Thread by @necrosofty

Aaaah it's this!!

Origins of panzer dragoon series - director futatsugi had to make a shooting game because gale racer got greenlit first

He wanted to contrast with all the usual hard models (ships etc) from other 3D shooting games, so decided something organic would be better as a "vehicle." he chose a dragon because he likes them

At first there was no homing laser, and the game was originally more in the fantasy realm. Homing laser came to be because the original shooting mechanics were tough to aim with.

Futatsugi was inspired by games like star blade, that felt more like movies with a continuous story and cinematic presentation. He used in-game cutscenes and music that fit the fixed place of player progression

Here are some early panzer dragoon visual concepts by manabu kusunoki. They created entire cultures for this game. I've never seen these images before, they are super cool ;_;

Ancient age concepts. It was a key word that everything centered around. Even if it was a bizarre idea, if they could fit it into the idea of "ancient age" they would keep it

They used ceramic panels with metal joints, almost put together like a watch, as the cornerstone of the mechanical design.

Concepts for the empire. Ancient age plus future technology.

Apparently a lot of designs were inspired by katsuhiro otomo's Vega.

The dragons were ancient armored weapons, but other organisms no longer had armored plating and were weaker

They were able to dedicate more time to creating the world and concepts because the Saturn dev kits were three months behind schedule! Ultimately it worked in their favor because they were able to flesh the world out, and make the fake language used in the world.

TAKE DOWN THE PLAYSTATION
The goal was to create visuals that the playstation couldn't. Since the Saturn was the ultimate 2D system in a way, they had to showcase that, designing levels with huge scrolling 2D environments and clouds and water surfaces.

The team saw the ridge racer demo at playstation's launch, and thought what the heck are we going to do about this? "even to this day I have a lingering trauma about this any time someone mentions the original playstation. Those playstation classic controllers made me real mad."

Zwei and saga were made to build on the games shooting and world building elements separately. They split the teams into two, and the games were developed side by side.

For zwei, they wanted to give players varied playstyles, and push the game forward. They also wanted to let people spend more time with the game, and play it over and over without making it as difficult as the first game.

To accentuate the feeling of flight, they used the ground with the Saturn's scrolling layer - but they only had one to use, though they wanted to show players jumping and flying off the mountain. They switched the scrolling layer when you make a turn

(to then move to the flying stage)

Here's how panzer dragoon zwei's automatic difficulty adjustment system works. Adec stands for automatic difficulty enemy control system.

Some saga development documents! "if you were to ask me which game in my 25 years of game development gave me the most grief, saga is the answer."

Futatsugi says they just tried to do way too much, and it took too long. That design doc above was done about a year in, trying to explain to the rest of the group what they were trying to do.

At that time there were games that had rendered backgrounds and polygonal characters. But they wanted to make a fully 3D rpg. They wanted it to feel like you were playing a movie.

Rpg battles that played like shooters were a super difficult challenge. It was so different from a typical rpg that a whole year went by without anything good to show for the battle system. They passed the battle system to a new person, mukaiyama san, and it went better

He's the one who turned the dragon and it's shapes and weapons into your "party"

At first they wanted you to be able to go anywhere at any time, but they realized it was impossible at the time, so they went for small dungeons or gardens you could explore, with towns that had time of day changes.

Towns were divided into two different areas divided by a tunnel to hide loading! They also used a lock on system for items. The camera controls were also a brand new idea for the time.

They wanted to use motion capture, but optical motion capture was rare, so they used magnetic motion capture. Anything extra came up as noise, so they needed this grid to get a sense of where things were placed. That pile of boxes is the dragon!

Here he is riding the "dragon"

The development was delayed by a year, and the staff were so exhausted that there were a lot of conflicts. They had little management experience, with no ticketing system or solid pipeline. They only succeeded by burning their youth. Team was disbanded because of cost.

Turns out Sega's company theme song was called 若い力、or "youthful energy"
Ha ha

The end! I learned a bit about saga... I wish they talked about how they had multiple different sized models for each character

Apparently the game was heavily cut. So in the first game, in the last map you get to the end and wonder "where's the boss?" well, they had to cut it. They ran out of time, but there was supposed to be a boss, and then the last boss.

Some folks on the team came from the arcade side, so were aiming for 60fps. But the fun of the game overall took precedence and fps settled at 30-ish. But there's a cheat where you can see it at 60fps, in wizard mode in pandora's box.