Straight from the Source – Takuya Aizu (CEO of Inti Creates, Gunvolt)

We had the opportunity to meet with Takuya Aizu, the CEO of Inti Creates and talked about the newly announced Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminescent Avenger EX and their other retro-inspired titles like Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and Mighty Gunvolt! The interview was conducted by PushDustin.

Big thanks to Zedi for help with the transcription!
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PushDustIn: Ok, so yesterday you announced a new entry in the Gunvolt series starring Copen. Can you tell us a little bit about that game?

Takuya Aizu: Yeah, so, for the game you’re speaking of, it’s full title is: Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminescent Avenger EX it features Copen, who is kind of like the anti-hero from the main Gunvolt series who made his playable debut in Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 and now with Luminescent Avengers, a spin-off title from the main numbered series, he takes the lead as the main character. It sets [itself] apart from the other games in terms of adding its own original gameplay elements and features and stuff like that which will be unique to this title.

PushDustIn: What kind of gameplay elements are planned to be added?

Takuya Aizu: So, unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to really dive in deep with how all these new features are going to come to be and what exactly they are. A lot of them of them are still being milled around in the directors head. So yesterday’s announcement, this was basically a “Hey! This game is coming and it’s in development!” and that was it. (laughs)

So going forward, that was kind of the first step in the whole process, going forward [with] the concepts that we’ve come up with, and the concepts we will continue to come up with kind of all fit together. The game begins to take shape [and] it’ll be “Oh ok. This is how we’re gonna do it, this is how it’s gonna go.” A lot of that has still yet to come. So I think in the coming months when these things get solidified, etched in stone, we’ll be able to give more concrete “This is the feature. This is the this. This is the that.” type of information going forward in the future.

PushDustIn: Where does the game take place in the story? In terms of; before 1, between 1 and 2 or after 2.

Takuya Aizu: Yeah, so that’s actually a very pivotal piece of information in terms of where the game’s going to go and the concepts of the game (laughs). So please look forward to that in future announcements, coming soon!

(Everyone laughs)

PushDustIn: Alright. So Gunvolt is in Blade Strangers by Nicalis. Can you tell us how that crossover happened?

Takuya Aizu: Nicalis first came to us back at Anime Expo 2017 last year and were like “Hey. We wanna put Gunvolt in this game. What do you think?”. We were like “Sounds great! Let’s do it!” So we gave them the OK to put him in the game and then once development for him really got underway, they would send over stuff because we wanted to make sure of stuff like, the way the character looks and his model was right and his abilities were used correctly and stuff like that, basically all the stuff related to the Gunvolt lore was correct. But in terms of how he would play in the fighting game, what kind of moves is he going to have? We pretty much left all of that up to the discretion of Nicalis and the developer Saizensen to figure out how they wanted him to appear as a fighting game character.

PushDustIn: Are there any plans to revisit the Mighty Gunvolt series or do anything else with Beck?

Takuya Aizu: I can’t confirm anything 100% for sure but what I can tell you is that the director, Kinshi Ikegami, very much loves the Beck character. He was the director for Mighty Gunvolt Burst and he was also the development director for the main Mighty No. 9 game. So he has a lot of love for Beck and I know for a fact he would love to make a Mighty Gunvolt Burst 2 or a follow-up game to Mighty Gunvolt Burst. But at Inti Creates, we have a lot of projects going on. So I’m not sure when he would be able to have the time for it…

But in terms of will this ever happen I think it’s definitely possible and I know he wants to do it. So we’ll see what happens.

PushDustIn: That’s awesome. Do you have any idea when Dragon Marked for Death will be releasing?

Takuya Aizu: So…. We can’t say anything right now.

(Everyone Laughs)

We are really trying to get it out as soon as we possibly can. But there are a couple things to remember with Dragon Marked for Death. When we announced this back at Pax West, last year, the game had actually been in development one way or another for about 8-9 years so this game has been in production for a very long time and. One of the great points about this game is that we have a lot of the Megaman Zero, big names from that staff, working on this game and – I guess you could say they’re very much perfectionists (Laughs).

They don’t want to let a lot of the small things slide, they want it to be the exact game they want so they’re always finding a lot of things to tweak and fix and change so that obviously adds development time to the cycle. It’s a constant battle between me saying “We gotta get this game out!” “But we wanna do this! We wanna do that!” so it’s always that constant back and forth (laughs). But we’re hoping that we’ll be able to get a release time frame sooner rather than later and we appreciate everyone’s patience with this game. We thank you for your patience and we are sorry that it’s taking as long as it is to get this game out, to get the fine details out. But it is being worked on very hard for sure.

PushDustIn: Also Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon” was announced yesterday. Can you talk a little bit about how that cooperation came to be?

Takuya Aizu: With Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, the fact that we were going to make this game was basically decided during the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night where the stretch goal for an 8 bit styled Bloodstained game was passed. Because you have Ritual of the Night as more of that Metroidvania or Igavania style of game, we didn’t want to make another Metroidvania style of game. We decided [that] this game would be a more [in a] classic style: Go through the stage, beat a boss, go to the next stage, beat a boss sort of classic style of progression throughout the game.

PushDustIn: OK, and how involved is Koji Igarashi with Curse of the Moon?

Takuya Aizu: Igarashi’s involvement with this one is as a producer. This is his IP so he is a part of it. With Curse of the Moon specifically, because this game is coming out before Ritual of the Night, as the scenario supervisor, he wanted to make sure all the world building, settings, story and characters all mesh together the way he needs them to and wants them to so they don’t cause issues with contrasting stuff with Ritual of the Night. So all the setting, story and characters are handled by Igarashi.

PushDustIn: Alright. So is there a particular franchise that you’d like to revive as an 8bit or Retro title after you finish all these other projects?

Takuya Aizu: I can always promise you since we’re Inti Creates, we’re very good at making side-scrolling 2D action games and we love the classics very much. I’m sure the folks would love to be a part of a classic Namco, classic Capcom, Konami and make something really cool with that.

PushDustIn: Great! Thanks a lot!

Takuya Aizu: Thank you very much!