Akainu Was The Hardest One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 Character To Make

Siliconera caught up with Bandai Namco’s One Piece video game series producer Koji Nakajima to talk about One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. Some of the playable characters in the game are easy to make moves for since they have so much time on the screen, but what about the characters with only a little time in the limelight?

“For a character like Luffy, who has been a central part of the show until now, it’s easy to come up with their move sets. One character that comes to mind as having been particularly difficult, simply because his abilities weren’t displayed much on the show or in the manga, is Akainu. We didn’t really know how he was going to move, or even how he was going to unleash his skills. When we designed his move set though, we knew we had to give him the same touch as Luffy. We had to make the player feel good about using him when they play the game,” Nakajima said to Siliconera.

“So for that part, because we don’t have much to work with, we go with really small details. We’ll watch the show and see where he appears, observe how he moves, and make speculations based on how we think, say, his arm would move [after throwing a punch]. After chatting about it as a development team, we put together some rudimentary movements and animations. In cases where there doesn’t seem to be enough [data] in the show, we’ll look over the manga too and re-adjust those animations or make new ones to fit our discoveries. The player gets to see the character as much as we do, so we have a responsibility to bring that character to life for them, like we do with Luffy.”

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 will be available on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStaton Vita, and PC. It is slated for release on August 25 in North America, and August 28 in Europe.