Amano and Sakaguchi Share Some Insight into Splatoon

In a recent interview Splatoon developers have shared a great deal of information about the game, Splatoon has come a long way from the orginal prototype, originally there was no jumping and all shooting was kept on a set level instead of being able to shoot up and down, there was just the ink mechanic and basic shooting, it certainly wasn't enough to impress Miyamoto-san in 2013. "I don't understand. What do you want to do?" he said when commenting on the prototype "There's no appeal to this game."

The devs persevered, and in January 2014 came up with a ton of the now core mechanics, making the game more recognizable as the ​Splatoon we have been shown, from actually hiding in the ink instead of being invisible in it, how the player moves faster by interacting with friendly ink and slower in enemy ink, the transformation between Squid and Human form and the dynamic multi dimensional combat.
 
Co-Director of the game Yusuke Amano said the reason he wanted to develop was ​Splatoon is that as a fan of shooters he found that when he invited friends to play with him they would get frustrated, he wanted to make a game more approachable for the genre. It fits well when looking at things like the Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Mario Soccer games etc, each bringing in bigger audiences to established genres that often cater just to the die hard fans. Aspects of this are already apparent, with respawn points that keep the player invulnerable to try and discourage the age old habit of camping.
 
Another aspect of shooters Amano plans to do away with, there will be no voice chat "This is coming from personal experience." Amano says "When I played online games, I didn't like the negativity I got and people telling me 'You're crap. Go away'. So we wanted to focus on the positive aspects of online gaming" Some players will inevitably use other methods to include voice comms in their matches but this is a feature that definitely will not be added to the core game.
 
Splatoon will have 15 single player challenges which will reward each of the 3 Amiibos with 5 rare pieces of gear, expect some cool looking 90s trainers!

With a lot of the team being in their thirties the 90s fashion nostalgia is a big inspiration for the outfits. These challenges aren't set yet but one such example will be clearing a stage within a set time limit.
 
The developers are still heavily in the talks of game mechanics, from recently spending over two hours trying to decide how long it should take for grenades to explode to arguing over which weapon is strongest and in which situation. There is still weapon balancing on-going too, trying for a level playing field, each weapon having different variations of sub/special weapons makes this trickier.  Hopefully we'll see more and more details start to appear, so far for example for online modes we only know about Turf War and Splat Zone modes but it's confirmed more are still yet to be revealed.
 
Senior producer at Nintendo Kaysuya Eguchi is a huge fan of the ​Splatoon IP, he says how he hopes to see the characters appear in other Nintendo properties also, they'd certainly fit in well behind the wheel of a Kart or Smash'ing up other characters. Hopefully we're seeing the birth of a significant new IP with ​Splatoon and something that will be developed like Nintendo's other big properties.
 
What do you think of Splatoon? Will you be picking it up? Will it be on your party playlist alongside Mario Kart and Smash Bros.?