Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: NemoTheCaptain

From 2D pictures to 3D cartoon rendering classics.

Twenty years ago, the legendary RPG "Fairy Music Legend" was launched on the NGC mainframe. Twenty years later, the official Chinese high-definition version of Xianle Legend is on sale on PS4, Switch and Xbox One. People set up Fujima Yasuke, composer Sakura Tingtong, screenwriter Shimajima Qiao. All kinds of talented people contributed to this classic with the painstaking efforts of their peak state 20 years ago.

As an innovative work of the Legend series from 2D pictures to 3D cartoon rendering, the Legend of Xianle points out the direction of future development. It is worth mentioning that many European and American players said that this is their first contact with the Japanese animation style of RPG, which moved them to this day.

Legend and Xinghai "Legend" series of the first work "Fantasy Legend" was born in Japan's Telenet game development team "Wolf Team" (Wolf Group). Programmer and screenwriter Wu Nian Yizhi not only wrote a plot outline for Fantasy Legend, but also specially wrote an audio program for the SFC host cassette to accommodate a complete song. The Wolf team was looking for a publisher with a demo and script outline. At first, they planned to give Fantasy Legend to Enix for release, but Enix was not interested in it. Eventually, Namco became the publisher of the book.

Shinichiro Okamoto, the producer of Namco, the father of Fantasy Legend, believes that the RPG competition in the later period of SFC is very fierce, and neither Namco nor Wolf Group is considered a RPG family. In order to attract players' attention, Fantasy Legend must work on its characters. Okamoto Jinichiro liked Fujima Kosuke's cartoon "arrest warrant" so much that he invited the person in charge of this work.

Fujima's cover "Fantasy Legend" was originally scheduled to be released at the end of 1994, but at a critical moment when the game was nearing completion, Okamoto asked it to be redone, postponed the release for a year, and put forward various requirements for details. Although five anti-Tian Yizhi is not happy about this, but the publisher Namco has the development funds and game rights, Wolf Group does not have much room for negotiation. In March 1995, Wuda Yoshiji led most of the members of the Wolf Group to leave Telenet of Japan to set up a new company, Tri-Ace, to develop another RPG "Ocean of Stars" for SFC, and the publisher was Enix. This has also become the historical origin of the two series of "Legend" and "Ocean of Stars" with similar styles but competing with each other.

Rongji Kikuchi, the director of Fantasy Legend, stayed in the Wolf Group, and Namco sent more developers to modify the work in a year. The variety of miscellaneous soldiers in the game has been increased, and the combat experience has become richer. The character of some characters has also changed, the heroine Mintel has changed from a weak crybaby to a calm warrior, and finally Boss Daos has changed from a pure villain to a great hero who is difficult to distinguish between good and evil, so the plot of the game becomes more complicated and heavy.

In the battle picture of the SFC version of "Fantasy Legend," Okamoto believes that these changes reflect the characteristics of the "Legend" series: the plot is heavy but the characters are lovely; try to avoid an absolute dividing line between good and evil in the story, both the enemy and us have their own ideas, and the battle between the two sides is more a struggle between ideas than a struggle between good and evil. These designs may no longer be distinctive today, but they were not common in 1995.

The SFC version of Fantasy Legend went on sale in Japan on December 15, 1995, and sold only 210000 copies. The SFC version of "Warriors against Dragons 6" sold 2 million sets six days ago, which had a significant impact on the film. However, despite the failure of cassette sales, Japanese game magazines and readers still praised Fantasy Legend, and sales of strategy books were higher than expected. With the support of core players, Namco believes the Legend series can continue. In Okamoto's view, even if he is allowed to choose again, he will still let the work back to the furnace for a year, establishing the characteristics of the series is far more important than temporary sales, and a series without features cannot continue.

Tri-Ace 's "Ocean of Stars" was first released on July 19, 1996, with sales of 240000. At this time, there is no other RPG impact, but the late SFC host itself caused a certain drag. The first round of the two series ended in a draw, with both sides building up strength to welcome the second round on the PS mainframe.

It is worth mentioning that Sakura Tingtong, the composer of Fantasy Legend, became a freelance musician and joined the soundtrack of "Ocean of Stars" before the game was released, and he has been involved in two series of sequels since then. The propagandists of Fantasy Legend, Jijixin and Sakuratsu and Okamoto, both graduated from Meiji University. They were alumni of the same grade. They once played together at the university music festival and thought they would go their separate ways after graduation. as a result, because the Legend series has been working partners for many years, it can be said that fate played a trick on them.

