Atlus chats about Baroque's place in the Wii lineup
OMG Nintendo interviewed the Baroque localization team at Atlus USA about the challenges of making a super-hardcore dungeon RPG on the Wii. And don't worry -- this isn't being loaded with minigames or billed as Dungeon Training or anything. The team is fully aware of who the audience for Baroque is, and it's not the casual crowd. There are varying degrees of casual-to-hardcore, and "crazy dungeon RPG" is well beyond the hardcore side. Said Atlus's Aram Jabbari: "Baroque is a pure hardcore RPG experience and doesn't apologize for being so. With its dark subject matter and eerie characters, it definitely offers a change of pace from the Wii's usual light fare."
As is pointed out in the interview, Atlus has been doing surprisingly well on the Wii with the Trauma Center games. Atlus's Clayton S. Chan sees the success as a result of good designers being paired with new possibilities: "Honestly, I think what the industry really needs is some (pun definitely intended) New Blood. An influx of good designers who are given more control would undoubtedly yield more unique titles that took better advantage of what the Wii offers." Of course, that doesn't apply to Baroque, which is a Wii port of a PS2 remake of a Saturn game.
As is pointed out in the interview, Atlus has been doing surprisingly well on the Wii with the Trauma Center games. Atlus's Clayton S. Chan sees the success as a result of good designers being paired with new possibilities: "Honestly, I think what the industry really needs is some (pun definitely intended) New Blood. An influx of good designers who are given more control would undoubtedly yield more unique titles that took better advantage of what the Wii offers." Of course, that doesn't apply to Baroque, which is a Wii port of a PS2 remake of a Saturn game.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
James @ Jan 15th 2008 2:44PM
Funny you should mention -- I just got into Etrian Odyssey about a week ago. Is that the sort of thing I should expect from a "hardcore dungeon crawler"? It's pretty hardcore, all right -- I'm almost broke most of the time just from resurrecting my dudes, and I'm only on the second level (of 30) of the dungeon. Yipes.
Fiefdom @ Jan 15th 2008 5:02PM
Yes, Etrian Odyssey is a good example (and happens to have also been published by Atlus USA). I love Atlus. S2
Perverted @ Jan 15th 2008 5:08PM
I bought the Wii because I'm not all about the graphics and like new experiences, but hardcore games are few and far between so my hopes were raised here and then at the end my hope was dashed as the oh so dreaded(for me atleast) Wii + ps2 + port were mentioned....
Sinister Slim @ Jan 16th 2008 2:22AM
So I take it the Japanese audio is going to be discarded in favor of the new English audio?
I'm hoping they leave both audio tracks in like some other Atlus games...