FFD: What would you say to a fan of RPGs who would discover Star Ocean but would be afraid to start with the 5th episode?
Kobayashi: Even though the story of Star Ocean continues along the timeline and it's all the same world and the same setting, each individual game is a complete story of its own right. So in a lot of ways, it's like Final Fantasy, where you got I, II, III... They are completely different stories, so you wouldn't have a problem starting with number 5 at all. It has its own story.

FFW: French players were surprised to learn that the spaceship you get in Star Ocean 5 is called the "Charles D. Goale", and I've also noticed that one kingdom is called Langdauq, which sounds very much like the name of the French region Languedoc. So I wanted to know what's the deal with French names in Star Oean 5?
Kobayashi: It's quite interesting, actually. I can remember the head of tri-Ace, the company who's made Star Ocean, the people who wrote the story for it, come to me and say: "I really respect France!" (laughs) I don't know why he said that to me, but obviously he has put a lot of that in there. In actual fact, in addition to the two things you've pointed out, there's also a character, a quite important character in the story, who's actually of French nationality. This character, who is called Anne, is from the "France of the future". In Star Ocean, you've got the Galactic Federation, and the Charles D. Goale spaceship was actually created by their French team. Which means it was created from the real France in the future. I don't know the reason why they did that though!

DBZ: I would like to ask you about the design for this game. Akiman has been chosen for design duties, like character design, but does it have an influence on the game or is it just to bring a new visual experience to the players?
Kobayashi: The reason we chose to ask Akiman to design the characters is very much linked to the way they work in the game, because this game we have a party of seven characters who fight together, so it was really necessary to be able to see visually how each of these characters is going to fight. Obviously, from his work on Street Fighter, you can see Akiman is very good at stressing how a character is going to move and going to fight, what kind of style they are going to use from their visual appearance. He is a really good guy to do that. He's also very good at drawing all sorts of different characters, different clothing and design styles. He's very good at people exposing a lot of flesh, wearing normal clothes, suits of armory, all kinds of different characters. To differenciate the characters and make them all individuals, we thought he was the perfect guy to do it, so that's why we asked him, because it helps with what we want to show with the characters in the game.
Also, a number of things we got inspiration and ideas from how the characters are going to move just from looking at the designs he presented us. So for example, the character called Anne fights with martial arts, and because we saw the design he drawn for us with that, we thought: OK, this really works to make a guard position. We sought the image that he provided for that character to make a blocking position look like this. So he helped out with inspiring some aspects of the game too.

DBZ: Another question about the graphics. Why didn't you use anime render, like cel-shading like the Naruto games?
Kobayashi: We originally did look at making a cel-shaded style, and while that's very good for the characters, what really felt wrong and didn't quite work was with the backgrounds. Because of the type of games it is, as in Star Ocean you travel through this wide worlds and they have to look beautiful and imposing. Something about the background looked flat and not right when you use the cel-shaded style, so we thought it wasn't the best style to go overall, even if it goes really good with the characters. Instead of that, we thought we should try a more CG-like animated style, sort of like Disney and Pixar, which is very popular in Japan at the moment and people really would like that style, so we tried to go more for that style. We felt that, for the backgrounds, that really helped too.

FFD: Japanese players seemed hostile to the idea of westernizing Japanese productions, and Western gamers want to enjoy the original version of a game without censorship. Some adjustments to the design of certain characters were controversial. What do you think about this situation?
Kobayashi: At Square Enix, the way we approach this is we get together with the localization team and the development team at the very start of the project, before we even announce the game, and discuss how the characters are going to be, and how they should be, so that every single region around the world gets the same content. Having a game that's been announced or released somewhere, presented to the world, and changed afterwards is very bad. We very much try to make sure all regions can agree and get the same content right from the start. That's how we approach that.
Also, a worldwide release is important too. Obviously, Star Ocean 5 was released in Japan first because of the way the development worked, but for my upcoming projects I really want to make sure that they go out at the same time everywhere in the world.

