New Harada Interview
Aris ON Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 8:37AM 
Edge Magazine's web site has put up a very interesting interview with Katsuhiro Harada. Check out a quick exerpt below. For the entire article click HERE.
"You’ve remodelled the character models for Tag 2. How did you go about doing so without compromising their personalities?
You have no idea how difficult it was and still is! I’m still hesitant. In the West, photorealism is the standard and the latest games show how close [Western developers] are now to achieving it. Tekken is not about that. On the other hand, take a game like Street Fighter or Guilty Gear. Their charisma comes from the art style and their anime looking motions. But what is Tekken about? Well, this is a very tough question as there is no real answer. It's a mix of CG with a very Japanese way of designing characters. So changing the models, bringing them to the next stage, is a very difficult process and one that should not hurt the fans. We made new sets of shaders with the use of normal maps. The quality of the character models looks very improved, but I’m sure there will be people who won’t like our current approach. We’re still working on those models, so the final version may offer either a little more realism or a stronger anime touch. We can’t tell at this point."
Reader Comments (22)
Great interview!
Cel-shaded Tekken, let's go.
Reading that interview especially at the end makes me feel like the SC francise is getting a complete overhaul. I hope so. They gotta start from scratch and get things right again. Im so happy to be a Namco fan. Harada really cares about the community.
good questions thank goodness unlike that recent Daigo interview
I found it interesting about the part where he talks about 3rd Strike and how new players can't enter into the game because they have no chance against the pro's. Something he seems to avoid in Tekken and what he believes makes Tekken popular.
I think that goes against the majority of things the guests in the ATP podcasts have been saying. In TTT nobody could challenge JOP/Tom Hilfiger or Jang Iksu etc. I guess this complements Slip's article about the low crush hopkicks. Great find though.
Nice excuse for never changing what the models wear for 10 years
There is no need to change something that works well already. Quit your trolling. The way the characters look and act defines their unique personalities.
Wtf I don't understand why people are bitchin about characters not having their costumes changed; do these people realise that T6 has a customization feature? That's the whole point so that people can try to make their characters look like they want them to. As for the character models the facial structures have been changing constantly.
This was a great interview. I'm really looking forward to TTT2 and to the next SC game.
yeah this excerpt made me cringe
"Fighting games are very severe as half of the players will loose automatically. SFIII was almost bringing that to 80 per cent. It was seen as the best 2D fighting could offer but it was very much exclusive to a few. You pay 100 yen to play and loose. That became more and more apparent in the genre and the result was predictable. Tekken survived because it's a game that, in a way, is almost a parody of a fighting game. I was often criticized about that fact when we made Tekken 1 to 3; it was possible to win by just doing silly things on the controls. You could inflict massive damage with just one move, and people who were winning and were then defeated because the other player did such a move felt annoyed. You still find this in Tekken 6 when players were clearly leading the fight but lost because of rage. From a good player’s point of view, this is seen as a potential accident. From a more novice player’s point of view it leaves them the possibility to defeat good players. You may play 20 times and loose 19 but there is still a good chance you win at least once. "
^jom of you would think that because you play them at that level. You gotta look beyond your level of play...
Great interview, and fuck rage, seriously.
and shut the fuck up about their costumes. Thats what character customization is four and allows the characters to keep their default character and style. But if I wont be able to customise zafina in a skirt I will be pissed I admit. Fuck you, sand monkeys, and fuck your beliefs...
I really hope they start to aim for realistic rather than anime there is too much fucking anime....
I love how Harada is very up-front and honest about everything. Him giving his views on concepts really puts things in perspective as well. We're lucky to have a creator who as is liberal as him and very open. The whole SFIII thing was interesting about the pyramid with the large base by making the game 'simpler' so new players could come in and rage being in the game to give lesser players a chance. I think what needs to be said is this pyramid he's talking about that has this big ole wide base is great and everything, but it doesn't have a peak anymore. Its just the base with 2 or 3 levels. Nobody can reach the top because it doesn't exist. Its just a group of people chillin at level 3 or 4 or whatever.
Someone mentioned JOP and hilfiger being unbeatable in the previous Tekkens, and that was true, they were legendary good. But they were the only ones who really reached that level. Its not like there were a giant group of players who reached the peak and fired lightning bolts at whoever tried to climb the pyramid. It was just a couple people who could play at that level. Everyone below them was the same mesh of players we all see in our community now. Anakin, Crow, KOR, GM, FAB, bronson, Naps ect. will just continue to rotate winning tournies because the ultimate peak of the pyramid no longer exists to separate the Saiyans from the Super Saiyans. We'll never know who the best player in the country is because the engine doesn't go deep enough for someone to be THAT good. I think that hurts the hardcore players knowing so many people can reach the highest level, and the hardcore players are the ones that keep these games alive through the years.
yeah, tekkens has balls, but what tekken really needs is Dragon Balls
I thought DR's color swaps were for people who kept bitching about the costumes not changing, even when T4 changed almost everyone's costume.
Nice interview
"^jom of you would think that because you play them at that level. You gotta look beyond your level of play..."
this is the best
Harada just confirms what Rain had to say in his interview...
Rain is scrub!
No wonder he got his ass kicked by Mainstreetryu and Qudans
Lizanias : Which Tekken do you think is the most interesting. T6BR/T5DR/T4/TTT/T3/T2...wow that's a mouthful. So, which one is it?
Rain : First is T6BR, second is T4. I don't know many things about T2 and T3. TTT had bad balance, and hard to beat master for novice. T4 was really fun, but noone played it in Korea.
T5DR had good balance and fun, but still hard to beat master for novice.
T6 is like a lottery. In T6, sometimes novice beats master by lucky hopkick and magic 4. I love the fact. In my opinion, fun is come from unexpected and surprise things. Always master beat beginner, why we organizing tournament, just give the prize money to best player. :]
T6 and 4 are his favorites? What the fuck is wrong with him?
personally i'm glad they are changing up the character models. i dislike the character models after tekken tag, tekken 4 being the worst. its not anything against the anime flare of tekken cause i love me some anime, but the anatomy of the characters just always seems off. even though it has more of an anime look to understand what mean just compare Soul Calibur 4 to tekken, Rock vs Marduk... the best thing about tekken though is every character is unique so even if its just a silhouette you can tell them apart.