Last week’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase may not have been everything that gamers wanted, and then some, but there were a few developers that had some surprises to show off, including all-new games to reveal for the first time. Team Asano had not one but two games in the Partner Showcase to reveal, with one of them being The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. This title was the true newest entry in the HD-2D line of titles that the team is known for, and they have a lot to say about it. In fact, they did their first interview about the game on the Square Enix website.
The team talked about many elements of the game, including its true origin. They revealed that they had done RPGs and even tactics-based RPGs, so shifting to an Action RPG would be both a new challenge and a chance to bring a different fanbase into the HD-2D genre space.
Then, there was the effort and detail put into the character of Elliot. According to Tomoya Asano, they had to make sure that Elliot “looked the part” and stood out from what came before:
“A lot of care was taken in getting Elliot right, as this is the first time that we’ve made a game with just a single protagonist. For example, OCTOPATH TRAVELER I and II had eight, BRAVELY DEFAULT II had four and TRIANGLE STRATEGY had a sprawling ensemble cast. I think Elliot achieves a good balance between looking natural but also slightly fancy!”
Oh, but what about his companion, you ask? Producer Naofumi Matsushita had this to say on that:
“When we decided that we wanted to make The Adventures of Elliot a buddy story, we considered what kind of character we wanted for the companion. We very quickly decided on having it be a fairy.”
Another thing that Team Asano made sure to point out was that the game has a demo available right now on the Nintendo Switch 2. When you complete the game demo, you can fill out a survey that will go right to the team to help them adjust things, and they DO want your feedback!
“The first priority is, of course, to make sure that we are properly delivering fun to everyone, but sometimes we get completely unexpected answers from these surveys, too. The development team always take these on board – it’s always a great help to get this kind of direct feedback and opinion.”