SFC version of the first version of "Ocean of the Stars"

Ji Jixin later became the producer of the Legend series. Namco originally planned to develop Fantasy Legend 2, but in 1996, Fujima Kosuke was so busy with the Cherry Blossom War that Namco had to find another artist. At that time, Okamoto Jinichiro went to the bookstore to buy 50 collections of paintings as a reference, and the art team took a fancy to Hogu at a glance. After the change of human setting, the world outlook has also changed, and the new work is named "the Legend of Destiny".

Fantasy Legend shocked SFC players with a theme song, while Destiny went a step further by animating the opening of the theme song. Animation company Production I.G has previously worked with Pig stocks in the theatrical version of the animation "the mainland of Wind," and Namco chose the company to preserve the charm of Pig stocks. Originally, Production I.G had too many projects to spare, and the cooperation between the two sides was about to fail, but then the release date of "fatalistic Legend" was postponed, freeing up the time limit for the cooperation instead.

On December 23, 1997, the PS version of "Destiny" went on sale in Japan and eventually sold 900000 units, with mixed reviews from players. The excellent voice lineup of this work is very luxurious, but there is not much voice in a CD, which drags down the performance effect of the plot. Compared with the SFC version of Fantasy Legend, the progress of the picture and combat system is limited, and the standard obviously lags behind the times. A series of problems caused the PS version of the Legend of Destiny to become a chicken rib-the music, character and plot are good, but the pictures and battles are very old.

The picture of the PS version of "Destiny Legend" lags behind the times. Tri-Ace released "Ocean of the Stars 2" on July 30, 1998, even without the help of well-known painters, vocalists, singers and animation companies. It still achieved a success of 720,000-day sales, demonstrating Tri-Ace 's deep fighting system.

Namco then launched the PS version of Fantasy Legend on December 23, 1998. In addition to adding opening animation and hidden elements, this is also the first time that the Legend series introduced a full manual operation mode, which significantly improved the combat experience. The sales of PS version 770000 also made up for the lack of popularity of the SFC version.

The Eternal Legend, released on November 30, 2000, is the end of the series dedicated to PS. 3 CD included a large number of dubbing, luxury sound excellent lineup is no longer reduced to decoration. The 2D screen of the game has reached the limit level of PS, and the combat moves have become more abundant, becoming an eternal classic.

Ji Jixin was only responsible for publicity in Fantasy Legend, and was later involved in the communication and dubbing guidance of the people in Destiny Legend and Eternal Legend-these are already the work of producers, so Namco promoted Ji Jixin to producer after the release of Eternal Legend. At this time, Wolf Group carried out a new round of enrollment expansion, introducing a rotation mechanism developed by two new works at the same time. The PS2 version of "Legend of Destiny 2" and the NGC version of "Fairy Legends" were established at the end of 2000.

"Eternal Legend" has become an eternal classic sequel and prequel about the attitude of the "Legend" series towards the sequel. Takashi Hasegawa, the main planner of "Eternal Legend" and "Fairy Legend", gives a detailed explanation. Most of the works in the series aim at the complete plot, and many of the unexplained parts are deliberately left blank, and players can fill in the follow-up with their own imagination.

For example, the plot and worldview of Eternal Legend are so complete that there is no need for a sequel. Accordingly, there are still a large number of gaps in the world outlook of "Destiny Legend", which has exceeded the imagination of the players, so the plot of "Destiny Legend 2" involves time travel, which is both a sequel and a prequel, which makes a good supplement to the previous work.

At the beginning of the project, the Legend of Xianle is a new work with a world outlook that has nothing to do with other series of works. the story has the rich personal style of the screenwriter Shijima. Shimi Shimashima's father is a lover of both animation and literature. under the influence of her father, she became the first batch of Japanese animated audience of Mobile Warrior Gao Da, and she also read all kinds of literary classics. Shimi Shimashima has always wanted to be a novel writer since she was a child. in competitive Japan, it is not easy to succeed in the literary world. One of her predecessors recommended her to work as a magazine editor as a springboard to accumulate qualifications.

