Nintendo's putting most of its holiday hopes in 2015 on Star Fox Zero, a Wii U entry in a series based on a rather incongruous pairing: Fluffy animal pals engaging in high-stakes spacecraft dogfights.
As you might expect from a series with such a strange combination of inspirations, Star Fox has always been about collaboration. The first game in the series was co-developed with Argonaut, the creator of the British classic Starglider---in fact, it was a Starglider game until Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto stepped in to add furries. So it shouldn't be a surprise that for Star Fox Zero, Nintendo has teamed up with what is fast becoming one of its closest development partners in Japan, Platinum Games, to craft this version.
"This is the first time I've ever done this kind of collaborative design," says Platinum Games' Yusuke Hashimoto, who also directed the last Platinum-Nintendo game Bayonetta 2. "It's not just with Mr. Miyamoto, but also with Mr. Hayashi here," he says, gesturing to Nintendo's Yugo Hayashi, also in the E3 meeting room, also working on the game.
"The three of us are always working together and it's very fun," Hayashi says, "but obviously when Mr. Miyamoto shows you something and is like, what do you think of this, and you have to come up with a good answer, it's very nerve-wracking."
"I'm struck by how fast this goes," says Hashimoto. "The turnaround between the exchange of the two parties is very quick. It's a kind of development speed I haven't really seen before."
Nintendo's gaming impresario Shigeru Miyamoto sort-of unveiled Star Fox Zero at last year's E3---WIRED was among a small group of media that got to play Nintendo's prototype of the game, which was designed to show how the Wii U's GamePad controller, which has motion controls and its own touchscreen, could be used to create a unique game experience. You can see your Arwing flying craft on the TV screen, but if you look down at the GamePad, you see a first-person cockpit view. Shifting the GamePad around lets you aim your targeting reticle with pinpoint accuracy, without changing the direction your ship is traveling.
The levels are designed to gradually get you into this novel way of playing, the designers say. The E3 demo begins with a standard, linear level in which the Arwing automatically flies forward into the horizon. This then switches to "all-range" mode, in which you can fly in any direction in an enclosed space. It closes with what Platinum's Hashimoto calls a "dynamic, cinematic" boss battle---on the TV, you see the Arwing flying around a huge enemy aircraft from a side-on view, and to aim at the targets with any accuracy at all you've got to check out the first-person view on the GamePad.
"The ability to have both of these at the same time is a really good example of the kind of action we're going for," says Hashimoto.
"Throughout those sequences, you'll have different opportunities to get more use out of the GamePad," Hayashi says. "You'll be required to use it more, and that was kind of our goal---naturally, through the design of the level, you'll get used to the controls."
"We don't want to make it a simple game, by any means," says Hashimoto. "The challenge for us is, how to make a game that feels good and challenging to play for lots of different people?"
Star Fox Zero, like most games in the series, shouldn't be too difficult to complete; the challenge comes when you try to get higher scores on each level by shooting down more targets and finding all the secrets. "At first glance, [the demo] looks very much like a traditional Star Fox level," says Hayashi, "but if you're not looking around with the GamePad, if you want to shoot down all the enemies, you wouldn't be able to do it without utilizing the gyro controls."
As with most of Nintendo's games, Star Fox Zero will have cooperative multiplayer gameplay, in which one person controls the movement of the Arwing and the other aims and fires the shots. "We think it's a great mode for parents to play with their children, but basically for anyone who maybe has a friend who isn't that used to shooters," Hayashi says.
Star Fox has long struggled with the question of how to make land-based combat as appealing as the flight portions. For Star Fox Zero, the Arwing can transform into possibly the goofiest Star Fox vehicle yet, a "walker" that kind of looks like a mechanical chicken.
"It is not a chicken," says Hayashi. "More like a dinosaur. Talking with one of the Star Fox character designers, since all of the characters are animals, he thought it would be better to make this design also more like an animal. That's how we ended up like this."
"When you jump, it flutters its arms," Hayashi says. "That was all Miyamoto's idea."
