The following comes from a DualShockers interview with Producers Keisuke Kikuchi and Junzo Hosoi...
- the dev team wants as many people as possible to play their games, which is why they've brought two titles to Switch
- the proprietary engine used for Atlier Lydie and Nights of Azures 2 is compatible with Switch, which also helped
- in general, there were no big issues during the porting process
- the team aimed to keep features the same for all platforms
- the dev team is looking into the possibility of Switch-specific feature support for future titles
- the name Suelle actually reads as Soeur in Japan, and has a French origin
- while Soeur is easy to pronounce for a French speaker, it isn’t as intuitive for those coming from English-speaking countries
- this is why the team decided to change the game to Suelle in the western localization
- it's tradition for the Mysterious series of the Atelier franchise to have two character designers
- the Producer and Director go on Pixiv (a popular Japanese website for artists) and will look at various illustrators' work
- this selection is done on a title-by-title basis, and they go with the artist(s) who match the concept they want to convey
- the Atelier series is made of heartwarming, slice-of-life stories
- this means players aren’t necessarily interested in epic “grand finales,” but more in seeing how the characters end up
- the developers aimed for an ending that will let players who started with Atelier Sophie feel satisfied
- at times, players see something in a character that the developers themselves did not notice
- with the next installment, the devs might consider emphasizing it
- some characters may have aspects that the fans didn’t enjoy, so that might be adjusted to make them more likable
- what developers themselves like to create is also important
- how a character progresses from game to game is a combination of user feedback and developers’ creativity
- the devs also like to drop in elements of surprise, like Rorona becoming younger in Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland
- the devs look at feedback both from Japan and from the west and want to embrace the tastes of as many people as possible
- there are times in which feedback from the west and feedback from Japan are in conflict with each other
- when that happens, developers simply go with what feels right to them
- when Gust set out to create Night of Azure, it was supposed to be a one-off game
- the first game ended up being successful enough to warrant a sequel
- the devs picked up some aspects of the storyline of the first titles, and those have found their conclusion in Night of Azure 2
- Gust doesn’t know whether there could be a third title or not, but if it happened, it would probably be different from the first two
- the developers are already thinking about what could come next for the Atelier series
from GoNintendo
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