TGS 2017 4Gamer Kazutoki Kono Interview Summary

Ace Combat 7 appeared at TGS 2017! The coverage has slowly been rolling out in the Japanese gaming press, and now we have another interview between 4Gamer and brand producer Kazutoki Kono. This one is mostly about plot, which we figure may be something our audience is curious about.

• 4Gamer asks how it came to be that Osea constructed an orbital elevator in Erusean territory, leading to war. Kono replies that of course he can’t give away too much, but that many countries - including Erusea - expected that construction of the elevator would bring economic benefits. He says some countries did see these benefits, and implies Erusea did not. This is one of the factors in the war. According to Kono, this is a problem with parallels in the real world.
• 4Gamer suggests that the soot on the Princess’ face shows the war has taken a strange turn. Again, Kono naturally doesn’t want to give anything away, so he just points out that her role over time is being slowly revealed as the trailers reveal more and more of the plot, and coquettishly demurs from saying more.
• From there he just hits the same points he always does. It’s not a good versus evil story. Everyone’s got their own reasons for fighting, and this is what lies at the heart of the game. The princess is cute, but not merely cute. ＵＣＡＶｓ.
• 4Gamer brings up the "morality play" that was ACX2 and Kono very politely says “yeah nah that’s not where Katabuchi wants to go with this.”
• Kono gets on the subject of the traditional Ace Combat self-insert protagonist, and talks about how much of a challenge it is from a storytelling perspective to have a protagonist whose perspective nobody else knows. I’d imagine that this must be especially difficult in a game which is, as Kono says, about the different opinions and motivations of its characters.
• He goes on to talk about how, just as the protagonist in AC04 fit the archetype of a hero on a quest, and Blaze fit the archetype of a hero cast in shadow, so too would the protagonist in AC7 fill a “certain role.” He calls it “pretty shocking,” and that there’s gonna be “parts you won’t see coming.”
• 4Gamer asks whether the three stripes crossing out Trigger's unit on all the player's aircraft has anything to do with this role. To which Kono replies “Very astute! That's pretty much it.”
• Kono goes on to say how they struggle every time to come up with an easily recognizable icon for the player, and how they settled on the three stripes for this one. The fact that he’s seen people on twitter building kits and slashing out the unit affiliation in this way is another one of the little things that makes Kono a happy man.
• 4Gamer points out that Osea - the player character’s nation - is painted as a villain because of, for example, the line in the E3 trailer accusing them of harming civilians. Kono points out that the Gamescom trailer and the E3 trailer are of a pair. The E3 trailer paints Osea as “fighting for justice,” and the Gamescom trailer as Osea being the cause of the war. “Both lines of reasoning are correct,” he asserts.
• 4Gamer asks whether Kono can comment on the fictional plane with the white swept forward wings in the trailer. “Nope,” says Kono. Apparently someone put it into the trailer on their own, and Kono was like “Wait why is that in there?” But he gave the OK because “it might get people talking.” He justifies it as a sort of symbol of the new things you’ll come across as you progress in the story. “Game-y things are cool too,” he says.
• Kono confirms that the FSW aircraft is unmanned.
• Kono points out that while Mihay and the player stand opposed on one level, if you take a step back, you're both in the same category of pilots who stand in opposition to the imminent future of unmanned air vehicles. This, Kono says, is a departure from what 4Gamer casts as the traditional story structure of having the player and their opponents belonging to diametrically opposed camps. This is something Katabuchi and Kono hashed out together.
• He goes on to clarify that the fact Trigger is shown using a sci-fi laser weapon - and Erusea is not - does not play into the story’s system of contrasts - it’s just a coincidence. Laser weapons are one of the many things added to the game for variation, which also includes the clouds, UCAVs, countermeasures, and post stall maneuvers.
• 4Gamer points out that the Z.O.E. Falkens in ACX have “beam-saber like lasers,” which gets them onto a discussion about concessions you have to make to gameplay away from, say, how airborne lasers would actually work.
• 4Gamer wonders if the reason why the people in the trailers have a negative view of Osea is because they’re Erusean, but Kono says there are Oseans among them too. “Organizations aren’t monolithic,” Kono observes.
  
• “It’s not that deep, fam.” - Kono, almost word for word, replying to 4Gamer’s question about whether the scene where planes of different types form up together represents anything about the player’s situation. “It means you can change your plane.”
  
• You can't change your wingmen's planes.
  
• “People keep asking me about the tunnel. (laughs)"
  
• Kono says that tunnel segments in Ace Combat history have always had mixed reception. Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War split the difference,  but this time they're approaching the problem with "STRONG STYLE."
  "So it may or may not be just a tunnel.”
  He declines to say more.
  
• On the subject of the EASA and where AC3 stands in relation to the rest of the series, Kono says that the official answer is “Since Ace Combat 3 is part of the Ace Combat franchise, Ace Combat 7 contains various influences from it.”
  
• Masato Kanno (art director on AC7, staff on almost every AC game since the first) is apparently really into UGSF - a hypothetical crossover universe between a few Namco titles including AC3 - which is the source of a lot of the AC3 stuff in AC7. Kono largely gave him a free hand.
  
• 4Gamer suggests that the numerous spinoffs from the numbered games suggest that the franchise has a lot of flexibility, and Kono agrees. He says there's a lot of challenges working within Strangereal's worldbuilding, but that the basic mechanics have a lot of applications that he'd like to explore.
• Kono draws a fundamental distinction between the Ace Combat style of flight shooting game and VR experiences like Argyle Shift which happen to use the same technology. Mainly, you don’t have the same choices.
  
• There were many people who said that you couldn’t do that kind of flight shooting in VR at first, but since there were so many people talking about the idea of flying jets in VR, Kono thought “doing something about this is the Ace Combat team’s job.” He enjoyed the R&D.
  
• Kono reiterates that Campaign and VR modes are 100% discrete, and hits some familiar talking points.

That's about it, folks!

The game Kono paints in all his interviews seems very ambitious, both structurally and thematically. I'm very curious to see how his team will execute on all these ideas. It'd be nice if they put some fluff material on the official site, but at this point we may well simply be waiting until the game is out.

Of course if they do post anything, you'll hear about it from us. Feel free to hit us up in our Discord or the comments if you have any questions.