To this day I still don’t know what exactly was Manabu Kusunoki’s involvement in the PD games. I know he was responsible for the original dragon designs in PD1 but besides that, what else?
How much of what can be seen at Lagi’s site is of his own doing? Did he work in all the Saturn PDs ?
TWOTA, please share
PS: IS he still attached to Cry On, the new Mistwalker game? Is it a one game thing or can he actually be considered a Mistwalker employee? shivers
[quote=“Gehpnaet”]
PS: IS he still attached to Cry On, the new Mistwalker game? Is it a one game thing or can he actually be considered a Mistwalker employee? shivers[/quote]
To my best knowledge, he resides primarily at Artoon (development studio for Blue Dragon). Cavia (dev studio responsible for the Drakengard series) IS apparently still in charge of Cry On’s development, contrary to popular belief. Sakaguchi simply wanted a change in art style, and replaced the Drakengard series’ lead artist (whose name escapes me at the moment, unfortunately, as I love their work) with Artoon’s Manabu Kusunoki.
For the record, Mistwalker is actually a very small group of people residing in a very small building. They contract work out to various developers like Artoon and Feel Plus, whom they work with frequently and supervise over during the course of development, but companies like Artoon, Feel Plus, and Cavia are completely free to do non-Mistwalker projects as well. So as such, Manabu would be an employee of Artoon, not Mistwalker.
At least that’s what I’ve gathered over the past few months (specifically from a very long Mistwalker/Lost Odyssey-related GamaSutra interview; I’ll try to find it if anyone is interested).