IGN’s recently published Game Developers Conference interview with Kirby director Shinya Kumazaki wasn’t just focused on the subject of Kirby’s future. You see, there has also been some debate about the influence of Kirby and The Forgotten Land on the series as a whole.
IGN asked Kumazaki if they felt Kirby and the Forgotten Land was transformative for the series. Kamazaki responded, saying that “if we’re talking about what Breath of the Wild may have done for the Zelda series by being a revolution, revolutionizing the series, I think Kirby [and the] The Forgotten Land was in a way at a turning point. And I think you can consider it the first step in our ongoing challenge and now we’re creating 3D Kirby games”.
Kamazaki also advised caution. HAL Laboratory may have made this 3D Kirby game, but that doesn’t mean the future of the entire franchise will follow suit. He said that “it’s really about the kind of gameplay experience that we can give players and how best to optimally deliver that gameplay experience that really dictates how we express that in the game,” he says. “Only now we have this new genre of 3D as another method, another way, another form of providing that optimal gaming experience through the optimal Kirby gaming experience”.
Kamazaki clarified this later, explaining that while HAL Laboratory has been comfortable enough to make 3D games again in the past decade, the gameplay experience and what the core gameplay idea is is always the team’s first concern. Once this is determined, they make a decision as to whether it can best be expressed in 2D or 3D.
When HAL Laboratory was finally introduced to a 3D Kirby game, Kamazaki revealed that it was Kirby’s Blowout Blast, which was released on the 3DS eShop in 2016. He explained that “with titles like Air Ride, we had an environment to create 3D [game]…but we didn’t have that much creative skill and experience. And we wanted to really be able to experiment and see if it was something we could bring into the main series… We realized that the hurdle to make a 3D Kirby game was going to be high. And really with Kirby’s Blowout [Blast] is when I looked at some of the previous challenges that the series had, and really used the experience that people had, the teams had as we were developing for it. And we got to a point where we felt like we had the skills, we had the experience. And when we tested, it started to kind of come together and so we felt that we could provide a 3D Kirby experience that would be accessible to a lot of people.”
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