Takashi Hasegawa, the chief planner of the Legend of Fairy Music

Shimi Island, the screenwriter of the Legend of Fairy Music, was originally responsible for setting the chronology for Mobile Warrior Gao Da in the magazine, an experience that taught her how to use the background timeline to add historical weight to fictional stories. In her spare time, Shimi Island coincidentally wants a set of MD host optical drive peripherals Mega CD,5 ten thousand yen high price makes her prohibitive. At this point, a frequent visitor to the magazine gave her a set of Mega CD and invited her to test Luna: eternal Blue, a new RPG book that has not yet been released.

The CD she got was only used to test the initial process, and the upgrade speed of the protagonist was very slow, but she managed to beat the final Boss and clear the customs. When Chong Ma Jing, the screenwriter of Luna: the Blue of Eternity, heard about this, he had a good talk with Shimi Island, and the two became friends.

Before the release of the 1995 SFC version of Fantasy Legend, Shimajima happened to see the game on display at a Tokyo exhibition, and she felt as if there was a wonderful relationship between the game and herself. On the day of the release of the SFC version of Fantasy Legend, Shimi Island happened to buy a cassette and was shocked after playing it.

At the end of 2000, Zhong Ma Jing learned that the wolf group was developing two games at the same time, so he recommended Shimi Island to the wolf group. Shimi Island believes that there is a big difference in form between a novel and a game screenplay. She has never worked as a game screenwriter before and lacks confidence. Chong Ma Jing told her not to worry and that she would tutor the newcomers. However, after that, Chong Ma Jing was so busy writing the script of Destiny 2 that he forgot all about the tutoring, and Shijima could only explore the skills needed by the game screenwriter on his own.

"Destiny Legend 2" is the first official Chinese game in the series, Hasegawa Hasegawa, whose title is "Fairy Music Legend". He hopes that the game will provide a symphonic experience, which will include the largest main actor in the series and the freest process. the fates of the characters are intertwined like symphonies. After listening to the request, Shimi Island skillfully wrote an outline of the script in only two months: when the vitality of the world fell into recession, it was necessary to sacrifice the angelic son of God to heaven in order to revive the world. This superficial process is just camouflage. In fact, there are two worlds that take turns to absorb each other's vitality like an hourglass. Different characters have different views on the status quo, and their communication brings together a group of wonderful stories.

Legends of Fairy Music originally adopted an original worldview. Later, Namco considered that SFC and NGC were both hosts of Nintendo. In order to evoke memories of old players, the world outlook of legends of Fairy Music should be consistent with Fantasy Legend, so it was positioned 4,000 years ago as Fantasy Legend. This is a difficult task, but after careful consideration, Shijima achieved the goal by making only a few changes to the plot.

Taking into account the world outlook, the Legend of Fairy Music invited back Kosuke Fujima as a human being. But this is the "Legend" series for the first time 3D, Fujima is also inexperienced in this respect, designed a lot of mainframe performance is difficult to restore the shape, the two sides can only communicate repeatedly.

Take the hero Lloyd as an example. Namco wants Fujima to draw a "warm-blooded teenager". Fujima's original sketch is a teenager in a cloak, glasses and side-parted hair. Namco said that the cloak affects the range of motion of the arm in 3D, while glasses and side parting heads lack the smell of warm blood. Fujima believes that this is not his own fault, because there is no "no glasses" in Namco's initial requirement-in the end, Lloyd's short hair is exactly the same as that of the hero of "Cherry Blossom Wars". Coupled with the fact that this film's popularity system is similar to "Cherry Blossom Wars", players naturally call Lloyd "Brown-haired Goddess Ichiro".

Lloyd's original people set up sketches because the previous "Legend" series were all 2D, and the Legend of Fairy Music retained the 2D feel as much as possible after 3D. The black tick edge effect of cartoon rendering is similar to that of cartoons, and the town scene continues the tradition of unrotatable viewing angle, which is also considered for reading time. The Legend of Xianle keeps the data of the characters of the four teams involved in the battle in memory, which shortens the reading time for entering the battle, leaving less memory for the town scene, and most of the building models are incomplete, only facing one side of the camera. if you turn the perspective to the other side, the damaged model will be exposed.

The protagonist can not move freely in battle, but can only move in a two-point and one-line way after locking the enemy, which takes care of the old 2D players, but also brings inconvenience to the position. Legend of Xianle tried to let the protagonist move freely in the later stage of development, but the enemy's AI did not make any adjustment, so the enemy could not attack the protagonist and had to give up.

