Monsters who are Human and Humans who are Monsters?  No, it’s not Jerry Springer – it’s “La Pucelle: Tactics”

By Louis Bedigian

“Sequels are an attractive notion, but we want to keep pushing ourselves into unknown territories.”

It’s not everyday that you come across a strategy/RPG as unique as La Pucelle: Tactics.  In addition to having excellent gameplay, La Pucelle features one of the most amusing, laugh-out-loud stories you’ll ever encounter in a game.

The game’s star, 16-year-old Prier, is a smart-mouthed brat who makes saving the world fun.  Fun for the player at least.  It’s not always fun for her comrades, and certainly not for her enemies!

La Pucelle: Tactics also sports an excellent, artistic graphic style that makes the characters look more like anime than a video game.  The gameplay is very cool and very addictive – attack in waves of up to eight units, or dish out the pain simultaneously.  The choice is up to you.

And that’s not all.  La Pucelle’s voice acting is some of the best you’ll ever hear on PlayStation 2.

How did the developers do it?  How did they put together such a remarkable game and bring it to the States without flaw?  Sohei Niikawa (from Nippon-Ichi), producer, scriptwriter and lyricist of La Pucelle: Tactics, tells us how they did it.  To find out how the North American version came together, we turned to Mastiff’s Mika Hayashi, producer of the localized version of the game.

La Pucelle: Tactics features a cool, turn-based battle system with some unique elements.  Talk about it.

Nippon-Ichi: The game has to be fun. That is the single most important thing for us. A game cannot become fun with just pretty graphics or an amazing story. We put ourselves through a lot of trial-and-errors to achieve what we want, which as a result, sometimes pushes us into building challenging game systems, and also leads us to unique elements.

I'm a huge fan of turn-based strategy games, but I've found that for the most part the gameplay is hit or miss.  Either it's challenging or it feels cheap.  Or worse – it's too easy!  How do you design a strategy/RPG that avoids those problems?  Where do you begin?

Nippon-Ichi: There is no easy way to balance gameplay. Testing is the key. We play our games numerous times ourselves, and also have a lot of people play it for us. People who are good at games, people who are new to games – the accumulated data helps us to get it just right.

Can you give us a rundown of the magic spells that are featured in the game?

Nippon-Ichi: Magic in the world (of) La Pucelle: Tactics is an everyday experience. The people there create miracles with the help of the elements that constitute the universe, or in other words, some larger form of power. Anyone, with some training, can use magic. It is not a special skill reserved for special people with special talents.

Followed by death.

La Pucelle's characters look like they came out of an anime.  Were there any particular anime or other entertainment mediums that inspired or directly influenced the game?

Nippon-Ichi: We are inspired by a lot of different forms of entertainment. We were avid absorbers of everything that felt good to us. Looking back, we might have gone a bit overboard there…

Speaking of anime, La Pucelle has great character animation.  What is the technology behind the effects?  Are they sprites?

Nippon-Ichi: The animation was done with sprites. It is a technique used from the very first days of computer games. The images consist of tiny dots, which are made to move around in the screen. The technique is less frequently used these days due to the evolving alternate technique of polygons, but we believe that it is still the best method if we want lively character movements. Actually, we aspire to become the best sprites animation team in the world!

La Pucelle’s spells are quite magical.

La Pucelle's story is lighthearted and a bit more comedic than most RPGs.  How much of the comedic aspect had to be altered in order to amuse the American players?

Mastiff: We took utmost care to preserve the humor in the Japanese. To do this, it is important to pay attention to the intention of the words, not the dictionary meaning of the words itself. We are proud to say that we think we have achieved what we wanted to in La Pucelle: Tactics. The gaming experience of both the Japanese players and the North American players are about as similar as humanly possible.

I know there are times when a Japanese story element must be completely removed because it wouldn't make sense in English.  However, even after that element is removed you're still left with an explained part of the game. Did you find it frustrating to fill in the blanks?

Mastiff: It is true that we sometimes have to fill in the gaps during the localization process. For example, a joke may not translate word-for-word so we come up with something similarly funny and with a parallel meaning to preserve the original intention.

In the case of La Pucelle: Tactics, there were no parts in the story that needed such treatment at all. We did go over the speaking lines numerous times so that the characters will come alive, but the story remains completely intact.

Oh no, zombies!?  Where’s Jill Valentine when you need her?

How were the English voice actors selected versus the Japanese voice actors?

Nippon-Ichi: We did an audition for the Japanese voice actors. We sent part of the script to the agency, and had numerous actors speak the parts. We listened to the voices and selected ones that were closest to what we had in mind. It wasn’t about who was famous, it was about who sounded convincing.

Mastiff: For the North American version, the English script was close to the final version when we did the audition. We had the voice actors read some lines, and made decisions based on the type of voice and the acting. Some difficult decisions were made by the very primitive method of closing our eyes while listening to the voices, to see if we could see the faces of the characters we were casting for in our minds. We listened to nearly a hundred auditions to get the roles right so it was time intensive, but worth it.

Did the English voice actors listen to the Japanese voices and try to re-create that emotion, or were they told to act out the part in their own way?

Mastiff: The actors did not hear the Japanese voices. They did see images of the characters they were playing, and we gave them a lot of background information about each character (background, motives, emotional range, age, strengths and weaknesses) to aid them in finding their characters’ voices.

La Pucelle’s sarcastic dialogue is great.

Without spoiling the game for those who haven't played it yet, tell me – have you left La Pucelle: Tactics open for a sequel?

Nippon-Ichi: We don’t have plans to make a sequel at the moment, but if fans want it we will certainly consider it. I also want to create new titles while our team here is in its prime. Sequels are an attractive notion, but we want to keep pushing ourselves into unknown territories.

Thank you for your time.