A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to join the team from Nihon Falcom at a preview event to talk about and play Ys X: Nordics and Trails Through Daybreak II. It was incredible to play both of these (at the time) unreleased titles, and the day gave me a not-inconsequential desire to play more of Daybreak II, but I have to wait until February 2025 for that! Another part of the day was getting to sit down with the president of Nihon Falcom, Toshihiro Kondo, to discuss these two upcoming games and his role within the company. As a huge Ys fan, I was more than happy to oblige, and you can find this full interview below. Please note that this interview was performed via an interpreter, and as such I have made some amendments for brevity and clarity.
TSA: Thank you so much for inviting me in and allowing me to come in and chat with you both. It’s been an amazing day. And, wow, there’s now games that I need to play, and that’s a problem. I’ll start with a kind of, like, really kind of big open question, and I’ll kind of make it a little bit more specific.
I think one of the biggest questions, and one of the things I always find really interesting to ask folks in the games industry, especially people in your position, is what inspires you as a games industry veteran. Are there any particular kind of movies or other games or anything that kind of really inspire you when it comes to your work?
TK: So that’s a difficult question. A lot of the inspiration comes from the anime and manga that I read and watched as a child. Another thing would be recent films or things that I’m exposed to when working on a given game.
In the case of Ys, which has kind of a pseudo history theme going with it, there’s a lot of history things that I will reference when working on it. This then becomes inspiration as things like this are probably impossible to avoid in daily life. Whatever I have been watching or reading at the time would kind of have a way of creeping into my work as an inspiration.
TSA: Okay, awesome. Following on from that because I did a little bit of research, you joined Nihon Falcom after creating the very popular fan site, The Saga of Tirasweel. How much you can speak about this, I don’t know, but how did you find that transition between being a fan writing about games to actually being a developer and creating the games?
TK: At first, I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was actually in a dream that I had joined the company. From there, however, obviously, I kind of went face to face with reality. I had this dream about the way it would be, but then the reality obviously was very different. At that point in time, I had actually talked to the owner of the company, who told me that, a lot of times, people who join the company who really love the games kind of break when they’re confronted with the strict reality of what it actually takes to make games and game development and quit. So, he said, please don’t quit, don’t break.
I had a lot of rough, difficult conversations with the people who had been in the company longer than him and who had told him all these things. It certainly ended up being a little bit more difficult than I thought, but that’s what game development is.
The interesting thing, though, is that Falcom is a very unique company in that I, for example, entered the company, supposedly in the finance division because I studied economics in school. However, as soon as I joined, I didn’t work in the finance department. I actually got put in charge of running the company’s servers, which I did for a year. I expected to be moved to finance or something, given that that was my background.
But from there, I was given the opportunity to write an additional scenario for a game that had already come out; so, I tried my hand at scenario writing. It turned out I was good at that, so was able to do scripting for certain event scenes in the game. Even though this was completely not in my wheelhouse, I was given the opportunity to do these things. By doing them, it turned out I’m actually good at these things meaning I was able to do more of it.
Another example of this one of my then co-workers, Shinkai Makoto, you might be familiar with his work in anime. When he knew him, he didn’t know how to draw. He wasn’t necessarily known as an artist, but working at Falcom, he was given the opportunity because he was interested in it, to draw and to be able to animate. By giving these opportunities, people can find out what they’re good at and what they can actually accomplish. Falcom is an interesting company because it offers those opportunities to people within the company regardless of what they supposedly join the company to do specifically.
TSA: It’s really good to hear that there’s a company that still fosters these sorts of these allowances to kind of play with your role.
TK: Yeah, it’s the kind of company where the company won’t necessarily go as far as to necessarily say, “oh, if you want to try this, you can”. But it’s more that if this person has the will and the desire and the guts, they’re given this opportunity and they can see how far they can go by just doing it because they want to, which is amazing, in itself.
TSA: So, I wanted to move on to a couple of game specific questions. The first one I wanted to ask, as a huge fan of Ys as a franchise, is that – with the Trails franchise – there was a very clear intent from the beginning that this would be a continual story in the same world with the same characters, and it would kind of grow out from there.
I know that Ys began before you joined the company, but I was wondering whether the decision to keep Adol was the central focal point of Ys was a conscious decision or it’s just something that’s just ended up happening? In other words, did Adol end up being the main focus, or was that a decision from the beginning?
TK: So, the thing is, there’s no hard and fast rules in the company that the main character of Ys has to be Adol. However, there’s a feeling in the company that Ys kind of *is* Adol. I specifically took over the Ys games from Ys Six and looking at that, it was like, well, these are Adol’s adventures. These games purport to tell the stories of this one adventurer and his adventures. So, it makes sense that he’s the main character. But one of the most important things about the Ys games is that Adol is kind of “the player” in a lot of situations.