Although Shimi Island skillfully said that she lacks experience in writing game scripts, as a RPG player, she can still sum up a lot of essentials: most plot conversations should be controlled within 8 minutes as much as possible, otherwise players will feel procrastinating. When writing a dialogue, you need to imagine the character's actions and dubbing to estimate the time. Script outline, the early plot should be intensive, to avoid players have a sense of boredom, the later protagonist level is higher, players have more interest to study the battle, the plot rhythm can be slowed down.

The length of the plot dialogue of the Legend of Fairy Music has been controlled. in the early years, the outline of the script written by Tian Yizhi for the Legend of Fantasy was imitated from Nordic mythology, with a large number of details ambiguous in addition to time travel. The Legend of Xianle has completed these unexplained details and really perfected the world outlook. Put together the big maps of the two worlds in the Legend of Fairy Music, and you can see the big map of Fantasy Legend, which makes the old players amazed.

Shirajima's original inspiration for this script comes from the human sacrifice in ancient history-even if the person being sacrificed is willing, does this sacrifice really have practical significance? Taking these thoughts as the starting point, she deconstructed the ancient history and created the world outlook of "Fairy Music Legend" with the thinking of gamification.

Producer Ji Jixin once wondered why so many people died in the plot of this film. Shijima skillfully responded that most of the dead characters were supporting roles. If you only look at the main character group, this work can barely be regarded as a happy ending. In fact, as a full-age game, the Legend of Xianle is very restrained from the dark plot, but this fresh painting style coupled with the dark plot gives players a different sense of cruelty.

The main character of the Legend of Fairy Music is the magical swordsman Zelos, the only character who is likely to die in the nine-person main regiment of the Legend of Fairy Music. Kratos, the first magical swordsman in the team, will leave the team in the middle of the game, a profession made up by Zelos. If the player returns Kratos at a later stage, Zelos will enter the plot branch that leaves the team and dies. Previous "legends" series also have characters who die after leaving the team, but these characters do not choose one of the two branches. The design of "Fairy Music Legend" is the result of discussion among several developers.

Shimi Island coincidentally set Zelos as the character who died in the main plot in the original script. Zelos can only enter the survival branch only if he is ranked first, and the second place will only delay his death. A lower ranking will lead to a faster death. Hasegawa believes that this kind of design is inappropriate, so he changes Zelos's survival into the main plot, and death is the branch.

The fighting team of "Xianle Legend" is a four-man system, and Shu Hasegawa thought that the main horn regiment had better be maintained at the number of eight, so that Zelos and Kratos could not coexist. In retrospect, Hasegawa believes that this inexplicable obsessive-compulsive thinking is meaningless. The bigger the main actor, the better. If he chooses it again, he wants Zelos and Kratos to co-exist in different professions.

Hasegawa, a four-man combat team, joins the popularity system for the Legend of Fairy Music in order to provide players with more choices. Nominally, the female No.1 is the son of God Colette, but players can enhance the preferences of other characters according to their own preferences, both men and women. Because the good feeling is related to the plot of the regional line, you can't see the whole plot only once. Hasegawa's original intention is not to encourage players to go through customs many times, he hopes that players will follow the flow of their choice without looking at the playbook, even if they miss some feeder lines, so that everyone's experience is different and players will have more fun when communicating with each other.

However, the high degree of freedom and the changing team have brought a lot of trouble to the game development. in addition to the Magic Swordsman's choice of 2 to 1, the time for ninja Fujimin to join the team is not fixed, and the process order of many mazes can be freely selected. coupled with the goodwill system of 8 characters, the state data of this work has become a mess. The characters that should not appear in the animations of the whole team often appear, and this kind of Bug becomes a nightmare in the late testing phase of the game, and the development team vows to give up the good feeling system in the next move. Hasegawa believes that it is the team's lack of experience that designed such a complex system, that experienced developers will back down in the face of difficulties, and that holding on to the final "Fairy Music Legend" has become a unique work in the series.

Legend of Fairy Music, a heavenly paradise in the starry sky, was first announced on May 8, 2002. At that time, Namco only said that there was a connection between this work and the plot of "Fantasy Legend." the game is scheduled to be released in 2003, and the adaptation of animation and other peripheral products are also in preparation. After nearly a year, the Legend of Fairy Music did not update the details, and Namco focused its promotion on the release of Destiny 2, which was released on November 28, 2002.