FFW: I've noticed a number of music from Star Ocean 5 was actually taken from 3 and 4, so I wanted to know why you've used so much music from the previous games?
Kobayashi: Overall, there are a lot of songs in the game, and we tried to put a lot of new music in there. We just didn't try to re-use everything. But in some ways, because it marks the 20th anniversary of the Star Ocean series, we wanted to have a sort of tribute to the previous games in there as well, and we wanted to use the classic Star Ocean songs in promotion in the future as well. So we had a couple of those in there, but obviously we only picked them if they fitted in the game itself, like "this one would really sum up this area in the game", so even it was an old song, we thought it would be a good idea to use it here.
Because we have these 20 years of Star Ocean and the same history with the music, we really want to be able to use them in the future as well, so as to keep these songs going, but I just don't want people to misunderstand: we didn't use old songs because we wanted to take a break or want to make it easy for ourselves. We felt that if this old song works well in this part of the game, then we use it here.

FFD: In terms of gameplay, what do you think is the biggest change introduced by this episode?
Kobayashi: I think one of the big trademarks of the Star Ocean series is the action battles, and the over-the-top flashy kind of battle scenes. In this one, we got those to work seamlessly with the exploration sections without having to change screens and load a battle area. It was really a difficult thing to do but I think it was one of the biggest changes to the game. The whole game as well, from the events all to everything seamlessly goes from one another, so to get those over-the-top battle attacks to work in the same area as you're exploring was quite difficult. To get the same type of big attacks as the previous Star Ocean games was one of our big goals. Looking forward into Star Ocean's future, where the battle cuts off and loads a new screen, that's not going to come back. We really like this way of going seamlessly into battle, so we're going to try and carry that forward too.
It's designed to feel like a traditional JRPG when you're playing it, for the story progression, but the way the world is designed is pretty much like a modern, open world game. That's the technology behind it.

FFW: What's the deal with the subtitle of the game, Integrity and Faithlessness? Everyone was surprised by that title, as it's very hard to pronounce.
Kobayashi: I didn't want to put that subtitle in the beginning. (laughs) But the guy who is the concept designer for the whole Star Ocean series said: we have to have this as a subtitle, otherwise it's pointless. He really wanted that. There is actually a good reason behind that, because it links to some deeper meanings like the name of the characters and the themes of the game. It does represent the story.

DBZ: If you had a suggestion for a subtitle, what would it be?
Kobayashi: I made a number of suggestions to the team as an alternative, but they all basically spoiled the contents of the game and made it too obvious, so I can't really tell them or everybody would be angry at me if I tell them to you. (laughs) Another reason is what it represents in the story, to give a bit more without giving everything away. As we said when we told about how to get new people to the series, you don't need to know about the previous things in the series to understand it. But for the people who have played these games and understand the world of Star Ocean, you have the Galactic Federation, one of the big organisations in there, and these words imply this episode in the game which starts to get people thinking about the truth behind the Galactic Federation, between their public faces and who they are in reality, and give a bit of doubt to all of that. These words help represent that too.

FFW: That subtitle also keeps giving the impression that Square Enix is trying to give the most complicated names ever. It's like a tradition. And I'm saying that as a Final Fantasy fan.
Kobayashi: (laughs) I'll definitely try to make the next one more simple. I have to go around and announce the full title to a lot of people in different places I always slip up on it. (laughs)

FFD: The situation in Japan is special and encourages to develop products on both PS3 and PS4. How does it impact the development and how do you deal with the situation?
Kobayashi: I really wanted to give up on the PS3 version. As a result of how hard it is, the release of the PS3 version was a month later in Japan. It couldn't get out at the same time. RPG games take a long time to developed because there is a lot to do on them. So we when first start developing Star Ocean 5, the PS3 market was much bigger than it is now, even in Japan. And so we started to develop both at once, and it was mainly based on the PS3 version with the idea of scaling it up later. But partway through development we realized that to make a PS4 game, you have to make it so that the graphics look good on the PS4, and to do that, it was much easier to work on the PS4 version mainly and then change the planning and lower the spec to put it down on PS3. But that was very difficult. There were so many hurdles to overcome on that. It's very difficult to get something designed on the PS4 and crunching it down to work on the PS3. I think we better give up on this idea of multiplatform. (laughs)

FFW: You've released Star Ocean 2 on PS4 and Vita last year, so I wanted to know if there are plans to release that in the West as well.
Kobayashi: The producer of Star Ocean 2 is actually not me, so it's not my decision. But I think it's a great idea and it should come out worldwide. If you want, I can talk to him about it, but it's not my decision. But you don't need the Vita version over here, do you?
FFW: I think Square Enix thinks there are no PS Vita players in Europe, but I'm not really sure about that.
Kobayashi: If we can do both of them, that would be the best thing to do.
FFW: People are actually complaining Square Enix is not releasing their games on PS Vita in Europe.
Kobayashi: Really? I didn't know about that. I'll tell about that straight away.