We talked about it briefly in the main presentation and the Q&A; but a lot of times, Adol is more of an avatar for the player and the things that are happening in the games are happening to the player. When the heroine, for example, is speaking to Adol, they’re speaking to you as the player. These things that are happening to Adol, and Adol’s experiencing, you should be experiencing as the player as Adol is your avatar.
Because Adol, as this character, lends himself to this method of storytelling, this has then become intertwined with what an Ys game is and with Ys’ storytelling. So, it stands that Adol continues to be the main character. The thing is, and again this is something that was mentioned during the Q&A session, it’s because of Adol the player is able to exist, and the game world is able to exist.
It all stems from the player and their relationship to and their role within this world through the vehicle of the playable character. In the Trails series, the characters are already built, and they have their own really strong personalities and motives and goals and things like that. The player is on the outside, looking into the story and watching the story. Whereas, in the case of Ys, the player is an actual participant. Even if Adol wasn’t the main character, it would probably end up being the same style because that is what Ys is at its fundamental core, something the player interacts with while in this world.
The only example which kind of breaks this rule is the game called Ys Origin, which has its own separate main characters. It’s got two main characters, Yunica and Hugo, and they both have their own personalities, they both have their own stories, and they always have their own world and things. So, it’s a little bit different because you are, as the player, kind of looking into their world rather than being a part of it. Other than that, all the rest of the games in the series have this very strong, distinct image of you as the player.
TSA: So, it’s like a difference between the playable character and the main character? The example that comes to mind from a game outside of Ys is Final Fantasy X, where the playable character is Tidus, but the main character of that story is Yuna.
TK: Unfortunately, I’m not super familiar with the Final Fantasy games, so I can’t agree necessarily to the example that you gave. But to talk a little bit further, I’d say this is an old-style game, like Dragon Quest or – as a modern example – Persona. Persona has a non-speaking main character. This is all with the goal of getting you, as the player, to see yourself within this world, so that you can kind of dive into the world head-first and be a part of it. That’s what makes Ys. At its heart it’s a very old-style game that tries to bring the player in through this method.
TSA: And it succeeds. One thing that makes the Ys franchise so engaging and so interesting for me is that Adol has been the protagonist for so long; and because the games are written in the way they are, the world feels realistic and believable because previous events that have happened within the actual chronological timeline will be referenced.
If someone was jumping in at, say, Ys VIII, they wouldn’t necessarily know the events of Celceta, but they’re mentioned in-game. So, if you have played Memories of Celceta, it’s something that long standing players of the franchise can actually pick up on. These events actually happened in this world, this world is thought out and that thought process translates across to Trails as well. There’s a clear consistency and breadth of thought given to the world itself as well as the characters.
TK: Yeah, you’re right. One of the big differences between the two series is that with Trails it almost becomes a requirement for the player to know. They’re built in this way where the games constantly reference themselves and what’s come before. So, for the players there’s a necessary level of “you need to meet us here in terms of understanding what came before” to really dive into this game.
Whereas with Ys, by contrast, you do have what you mentioned, which is like “oh my god, I remember that. That happened in, you know, this game”. Alternatively, even somebody new, they’ll still get this sense of “oh, okay, something happened”, but they’ll still be able to continue to play the game and enjoy it because it just becomes this thing where it’s like “oh, they’re referencing something”. It makes this world feel alive, but you don’t necessarily need to know it in order to enjoy the game. That’s kind of the big difference because the Ys series demands a lot less of you, as the player, in terms of having played everything that came before to really delve into it and to enjoy the world.
TSA: Yeah, I’m dreading Trails now.
TK: You haven’t played the Trails games yet?
TSA: I’ve played bits and pieces of Trails over the years. But I think that’s probably why it never gelled with me because there is clearly this thing that I hadn’t realized where there’s this underlying current of story that’s running through the whole thing and I think that’s why it didn’t grab me. Whereas with Ys I jumped in, I think, at Seven.
I’ve gone back and played Celceta, Ys 1 and Ys 2. Then played VIII, IX, and now Nordics, and I’ve had a great time jumping around and I’ve not had to be that concerned about it. Whereas I think I need to sit down and give myself some time with Trails and really get into the story because it’s clearly a big focus.
TK: It’s kind of what makes both of these series unique and enjoyable is that there is the fun, which hopefully you’ll be able to discover though the Trails series being so connected and everything being so reliant on what’s come before and hinting towards things in the future. That’s the real great joy of playing those games.
On the flip side, you have something where you can jump in anywhere and you can enjoy yourself, and you can jump around and go back to different places. You’ll be able to find a lot of enjoyment within that and seeing those small references, but still being able to enjoy the adventure at hand and knowing it’s going to be complete within itself. So there’s really no good or bad for either. They both have their merits and their fun points.