Tri-Ace originally planned to release "Ocean of Stars 3" and "Legend of Destiny 2" on the same day. In the trial area of the Tokyo Game Show in September 2002, 3D "Ocean of Stars 3" was significantly more popular than "Legend 2" in 2D form. However, after the Tokyo Game Show, Tri-Ace suddenly announced that "Ocean of Stars 3" had been postponed to early 2003 because of Bug problems, and a head-on showdown became an one-man show of Namco.

After a delay, the release of Ocean of Stars 3 in early 2003 was still full of Bug, and it was not completed until the edited version of Ocean of Stars 3: director in early 2004. Tri-Ace 's two launches are nearing the two versions of final Fantasy 10-2, which has hit sales. Bug aside, Star Ocean 3, which strives for innovation and change, is indeed more sincere than Destiny 2. 3D is the trend of the times. How should Namco take it in the future? In the player's doubt, "Xianle Legend" once again surfaced.

The enterprising "Ocean of the Stars 3" on April 1, 2003, Namco released details of the role and worldview of the Legend of Fairy Music, and the Wolf Group was reorganized into "Namco Legend Studio" (Namco Tales Studio) on this day. The subsidiary was initially 60 per cent owned by Namco and 40 per cent by Japan's Telenet, and then Namco bought the rest of Japan's Telenet when it formally merged with Bandai in 2006, providing a stable environment for the Legend series over the next few years.

The opening song of the NGC version of "Fairy Music Legend" is sung and written by Kanda Meiyuan. According to a series of conventions, Namco shows the outline of the script to the singer. Kanda Meiyuan thinks that the plot of this film is both dark, cruel, fresh and straightforward, and the opening song should also reflect the subtle feeling of seemingly contradictory but integrated. At that time, one of her friends was caught up in a long-distance relationship. Referring to this friend's state of mind, Meiyuan Kanda wrote lyrics for the opening song "Starry Heavens" and became a classic.

Production I.G, who is in charge of animation, was busy with two games, "Legend of Destiny 2" and "Cherry Blossom Battle: hot Blood". The animation of "Legend of Fairy Music" did not start until the end of 2002, and time was running out. At that time, the opening song had not yet been finalized, and animators could only imagine the rhythm of the opening animation. Namco said that the disc capacity of NGC is much smaller than that of PS2, and the length of the entire animation will not exceed 10 minutes. As a result, such a short animation has kept 70 producers busy for half a year, which is evident in Production I.G 's pursuit of quality.

The opening animation produced by Production I.G.

Fujima Kosuke painted the NGC Japanese version of the game cover NGC Japanese version of "Fairy Music Legend" on August 29, 2003, with sales of 300000, falling short of the target of 500000. Namco later launched the PS2 version of "Fairy Music Legend" in Japan. Because the PS2 version is not sold in Europe and the United States, Nintendo is still vigorously promoting the NGC version in Europe and the United States, which has played a significant role in promoting sales. The American version of NGC is on sale on July 13, 2004, and the European version is November 19, 2004.

Only PS's fatalistic Legend and Eternal Legend have released American versions of the previous Legend series, which have sold a combined $400000 in the United States. The Legend of Xianle is the first European version of the series. Sales of the NGC American version were 600000 and those of the NGC European version were 250000, which is commendable considering that sales of NGC consoles have hit rock bottom.

With the help of Nintendo, the Legend of Fairy Music has become the first work in the series to be a great success in Europe and the United States. many players in Europe and the United States have said that it is their first contact with the Japanese animation style RPG, which is touched by their memory to this day. If the European and American markets had not been opened, the "Legend" series would not have come all the way to today.

The NGC version of the Legend of Xianle has fewer moves and costumes, but many players think the NGC version is the best version. Because it is the only one that provides 60 frames of fluency, the other versions are 30 frames. In the NGC version of the Snow Night plot, players can reject the top three characters and go directly into the Kratos branch plot, which is also a convenience that other versions do not have.

The main problem with the NGC version is the depth of field effect, where all areas except the center of the screen are shrouded in a poor layer of blurred special effects, affecting clarity. The problem was not obvious on small-size televisions 20 years ago, but it has become dazzling on today's large-size televisions or high-definition monitors, but players can remove blurred effects by modifying memory data.

While developing the PS2 version of the Legend of Fairy Music, Namco is also working on the next 3D novel in the series, the Legend of the Abyss. After summing up the experience of "Xianle Legend", the more mature "abyss Legend" will bring new emotion to the players.

(to be continued)

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