[General Discussion] Suikoden Club v7!

Originally Posted by Knighthawk

Yeah I actually think the Silent hero bit works alot better then it did in IV. In IV it just always seemed awkward that he never said anything, but with the Prince...its hardly noticible (except during cutscenes when you see your name in text and they skip over it).

Yeah, and I think the addition of Lyon also lessens the awkward effect of a silent hero. It actually seems to be her main purpose is to sort of act as an emotional translator when needed which is an excellent and creative way to do so while keeping with the Suikoden tradition.


Personally, I am really enjoying Suikoden V as well. It really does seem like Konomi took a step back and listened to the fans and critics of the last two games when making this one. I think the major appeal I found in Suikoden I&II was the great job it did in making the hero(you) feel like a celebrity in the game. NPCs always had a lot to say about your status, performance, and in game character with comments mostly directed at you rather than the common random things/people NPCs tend to talk about in other RPGs. Suikoden V brings this back in a very good way. I spend so much time in this game just walking around towns to see the kinds of things NPCs might comment on about the Hero.

Bring back the more Asian themed towns and using a lot of Asian instruments in the music is also something I'm appreciating as I always considered it a major part of Suikoden as well. I'm loving the personalities of the main players in this one as well. Queen Arshetat ended up having a totally different personality than what I was expecting by watching the intro.


There are technical problems with V though. The load times are a little excessive, but what is worse is the interface just feels very unresponsive to the point where it does take some of the enjoyment out of the game. The encounter rate, while not as bad as Suikoden IV it still way too high. The excessive load time into battle just makes this issue worse than it is.

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Spoiler:

When you meet Jeane after coming from Stormfist, Lyon telling the Prince not to look directly at her and Sialeeds saying "Even I can't compare...". That was great.

On that same scene:

Spoiler:

Interesting, I encountered a totally different scene as I went to visit Jeane. I don't remember Sialeeds making a comment, but I had Lym in my party and she made a huge stink about the deal. She said something about the lines of "her Mother having a name for people like her, a HUSSY!" then Lym orders Jeane to put on some cloths or else.

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I actually wasnt comparing, BUT i really wanted the menu SFX for suikoden 2 to be used on suikoden 5, its just more easy on the ears.

There are soundsets in the game like in Suikoden II, but I haven't reached the point where I can use them. Who knows, they might have a classic sound set that you can change it to later on.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Save for the lead art director, the core development staff for Suikoden IV is the Suikoden V staff. They made a lot switches to the Suikoden development team for V and many of the people who worked on IV were let go. But for arguments sake, the Suikoden IV and V production teams are the same staff.

So I would not worry. For the most part the team responsible for V should be making VI. I doubt they brought in the people from IV to work on it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well development for Suikoden IV and V were actually pretty far apart. We usually just don't get the localized versions until a year+ after the Japanese release. Suikoden V was localized VERY quickly. Actually, if I recall the dub recording for the English version started at the same time as the Japanese dub started and they were already in the process of translating the script before the game has even gone into the alpha phase of development.

Yeah and I wouldn't mind Norikazu Miura returning for VI. Life or Death and Determination -Tragic Battle have become two of my all time favorite battle tracks. There are quite a few other memorable tracks as well like Counteroffensive really sticks out in my mind. He did a really nice job capturing some of the Asian music style I loved about Suikoden I/II as well.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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I agree with the top notch assessments. It easily compares with the first two in the series. I'm just wondering where VI will come from since sales were not that good and the PS3 is gonna be one expensive gargantuan of a console.

Suikoden was in the top 2 when it was released in Japan selling over 200,000 and it has sold over 50,000 in the US. That's actually pretty good for a low profile game. And not all PS3 projects require millions of dollars to make(assuming this is what you mean by expensive.)

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Do you have a source for this? It's been mentioned repeatedly on the Suikosource and Suikox forums that they are two development teams for the Suikoden series - one made 4 and the other made 5.

Let me see if I can dig up the development list for Suikoden V again. But yes there were two Suikoden teams, the main Suikoden Team and the Suikogaiden team. Most of the Suikogaiden team was brought over to the main team after the mass exodus during the development of III. What was left of the main Suikoden and the Suikogaiden team was then officially merged to work on IV, and finally the team for IV was re-organized and some new people were brought in for V.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Generic Badass

That's just one guy; Yoshitaka Murayama. An exodus involves many people, which I've never heard before.

Also, he actually quit right when they were wrapping up Suikoden III.

Him and a bunch of the development team. And he quit when they were just finishing the primary development, but for the most part his work in his position would have normally been finished. Actual coding of the game had not started yet. So they brought in Tomonori Matsugawa, who was the producer of the Suikogaiden to oversee final completion of III.

Also by development team, I'm referring to programmers, artists and modelers. They lost a lot of these types during the late phase of III so the Suikogaiden was used to rebuild the Suikoden Team for IV, that's why people tend to think Suikoden IV was developed by 'the other Suikoden team.' And the team for V was built off the team of IV. They just brought in a new scenario writer (guy from Sky's of Arcadia) and the new art director. The two of them are still with the team so I imagine they will both be working on Suikoden VI.

As the result of all of the shuffling, there aren't two independent Suikoden Teams anymore so as I was saying, I don't think there is a "Suikoden IV" team to work on Suikoden VI at this point. For the most part it will be the same people that made Suikoden V unless they fired/hired people again. I hope that at least makes some sense.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Generic Badass

This doesn't factor in OZ, which was being developed at the same time as Suikoden IV.

Yeah it does. What was left of the Suikoden III team worked on OZ. None of those people are considered to be on the Suikoden team anymore and have not been reinstated to the team for IV or V.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Generic Badass

But you said the "remnants" of the III team were merged with the Suikogaiden team to make the IV team. Now you're saying that no one from the development of III is around, and that the current team is entirely new (made up of Suikogaiden's or whatever)? That doesn't make any sense.

It does if you understand the common game development process. Development teams can pretty much be broken into the creative staff and the software development staff and much of the time some or all of the creative staff will start a new project before the last one is complete. Here is the basic timeline of Suikoden since III:

Yoshitaka Murayama + some software development staff leaves ->
Tomonori Matsugawa + other software development staff moved in to oversee finish of Suikoden III project ->
Suikoden III released ->
Entire Suikogaiden creative (small) and development staff (large) merged with Suikoden III creative staff (large) and development staff (small) ->
Suikoden IV creative phase project starts ->
Suikoden IV development phase starts + staff size increased ->
Former Suikoden III creative staff leave Suikoden IV project and start OZ project (note this is normal, their work for the most part on the project was complete) Tomonori Matsugawa takes the lead of this project as well as continuing GSIV work->
New development staff established for OZ (maybe some from the Suikoden IV project, who knows)->
Suikoden IV Released ->
OZ Released ->
Suikoden IV staff hires new art director and scenario writer to replace loss of Suikoden III creative staff
Suikoden V starts development ->
Suikoden V released.


I have no idea where the OZ / Suikoden III staff currently is. Are some of them working on VI? Dunno, maybe. But anyway the entire point was a large amount of people that worked on IV also worked on V including the same lead producer which is important. It shows that even though IV seemed to have been a failed experiment, he showed us with V that he has a good understanding of what people loved about Yoshitaka Murayama's Suikoden I-III. I think it also shows that the fears of Suikoden VI "being developed by the Suikoden IV team" isn't anything to worry about at this point.

FELIPE NO