TSA: Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Trails like, gameplay wise is flawless, but I felt completely lost plot wise, you know? Sticking with Ys still for a moment, one thing that I was really curious about was the naval combat because, in Ys X, this is the first time there’s ever been naval combat in the Ys franchise. You mentioned earlier in the Q&A that there is always this consideration between gameplay and narrative; did the naval combat fall in as a gameplay thing first or a narrative thing first.?
TK: Actually neither. What it actually came from is that there was this desire to have ship exploration to begin with, which is something that the team and I wanted to include in this game because, over the years, you don’t really see it anymore. I remember as a kid playing Dragon Quest 2, and when you get the ship, the ability for you to go more places is greatly expanded upon and you have more freedom as the player. If you see a little island somewhere, you can go to it.
I remember loving so much seeing a little island on the map and sailing to it, then getting off and seeing what the island discovers. It brought me a lot of enjoyment and, because games don’t really do this anymore, it’s something he wanted to bring back. At the same time though, I was watching the Vikings TV show, and these kind of just miraculously worked together and came together, which is where you get ship combat.
TSA: I will definitely say as someone who has played a few hours of Ys X: Nordics, that feeling of exploration has been completely nailed.
TK: The thing about the Ys games is that they always start from a concept of – “What will this adventure be like?”. What kind of adventure do we want to make? For example, with Ys Seven, the first thing we had was the key word of the Five Dragons of Altago. This is actually a term that came out in the manual for Ys 1. This is all we had. So, we had to think, well, what are the dragons? Then from there, we developed this whole adventure around this region of Altago and what these dragons did, and what the player had to do.
Similarly, with the adventure in Ys VIII, we had the idea of an unpopulated island, an island all by itself with, you know, no one. What would happen on this island? What kind of adventure would Adol have if he were to go to an island that supposedly was unpopulated? So, you’ve got the adventure that happens with Ys VIII.
With Ys IX, the idea actually came from one of the designers saying, “look at Ys VIII, we had to make so many assets that are in nature. Can we please do something that’s not nature? Can we do something that’s a little bit more urban?”. Therefore, you have the city setting. Within that, too, there was this idea of, up until that time, most of the Ys games had essentially the flat with a little bit of jumping. So they said, for Ys IX, what if we explored verticality? What if we had differences of level but still made it fun for people to traverse going from one level to another? How can we incorporate this into the game? That’s where you get the idea of the Monstrums and the Monstrum powers that came with Ys IX.
Then finally with Ys X again, it’s like, well, even though we’ve had Ys VIII being on an island and Altago being a water-based region, we’ve never really had Adol on a ship. We’ve never had him exploring via boat. Though the joke is that Adol gets on a boat, the boat sinks, the adventure begins, we thought what can we do with this that we’ve never done before? Thus you have Ys X. That’s how, essentially, all of these games are created. What adventure is Adol going to go on? Then we just let that idea inform what the game becomes.
TSA: That’s an incredible insight, and it does explain why each game feels so self-contained, because they each start from that one idea. One question I wanted to ask about Trails, specifically Trails through Daybreak II. There’s this very clear narrative thread, as it’s been discussed multiple times, that runs through the Trails series. But one of the key things with Trails through Daybreak II is time and the manipulation of time. How does the manipulation of time mess with that entire coherent thread of narrative that you have running through the world of Trails?
TK: It is a difficult question to answer, but mainly from the aspect of it ends up being super spoilery. This is absolutely directly related to what will come after in the series. So, this element of the story is there purposefully, and it was never necessarily something which could kind of ruin what came before. When you introduce time travel and time elements to a story, you can have paradoxes happen. But this is something that’s been very carefully planned out, and to say anything further would be a spoiler. So, please just look forward to it in the game.
TSA: Oh, yeah, I won’t ask any more. It’s just always interesting when time mechanics, or manipulation of time, is introduced into a narrative. It can be a concern, but that answer just perfectly solves the point that it has been included within the considerations for the story.
TK: That was an incredibly insightful question and a good question. Honestly, that specific question is something that will be addressed in the game that just came out in Japan, and coming to the West in the future.
TSA: That’s so exciting, and also something that doesn’t need to be considered with Ys because they’re all self-contained. You could have a time travel one and it wouldn’t really affect anything and that’s the wonderful thing about Y, isn’t it? I mean there was, and not getting too much into spoilers, but in Ys VIII there’s alternate dimensions at one point, isn’t there?
