but did that effect development in that you had to add, or even remove, characters from the Capcom side to balance out the roster numbers?

In general Marvel would never talk down when it came to character selection. Obviously they had some strong recommendations that we tried to accommodate. There were a few occasions were the characters they wanted in the game caused us to change our roster in Capcom's side, but all in all, that's all within good terms, so there wasn't really a problem as such.

And talking of the costume changes, I noticed that Spider-Man and She-Hulk wearing alternative costumes that we've seen them wear in the comics, rather than the standard colour-change wer're used to differentiate multiple versions of them in the same fight. Is that the case with every Marvel character?

The original idea for having different colours is just for visibility. When two people select the same character you want to be able to recognize them - that's the whole point. So we went to Marvel and said "the original colour for this character is this and this, can we have different colours?" Marvel then got over-exicted, and they went "if you're using Spider-Man, why not use Spider-Man in the Vemon suit" which appeared in the comics.

It's the same with She-Hulk with the Red She-Hulk. Marvel has so many of these variants that we the majority of the different colours have had least once appeared in one of the Marvel comics. So She-Hulk has another alternative costume with a 4 on her chest. [her costume when she was with the Fantastic Four] So we were only of thinking of different colours by changing the colour palette, but it ended up almost as a new design for each character.

But in the end it was really good because each character has a history in Marvel Vs Capcom 3. We've managed to cover a wider range of each characters and their previous changes.

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

Did you imagine doing something similar with Capcom characters in response?

As I mentioned, the original idea was just to change the colour slides. That was it. But because Marvel brought in a lot of cool ideas we decided to do it. But we didn't have the time to do exactly the same with the Capcom characters, obviously we couldn't neglect them, but in terms of the amount of wortk that had went into this particular part with Marvel characters. But then Capcom characters are used to having just colour palette swaps.

You talked previously about one of the hardest characters to balance was Okami's Amaterasu due to her size. So why include her in the first place?

Amaterasu was confirmed very early on in the character selection because one of the main concepts in Marvel Vs Capcom is the celebration of variety. So we wanted Robots, mutants, male, female, big, large, humanoid and non-humanoid. Amaterasu is the epitome of non-humanoid character. She's a wolf, and just for that reason she had to be in it, no matter how difficult the making of that would be.

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

One of the last characters to be announced was Taskmaster, who's move set is a mix of the other characters in the game. Was his inclusion to allow better players the chance for a greater team diversity with attacks?

He's not any more intending for expert characters as other characters, but he can't randomly use everyone's moves. He uses selected moves from other characters. And also Marvel were quite keen on this character as well, so I think he's a well balanced character.

Shuma-Gorath. Why's he reappearing?

So, Shuma-Gorath...he looks interesting, he's all tentacles. It was more our creative curiosity. We wanted to see what he'd be like in a 3D model. Marvel...weren't so keen [laughs]. It was the only character that we pushed Marvel on, that is of Marvel's characters. I'm not foreseeing a Shuma-Gorath movie any time soon, but I'm sure he'll be loved once he's included.

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

A key question asked at the end of every interview with you seems to be what your favorite character is, or your favorite team to play with. My variation of that is what team of characters do you believe will be most surprising to players in terms of strategy?

I can't really think of a combination, as its almost infinite. But Trish is quite an interesting character, because we didn't actually intend for her to be positioned that way and when I spoke to Justin Wong in Evo last year he thought Trish was the most interesting of the whole roster. At that point the game was still in development so we didn't know if she would turn out in the end. But even now those people who have played Trish have all thought she has some potential that still might not have been discovered fully. So we were actually quite surprised that everyone picks Trish of al the characters, but perhaps a combination with Trish in it, would be more than what people perceive her to be.

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

How do you want Marvel Vs Capcom 3 to be remembered, and what's on the cards once you've finished the DLC? Holiday?

I want Marvel Vs Capcom 3 to be an instant classic. As a fighting game its got to a point that we could call it perfection. Every single character that appears has been polished to the max and if you're a fan of any Marvel or Capcom characters and you play as them - you know it's therm. We didn't make the character up, it's just that character recreated and brought into the game exactly as people perceive that character to be. And one of the reasons the game will be so accessible to everyone is that it has something for everyone. Even if you've never played fighting games you ought to know one of these characters, and at least just to see how the characters move in the game. But this game has the ability to pull people in, to interest and excite them. I'm hoping to have this game played online for some time to come.

In terms of holiday, after this project I have more projects piled up from Capcom as Producer. I'm hoping that they'll sympathize slightly and give me a few days off at the end, as I'm quite tired. But this won't come to about Christmas this year, because just after Marvel Vs Capcom 3 I have another product fully scheduled.

So I'm looking forward to Christmas. [laughs]

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