Gunvolt Chronicles Producer Explains Why Copen Is The Protagonist, Going Multiplatform, And More

Gunvolt Chronicles Producer Explains Why Copen Is The Protagonist, Going Multiplatform, And More

Curious to learn more about the upcoming Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX for Nintendo Switch?

In a recent interview with Gematsu, Inti Creates director Takuya Aizu revealed more details behind the game’s development. Namely, he explained why the game now features Copen instead of Gunvolt, among other decisions surrounding the game. We also get more insight into why Gunvolt Chronicles will be multiplatform (for Switch, PS4, and PC), its voice options, and whether a western physical release is possible.

Check it out below:

Why Copen is now the main protagonist:

Aizu: “When you look at the Gunvolt series as a whole, in Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 you were able to play from the beginning to the end as both Gunvolt and Copen. Of course, Gunvolt had an entire game to himself with the original Azure Striker Gunvolt. But when you compare the amount of time you get to play as Copen to the amount of time you get to play as Gunvolt, Copen is a lot more lacking in terms of the amount of content he has. We’re very proud of the gameplay mechanics we made for Copen and think they’re a ton of fun, and know that a lot of people wanted to see more of him—both the fans and us. So we thought if we’re going to make more Copen content, then it was fit to have him have his own story focused around him with a lot more content and his own thing around him as a centerpiece.”


About Lola’s idol form:

Aizu: “I guess from a scientific perspective, I’m not quite sure how I can explain that to you. But in the world of Gunvolt, I think a lot of it is very similar to a more real-life science-fiction type of thing, except for the fact that you have what are called ‘Adepts,’ people that have special powers known as ‘Septimas,’ which is where Gunvolt really strains from real life and goes into the fiction category. As far as Lola goes, she’s basically this robot that Copen designed to be his combat partner—it has all these different types of things it can do to help him in combat, and the biggest thing is that it can copy those powers from other Adepts, and Copen can use them as such. One of the powers that Lola had copied, which enables her to become this idol character that can sing and make all these special powers happen from that, was copied from the abilities of one of the main characters of the previous game named Lumen. So that’s how she’s able to do that. That’s a power she obtained from another very important character in the Gunvolt series. Which is how this little tiny spherical robot turns into this beautiful girl who sings with magical powers.”


Why Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX is multiplatform:

Aizu: “One of the good things that came with the release of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon was that we had to make improvements and adjustments to our in-house engine, with which we develop most of our games, to be able to work across all platforms. So when it comes to Luminous Avengers iX, it’s a spin-off of the Gunvolt series, while still the start of a new series, so we wanted to make that a multiplatform release from the get-go. So if we ever did a sequel to Luminous Avenger iX, the chances of that being multiplatform are pretty high. But when it comes to other titles, we’re still a small company, so I think each title is more of a case-by-case basis kind of thing. But yeah, having Curse of the Moon be multiplatform set the stage to allow us to do that much easier going forward.”

Why Gunvolt 2 is still a Nintendo-exclusive

Aizu: “There are mainly two reasons why these have yet to be ported. The first reason is that the Gunvolt team, which is responsible for creating all the games in that series, are very much like a set unit of people, so if anything happens within the development of Gunvolt-anything, it needs to be within this one team. So when it comes to porting, we want to focus on releasing new titles as that’s what our fans want to play, so if we decide to port the games, that could take four months, or six months, and every month that the Gunvolt team spends working on a port, that’s that many more months of a delay for the next title. So you have that timing issue of how much time you can really dedicate to porting when you’re still trying to work on creating new titles. And of course, the second thing is that there’s obviously a cost measure. We’re not a giant company, we have to be able to be sure that porting would not only be worth the development time and costs, but also whether it looks like we would lose money when we put it all together. There are other factors you may not realize off the top, such as paying more royalties to the voice talent, and all these other parts of the equation that need to be considered.”


Whether the game will have dual audio:

Aizu: “For voice options, it will be Japanese-only. But there will be English text, as well as other language options.”

Whether a western physical release is possible:

Aizu: “We want to do a physical release in North America and Europe. Inti Creates is able to self-publish in both Japan and Asia, but we need to work with a partner to do that everywhere else. We’re currently in talks with partners we’ve worked with in the past to produce physical versions of our games, but nothing is set in stone just yet. But we are in talks with different companies about that. We want to do it. But I think the biggest caveat to it all is that we may not be able to do it in time for the digital release. If we can that would be wonderful, but there’s definitely a big chance that if we do a physical release in North America and Europe, it’ll be out after the digital release.”

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX will be hitting Nintendo Switch on 26 September 2019.

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