Back in 2007, Yukio Futatsugi did an interview with 1up for a PDS retrospective I’m sure we’ve all read. It’s here: 1up.com/features/panzer-drag … r.offset=4
What struck me is this section
[quote]YF: I want to create a Panzer without a dragon. [Laughs] You know, you’re not the person riding the dragon this time. You’re just a person, a nobody in the game, and you see a dragon flying in the distance, and you can’t even imagine riding such a thing. It might even appear to be an enemy.
1UP: So when does it get fun? [Laughs]
YF: I just want to create something that will make no money. You find bits and pieces of old planes and machines, and you rebuild it, and then you fly far away with it. You travel and find pieces of weapons and machines, and reassemble these things. So if someone came to me and said “Make a Panzer game that would make the original fans happy,” I’d make a shooter version of Azel. But if there was no lock on the concept, no preconceptions, I’d make the game I just described. You’re a little person in this town that’s about to collapse, you can’t ride the dragon. You just collect pieces from caves all over a mountain, and build a plane, fly somewhere else, create a gun or weapon, and just do stuff like that. I’d probably create a game like that.[/quote]
Doesn’t this strike you as presciently similar to the current state of games today, especially in the third party world? Minecraft, Starbound, Terraria, DayZ and Rust, etc etc etc - all about constructing an existence in a disinterested or uncaring world. Quite to the counter of the assertions above, that were made in a very different video game design climate, a game like this could stand to make a ton of money released today.
I’m just dreamstorming here, but wouldn’t a game like this set in the Panzer world make so much sense? Even at their best, games of this genre don’t come close to capturing that dirty, desolate yet not bleak, post-post-apocalyptic world that the Panzer games portray so beautifully? There are certain moments wandering around a Minecraft world that you might get this feeling of transcendental solitude, but without the sense of ancient history that the panzer games are built around.
It won’t happen, at least not with the Panzer license, but i think Yukio should take a look at gaming in the west, and give this another thought. After all he does finish the interview like this: