Project Sakura Wars Devs Reflect On What’s Changed Throughout Development

The latest issue of Famitsu has an interview with the developers of Project Sakura Wars, who discussed just how the project has changed since its conception, and more. [Thanks, Ryokutya2089!]

Check out the highlights below:

• According to main scenario writer Ishii Jirou, he received the offer in 2016 at a cafe, and was shocked they were discussing something so secretive at somewhere so public.

• Even after the game proposal was passed, the first draft of the story was scrapped, and the idea for the Great Combat Revue War was formed in November 2016.

• Sumire and Yasha’s character settings were changed quite a bit from what they were originally after voice direction work with the voice actresses.

• The Combat Revues we see in this game made it into the finals out of the preliminaries, with most of them happening off-screen. There are tons of Combat Revues outside of the ones shown in-game, just that they lost then. The only reason why the Imperial Combat Revue got to the late stage of the competition so easily was because they were the hosts.

• The plan for the anime was proposed in 2016, although production started much later. By late 2018, it was looking like the anime might wrap up production before the game, and so they were panicking.

• Jirou has lots of ideas on where the story could go from after this game, detailing this Imperial Combat Revue and their relation to the world. With the “base” complete, the team want to see what they can do from here.

• Originally, you were meant to be able to see the characters’ faces inside the cockpit, but it ended up being technically unfeasible.

• Sakura’s 3D model had the most changes made, and getting Sakura’s hair and kimono to animate properly put a lot of stress on the hardware.

Project Sakura Wars releases for PlayStation 4 in Japan on December 12, 2019. It releases in North America and Europe in Spring 2020. Check out info on Season Pass and DLC in our previous report, and a trailer for the anime here.