Interview | How Ys X: Nordics Hopes To Renew The Beloved RPG Series

It wouldn't be amiss to call Ys one of the more beloved action RPG series in gaming, and one I personally hold in high regard. Ever since it first appeared in 1987, it's continued capturing the spirit of adventure through its red-haired protagonist, Adol Christin, and those adventures have slowly grown in ambition. But with over four decades of experience making games, Nihon Falcom hopes to make a fresh start.

Launching in just over a week, Ys X: Nordics is the 10th major entry and a landmark game for the long-running series - well, technically the 11th if you include distant prequel Ys: Origins and ignore the remakes. It's a solid game that introduces significant changes like oceanic exploration and a dual protagonist system, and my recent review considered it to be a “thrilling adventure that feels even better than its predecessors." 

What's notable about Ys X: Nordics is how it's a considerable departure from other modern entries in the long-running series, yet it still feels like a fitting evolution to what came before it. Alongside my review, I also had the chance to meet Nihon Falcom's president, Toshihiro Kondo, for an in-person interview Considering Ys has never shied away from its European influences, I queried what led the studio to Nordic culture specifically.

"Up until now, the northern part of the Ys’ world has actually never been shown. I wanted to take this opportunity to portray that, which would then allow us to go back there as necessary in future games," Kondo explains. I'm also told that during development, he was watching Netflix's Vikings.

Given his history with shipwrecks, I make the lighthearted suggestion that giving Adol his own ship feels like a brave choice, querying what led to them introducing a nautical setting with ocean exploration. Kondo informed me that while real-life Vikings were known for being seafaring people, the studio looked to RPGs from the past when developing this system. 

"One of the great joys of them was that when you got a ship, your area of exploration greatly increased. That was a lot of fun. People love to go out there and explore. Because the entire theme of Ys is adventuring and exploration, we wanted to give the players an opportunity to enjoy not only exploring, but also discovery as well. Adol is kind of known for having really bad luck when it comes to ships and ships sinking. However, that might not necessarily always be the case."

Though he wouldn't describe them as being direct inspirations, I'm told the development team looked to several other titles to see how other studios handled ship combat since Nihon Falcom had never done this before. This included playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Kingdom Hearts 3, the latter of which featured this in its Pirates of the Caribbean world. 

Being the 10th mainline entry in the series, Kondo describes Ys X as an "opportunity for renewal" and "a fresh start for everybody," and several steps were also taken to ensure it's newcomer-friendly. That's why this chronologically occurs after Adol's initial adventures in Ys I and II but before the next canonical story, Memories of Celceta. Kondo also explained that Nihon Falcom is putting greater emphasis on the Switch, believing Nintendo's console provides a great opportunity to bring new people on board.

Part of this renewal includes changing the old party system introduced in Ys Seven, which let you swap between multiple party members who deal different damage types. Ys X: Nordics replaces this with a dual protagonist system, only letting you play as Adol and Karja. This allowed the team to refresh gameplay and "see what they could do that they hadn't done" up until now.

"One thing we noticed specifically about the party system is that when you have six characters, we felt that players would focus on three that they really liked, maybe four or five, and ignore the others. So we thought that if that's going to be the case, perhaps we could pare this down. We could put all the time, energy, and resources that would normally be used for creating movesets for a party of six, and do that for two characters instead." 

There were concerns since the team had never taken this approach before, so Nihon Falcom wanted to make this narrative interesting for players. Kondo explained, "All of those resources that would have gone into creating a full party could be put into these two. Many character animations are more extravagant and beautiful than what came before."

With Ys' history going back nearly four decades, it's not surprising that Nihon Falcom would seek a fresh start and I'm encouraged by what Ys X: Nordics has achieved when it comes to getting new players into the series. The studio's ambitions are clear and the end result delivered yet another compelling entry. It'll likely be several years before we learn about Adol's next adventure, but you can guarantee I'll be jumping in all over again when that happens. 

The interview was translated on-site by Alan Costa, the NIS America EU Marketing and Sales Manager.