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Nintendo Dream recently had a special celebratory edition for Kirby’s Anniversary in which Kirby general director, Shinya Kumazaki, took part in an interview with the Japanese Nintendo-centric magazine. Mr. Kumazaki spoke about the first 3D Kirby game Kirby and the Forgotten Land and its predecessor, Kirby Star Allies He revealed that they wanted 2018’s Kirby Star Allies to set “the groundwork” for the Kirby franchise going forward, as they knew at the time that they would create the first Kirby 3D adventure as their next project. He mentioned that Kirby Star Allies and Kirby and the Forgotten Land were thought of internally as a “single large connected project.”
First, can you talk to us about the thought process behind the creation of Kirby and the Forgotten Land?
Kumazaki: For the first fully 3D Kirby game, there were many challenges that needed to be overcome. One of those was overcome in our previous game Kirby Star Allies, which had been the culmination of a lot of hard work in 2D.
The final battle there also had some 3D elements right?
Kumazaki: Yeah, we thought of it as laying the groundwork for future works and we were sure that the next game would be 3D. The Kirby team and particularly HAL Laboratory considered Star Allies and Forgotten Land to be a single large connected project.
So it was all part of a larger plan?
Kumazaki: Star Allies was a game made with a tempo and scope in mind that would allow both long-standing series fans, but also young children, to finish the main mode. In contrast, the theme of Forgotten Land was made with deeper, full 3D action in mind, since we had many fans asking for ‘meatier action’. There were still things we were not able to achieve in Star Allies, and deriving from that we wanted to make a ‘deep and accessible fully 3D Kirby game’, while also continually rethinking the amazing traits of the ‘strange ad surreal thing’ that is Kirby. And that became the theme for the game.
Thanks to Greatsong1 for sending in the news tip!
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That’s very strange, and I’m not quite sure I buy it. For one, it uses the same engine and core gameplay as the 3 previous games.
Second, Kirby games have historically come out late in the console’s lifespan, almost without exception. Star Allies came out VERY early in the Switch’s life, not to mention pretty quickly after being announced. I think it’s extremely likely Star Allies began as a WiiU game, since the WiiU never got a main line Kirby game and there’s nothing about the game the WiiU couldn’t handle.
Third, the content of the game. This is even more true about the DLC, but everything about the game’s ending, themes, characters, even the music, plays like a grand finale to the “Return to Dreamland” era of Kirby games. It doesn’t set up anything new to build off of gameplay-wise or otherwise.
I think one of his points is how Forgotten Land relies on all the technical stuff they did in Star Allies behind the scenes that most people won’t notice. For one, Forgotten Land actually uses the same engine as Star Allies, just with highly upgraded components but has a lot in common. Since Return to Dream Land, HAL has been using the same framework on a technical level, but Star Allies has been regarded as pivotal in one of their dev talks because of their reliance on certain components (the script system, if you wanna know) more than usual, to really try to make development easier and faster.
An analysis of the Forgotten Land engine framework also showed how HAL really wanted to make development even easier, taking inspirations from Unity for example. So I think this is more about how Star Allies’ development was also made in mind for future development of games at HAL.
While I agree with most of what you said about the timing, I don’t think that changes the core concept of the article. They figured out a groundwork for 3D in the final boss fight of star Allies and probably used that code as a base for developing the full 3D game.
If they were thinking one project ahead, it’s a pretty smart way of easing development for the next game and possible regardless of what system star allies was originally targeting.
I think the main issue here is that the article title is a bit misleading. He doesn’t say verbatim that Star Allies was created to lay the groundwork for future games, that’s something that MNN said. So while I’m not sure if Star Allies really was originally a Wii U game, your reasoning is still reasonable and doesn’t go against what they actually said.
Forgotten Land reusing some templates from Star Allies doesn’t mean that Star Allies’ sole purpose was for being a springboard into Forgotten Land existing, and I think that’s my issue with this article title.
Star Allies was created as a standalone game, but of course they started to have ideas they could use in the next game so they tested them out at the end of Star Allies. Those ideas were then expanded upon in Forgotten Land. Star Allies was not created just so that Forgotten Land could exist
So happy about how forgotten land turned out to be. It’s the exact direction the series needed to go into. Star Allies was lacklustre, and necessitated very little from the player thanks for that non-optional allies taking care of everything for you.
I totally wouldn’t mind if Kirby FL sets the path for future games. Heck, the game looks and okay so good they can recycle the same engine and assets for the the follow-up 2 or 3 games.
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Kirby Star Allies foi feito em parte para lançar as bases para futuros jogos Kirby
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