During the Arc World Tour 2024 Finals event, Final Weapon had the opportunity to interview Tetsuya Fukuhara, Creative Director of Granblue Fantasy. Fukuhara-san has served as Director or Creative Director for every Granblue Fantasy game thus far, including Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. In our time with Fukuhara-san, we dove into the process of patching the game, the story of how 2B joined the roster, and the future goals of Granblue Fantasy! We hope you enjoy this exclusive interview, and we’d like to thank the wonderful teams at Cygames and Arc System Works for making this possible! Enjoy!
Hi, Fukahara-San, thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us. We’re really excited to talk about Rising and Granblue as a whole. To start off, Rising is a massive improvement from the original Granblue Fantasy Versus in a lot of ways. How do you and the development team feel about the game’s success at the current moment?
Tetsuya Fukuhara: With Rising, you know, we got picked for EVO both last year and this year and with the release of the patch version 2.0, we were seeing the most excitement in the community right now so far. So yeah, we feel really good about everything at the moment.
That’s great to hear. Congratulations on the back-to-back EVO selections, as well as Version 2.0! Speaking of updates, many players are curious about the process that goes into patching the game and making patch notes. Does the team use online match footage or tournaments to gauge the strengths of characters or how does that process work? Also, do Cygames sometimes handle the patches instead of Arc System Works, or do you work together?
Tetsuya Fukuhara: Yeah, so there are a lot of things that go into implementing changes and updates or balancing via patches. We look at the data we collect from console platforms from each platform. Additionally, we can look at, rankings, character rankings, and character usage rates. We pay attention to the competitive scenes, you know, so we can understand the kind of characters that are popular and not popular. So there are a lot of mini data points that we reference and when we decide how to about make changes, sometimes there are internal agendas that we want to push and that we want to implement.
We always have a long-term goal in mind, and some patches can be implemented to go along with those long-term goals, but as well, some might be a little more short-term, quick fixes that we need to implement. There are those two elements that we consider many different pieces of data. And as far as the actual implementation, whether, is it ASW or Cygames, it’s a little bit hard to say just because we sort of operate as one unit, so Cygames and ASW. So I guess we can say it’s like a joint operation.
How did the addition of 2B come about? Did Cygames and Square Enix feel the collaboration was successful and what was the experience working with Yoko Taro like?
Tetsuya Fukuhara: Yeah, so 2B, so this is back before, Rising. So during Versus, there was a lot of community feedback that they wanted some sort of collaboration character or guest character, but at the time, Versus had a smaller roster. So, we wanted to first build up the Granblue Fantasy roster first, meaning the idea of including a guest character at the time was shelved. However, when Rising released, we wanted to implement a strategy to expand our audience. And so that was one of the reasons why we chose 2B as a guest character, with respect to that goal of reaching different audiences and expanding our player base.
As for why we picked 2B, we were looking around and were considering different characters. While we narrowed it down to a few characters that would fit into the Granblue Fantasy world, and just kind of the overall design and concept, everything, we just wanted a character that would be a good fit that wouldn’t feel too out of place. That, combined with our connection with Square Enix and our connection with Akihiko Yoshida, who was the designer for 2B, allowed that kind of all to come together and led to our decision to include 2B.
As far as reaching our goals, I think back to when we released 2B, she had already come out as a guest character for another game, Soul Calibur, that was 3D, and for Granblue, it was going to be a different art style, in this sort of 2D anime art style. So we really set out to make the highest quality 2D anime version of 2B. And based on the feedback from the community, we think that we achieved what we set out to do for 2B.
When it comes to working with Yoko Taro, I actually have never met him in person. We’ve read each other’s emails and stuff like that, but not so much outside of that. He would be the one to review our assets and things like that, and give the green light or ask for revisions or things like that. But I guess, the only real interaction other than the operational daily work kind of stuff, is we showed him our animated concept design and we showed it to him, and he was “Oh, this is fantastic.” and that was about it. So, yeah not a whole lot of interaction with Yoko Taro outside of just the regular work at the operational side.
As for Yoko Taro’s personality, there was sometimes we start advice from him, as far as like what kind of weapons we can make 2B carry. So, we suggested that she carry one of the weapons that come out of Granblue Fantasy. Additionally, there are a lot of characters in Rising that have very funny animations that are kind of meant to be very comical, and there are a lot of elements to that. In NieR: Automata, there’s a type of fish that if you go fishing and you make 2B eat it, 2B Dies. And so we had a suggestion of having the filet of that fish be a weapon. Yoko Taro agreed to it, and I think it speaks to his flexibility and open-mindedness when it comes to suggestions that we throw at him.
In regards to the future of Granblue Fantasy Versus, are there any plans in the future to make another Granblue Fantasy Versus fighting game, or at least another fighting game similar to it?
Tetsuya Fukahara: Right now with Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, currently we are focused on supporting that title. I guess if the company wants me to hop ships and do something else, I would, but yeah, right now we’re focused on Rising. If there’s another chance or opportunity to make a different fighting game, we would maybe try a different approach to reach a different audience or segment of the fighting game community. So if that’s something that comes to the table, then yeah, we could try a different approach from how we did in Rising.
And finally, Fukahara-San, you’ve been so integral to Granblue Fantasy as a whole. What’s your goal for the Granblue series as a whole going forward?
Tetsuya Fukahara: Ever since working on Granblue, the original mobile game, our goal and hope was that Granblue Fantasy would become a notable mobile RPG that can stand shoulder to shoulder with titles like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, those games that have been around for decades. We set out to do that, and as well with Versus, the fighting game, we want to stand shoulder to shoulder with titles like Street Fighter, Tekken, and KOF, titles that have been around for 20 or 30 years.
So we want to support these titles, whether that’s the mobile or the fighting game, for the long haul, and we want to have a community that will follow and stick with these IPs for decades to come. And so, with that in mind, we want to really focus on longevity, and if we can, expand the IP into different genres as we have, but hopefully we can go even further with that.
Thank you so much for your time! We’re very happy to see the growth of Granblue Fantasy worldwide, and we can’t wait to see what else comes for the future of the series.
Tetsuya Fukahara: Thank you very much.
Note: This interview was edited for clarity. Transcribed by Luis Enrique.
