Koei Tecmo recently talked up their newly announced Berserk musou game.
In an interview with Gamer.ne (via Play-Asia), Koei Tecmo president Hisashi Koinuma talked up the game’s approach to adapting Kentaro Miura’s classic and dark series, avoiding the dreaded CERO Z rating (Editor’s Note: This is essentially them going for an M rating instead of an AO rating), as well as Miura’s involvement with the game.
You can find the entire interview, below:
Was your intention to create a game to go along with this year’s upcoming Berserk anime?
Koinuma: The higher ups and I have actually discussed about creating a Berserk game quite a while before the anime had begun its concept. Although, much later we were approached by the Berserk anime’s production team to ask if we could create a game based on Berserk as well. Personally as a very big Berserk fan I began looking into making a Berserk game a reality. I talked with various members of staff and as Berserk fans themselves they were all delighted to start on the project.
We were unsure when to announce the game itself as Mr. Miura had not released a new volume in three years and we always put an announcement of an IP’s game on the outer slip of a manga book. Since we can’t do that, we decided E3 was the closest event to announce it haha.
So you planned on a worldwide reveal?
Koinuma: We at Koei tend to reveal our games on a global scale like we did with our previous manga to game adaptation of “Attack on Titan”. I feel it’s best we reveal those types of games that way.
Is Mr. Miura interested in the game adaptation of his creation?
Koinuma: Since we announced Koei will be working on a Berserk Warriors, Mr. Miura has sent us a New Years Postcard every single year haha. Mr. Miura is a man grounded in reality and he really wanted the Warriors feeling to remain, but with a Berserk flair, he’s even supervised the creation of the game from the very start.
Will the game’s story be following alongside the manga’s story?
Koinuma: As we did with our “Fist of the North Star” and “Attack on Titan” games, we like to create a story that fans will love yet newcomers can also come and enjoy as if they picked up the very first volume. Berserk Warriors will begin from the Golden Age whereas the anime will pick up from after Guts became a Black Swordsman.
What part of the story are you planning to develop up to?
Koinuma: We plan on cramming a lot of the upcoming anime into the game.
How is development going?
Koinuma: Development is going smoothly.
Will there be plenty of playable characters?
Koinuma: As it’s a Warriors game we planned on a number of different playable characters but please wait for more information in the upcoming months.
Will there be any original “Apostles” featured in the game?
Koinuma: The game will feature a whole lot of Berserk and we plan to keep to the story. We never considered adding anything extra into the game.
What CERO rating are you aiming for?
Koinuma: Our policy at Koei is that we will never release a Z rating (18+) game and like “Fist of the North Star” before we managed to get a CERO D (17+) rating.
Will there be anything cut out due to problems etc?
Koinuma: Nothing will be cut. We had to cut a bit in the “Attack on Titan” game, but to be fair, the enemies were giants and that was a difficult task. With Berserk, since there are mainly humans or monsters, anything that may seem difficult we will push through and challenge ourselves in order to make it happen.
Will Gut’s arm etc be depicted correctly in game?
Koinuma: Guts will be able to fight with his artificial arm and how you will be able to fight…well.. just wait till we announce it!
Will it have a shaded toon type style similar to “Attack on Titan”?
Koinuma: *picks up main visual cut out* We created this especially for the E3 reveal but we are still brushing it up so there is a chance that it could slightly change.
Any hints of an Online mode?
Koinuma: I can’t speak about that at this time, our main focus is on creating an amazing Berserk experience with the story.
Will you be taking over bases similar to the regular Warriors games?
Koinuma: Since that does not happen in the Berserk story, we are instead making it more Berserk-like by making the battles resemble the original material.
Will this game also be made available on Steam?
Koinuma: Koei has always wanted to put out games on multiple platforms and we understand there are a lot of gamers who use Steam and so we plan on considering it an option .
Will the game be released in America on the Xbox One?
Koinuma: We are currently considering Steam and other platforms for Japan at this time.
Berserk (working title) will launch in Japan on September 21st – a western release date has not been confirmed, however it is planned for both North America and Europe.
How do you guys feel about Koei Tecmo focusing on keeping the game at a level so that it doesn’t get an explicit rating, despite its sometimes grotesque material? Sound off in the comments below!
Editor’s Note: Featured image is from the Berserk anime, and not the game itself. You can find the first imagery and screenshots in our previous report.