TK: That’s a really good point. The thing about the Ys world – the world of Eresia – is that each area has its own specific powers that exist there, and their influence basically only extends to those areas. So that kind of helps it be self-contained. Also even though you might have like gods or godlike figures, they’re called by different names in different areas and their powers kind of extend in different ways. The setting is very different and it lends itself really well to these self-contained adventures because of how compartmentalised certain aspects of this world can be in terms of what power governs one individual region or has sway over individual region.
TSA: As president of Nihon Falcom and someone who’s overseen both Trails and Ys, do you have a specific game in mind that you say to start for new players to each series?
TK: Even though I very much love Ys 1 and 2, I don’t know whether or not they would really be well received by everybody given their, you know, very unique nature. Therefore, to choose something more recent that was generally really well received by everybody, I would have to point to Ys VIII. That’d be a great jumping on point.
For Trails, that’s a really hard question. There’s lots of onboarding points, but the thing that would probably be the best right now would be Daybreak 1, simply because it’s a brand-new location within the world, meaning it has a brand-new cast of characters. Also, the system has been completely revamped over what’s came before, so it really lends itself well to being a good jumping on point.
TSA: Speaking as a player, I’m going to take that on board and that’s going to be my jumping on point for Trails. Oh, and also Ys VIII is the one that I use to convince people to play Ys; it’s a very good jumping on point.
So, a slightly lighthearted question for you. I know there’s a lot of characters across Trails and Ys, but is there a particular character that sticks out from those two franchises that you would call your favorite?
TK: Like one from each or one from everything?
TSA: Either/or. If there’s one from each that speaks fantastic, but if there’s one particular character that really stands out, that’s also golden.
TK: It’s difficult because if it’s a character that I actually created, it can be really embarrassing. When it comes to the Trails series, that’s the first game that I worked on as an original in the company. It’s the first game that I had a chance to come up with the world and the characters and everything. So, within that, the main character of that series is a young woman named Estelle Bright. She was one of the first ones I did and she was the first main character. She was essentially the first female character that came out. Because of that she is very near and dear to me. So that’s the character I would choose from Trails.
So, this is a little embarrassing because it is a character I created, but from Ys my favourite would be Dana from Ys VIII. The reason for that, as I mentioned in the talk earlier, was because of Feena from Ys 1 and 2 who was a character that the fans loved. I often saw on message boards and among fan communities that they’re never going to beat Feena in terms of creating a heroine. They tried over the years, as there’s plenty of games where there have been heroines that come out, but none of them have never been able to compare to Feena.
So, one of the goals for Ys VIII was the “Beat Feena” goal, or at least the “Reach Feena” goal to make a character who is beloved as Feena. The thing that makes this so difficult though, too, is that Feena also has this historical baggage that comes along with her. Now you’re fighting not only against the character of Feena, but you’re fighting against the memories that the players have created, having played this long ago and having all these deep feelings towards the character of Feena.
So, we thought how can we do this? One way to do that was that Dana first appears, as, you know, in Adol’s dreams. As Adol, you play as Dana in these dream sequences, which was very interesting and novel, because Adol’s the main character. This is something they hadn’t really done before. Within that, as you know, the story grows and we learn about Dana’s character throughout the course of the game.
When it came out, a lot of people said, “Oh, they’ve done it. They finally beat Feena”. It was really difficult coming up with that character. The actual idea for this whole setting came out with this idea of how to beat Feena. But, all that hard work was worth it because, at the end of the day, a lot of players actually gave me this feedback of “You guys, you finally did it. You finally got a character to beat Feena”.
TSA: I mean, Dana is incredible. Not my favorite character in Ys, but amazing nonetheless.
TK: Okay, who is your favorite character, out of curiosity?
TSA: I’ve got two favorite characters in Ys, one is early in the series and one later. My favourite from the early games is Ozma from Celceta, and from the later is Sahad from VIII.
TK: I actually wrote and made Ozma!
TSA: Really?? I just think Ozma is just such a well written young leader, and those are often either written to be too one way or the other. He’s very well balanced in the middle and it’s just a very well-written character generally.
TK: Not many people ever praise Ozma. This might be the first time anyone’s ever said he is one of their favorite characters. So, I’m very happy about that.
TSA: I’m glad. Also, I love a good spear.
So my last question and it’s probably my most lighthearted one. Nihon Falcom games, from what I’ve heard of Trails and also extensively in Ys too, have a broad range of musical genres that are brought in in terms of the soundtracks. There’s hard rock, folk, electronica, and there’s even some flamenco in some of the Ys games as well. So, the question I wanted to ask is, what’s your favorite genre of music to listen to?
TK: Actually, I’m pretty much really into orthodox rock. I’m really kind of old school. To give you a specific example, I really like Deep Purple, just that kind of old British rock from back in the day.
TSA: Very, very solid choice. You’ll not get an argument from me with Deep Purple. Thank you so much for talking with me.