Aktuelle BlazeBlue News [TaitoTypeX²/XBOX360/PS3]

Hey everyone! It’s been less than a week, and you’ve already got another sweet, juicy podcast on your doorstep. This one’s a little more focused that usual: As you may have surmised from the title, it’s all BlazBlue, all the time. We heard your questions, and we sent them off to Japan (Arc System Works, actually, not the entire country of Japan), who were nice enough to send us a recording with none other than the producer of BlazBlue, Mori Toshimichi (森 利道), answering your questions. We got our very own Mikey to translate, added a little commentary of our own, and ended up with this gem of a podcast! Take a look at the rest of the post for a list of the questions we asked. And don’t worry if something you want to know isn’t on here—just e-mail us at podcast(at)aksysgames(dot)com and we’ll do our best to answer it too.

1. What is the reason for moving away from the okizeme-heavy playing style of most modern games? It seems most attacks don’t knockdown, or if they do they can be teched. What is the goal of this approach?

2. Did any character especially grow on the team during the development process?

3. What led to the decision to make an entirely new fighting game franchise? Can we look forward to new Guilty Gear games as well, or will the focus be more heavily on the BlazBlue universe?

4. How did you come up with the character designs? It seems like a specialty of yours to come up with innovative ideas that have never been tried before, like controlling the weather.

5. What are the biggest gameplay differences between BlazBlue and Guilty Gear XX Accent Core and how do you think they will affect competitive play later down the line by comparison?

6. Is it possible that we’ll see BlazBlue vs. Guilty Gear someday?

7. Will the roster ever exceed 10 characters?

8. Is BlazBlue going to be just one game or part of a series?

9. When most people play a game, they want a cast in which everyone is powerful. Arc System Works has proven they can do this, but for some reason just let some characters be horrible. Can you guarantee that players won’t have to experience this with BlazBlue?

10. It’s obvious some characters have far stronger abilities than others, like Tager over Noel. What justified nerfing some characters while keeping others highly buffed?

11. How balanced do you believe BlazBlue is compared to Guilty Gear XX Accent Core? More or less balanced?