FFW: Speaking about the Japanese market specifically, what do you think is the future of the Star Ocean series?
Kobayashi: At the very least, I want to stick for the numbered Star Ocean titles going forward on the current most popular hardware among consumers. There is nothing concrete down yet, but the development team has got a number of ideas drawn up already for how they want to do the next sequel in the Star Ocean series and where they are going to take the story. So I guess that's what I have to do now as my homework, to work out which one of those would be best, and work on getting that in production.

FFDream: Have you already planned a port on PC?
Kobayashi: Because it's such an action game, I'm thinking what the control scheme should be on the PC. What do you think the best way to control this on PC would be?
FFWorld: With a gamepad?
Kobayashi: I don't know. In Europe, is it popular to play PC games with a gamepad?
FFDream & FFWorld: Yes.
Kobayashi: It's interesting, because obviously if you have a gamepad, it's very possible to do it straight away. I'm just wondering, for those who don't have a gamepad, how do we let them control the game? That's what really stuck with us, it was a bit of a problem and that's why we delayed the PC version to later, to work out how to let people who haven't a gamepad play it. The development engine that tri-Ace used to build the game, which is called the ASKA engine, actually makes it very easy to port what we created to PC as well. If we can overcome the issue with the controls and work out clearly what we're supposed to do with that, then it won't be quick, but it will be easy for us to port the game to PC. As soon as that's worked out, we can go ahead with that quite easily.

DBZ: I would now like to ask a few questions on behalf of the Dragon Ball community. So, in your opinion, what should a Dragon Ball RPG game be like?
Kobayashi: For the graphics, as we talked about Naruto just now, I think it should have that kind of cel-shaded style. That would be required for Dragon Ball.

DBZ: Would you think it would be a good idea or not to produce that kind of game?
Kobayashi: I'm not from Bandai Namco, so it's very difficult for me to answer that kind of question on their IPs. (laughs) I know some producers at Bandai Namco so I can go and ask them to make an RPG if you want. Thinking about Dragon Ball, and the nature of the series, individual battles between the characters are very long, they take a while. But there aren't many different enemies, so I think it RPG isn't the best genre for that.

FFW: If you could make your dream project, what would it be?
Kobayashi: I would make Tales Versus Star Ocean. (laughs) It's interesting because a lot of the members of the Tales of Phantasia team split off and made tri-Ace, the guys who made Star Ocean 5, so they are very much "cousin teams", they have the same work experience. I did talk to them about that, the discussion took place quite a while back but they said no we can't do that.

FFW: Plus the music would be the same since Sakuraba is doing the music for both series.
Kobayashi: The guys who made Star Ocean 5 are the same who made the Tales series, they would very easily make a Tales game.

Kobayashi: But I wanted to know, since you're obviously Final Fantasy big fans, how much do love Final Fantasy? Like, what is your favorite FF?
FFW: It's such a big series, it's hard to pick just one.
DBZ: IX!
FFW: IX is a very good one. I like XII too.
FFD: VII, VIII, IX, VI...
Kobayashi: My favorite is X.
FFW: So would you make a sequel to FFX?
Kobayashi: There's already X-2. (laughs)
FFW: Make X-3, then! (laughs)
Kobayashi: My boss is actually Shinji Hashimoto, who's the head of the Final Fantasy series at the moment, so if I said I wanted to make a Final Fantasy, I could ask him to give it a go.
FFW: I'd also love Radiata Stories 2, someday.
Kobayashi: Radiata Stories is not that popular. Very few people say they liked it.
FFW: I did.
Kobayashi: I worked as a marketing producer for Radiata Stories, and I really wasn't convinced by the ending, I thought it didn't fit. I remember talking to our manga production department as well, because they were doing a manga at the same time, but obviously we didn't change the ending for the comics. I remember that quite fondly. (laughs)