[Interview] Toshihiro Kondo | The Legend of Kondo: Trails From White Witch to Daybreak II

“Trailing ahead.”

Thanks to a recent preview event in London, I had the chance to go hands-on with The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II and Ys X Nordics. I greatly enjoyed my time with both titles and it was a lot of fun getting to conduct my preview of each game, as part of our ongoing Game & Chat series, but there was even greater opportunity waiting for me.

Not only was I able to play two upcoming NIS America releases, but I was also able to meet Toshihiro Kondo himself, the President of Nihon Falcom and spend an hour with him and interpreter, Alan, to learn plenty about both Trails and Ys series of games.

With much discussed, it’s impossible to share the whole interview in just one written part, so please join us for Part 1, where we discuss the Trails series, starting with how The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch inspired Kondo so much that he ended up working for Nihon Falcom, to present day talking about The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II:

Toshihiro Kondo | The Legend of Kondo: Trails From White Witch to Daybreak II:

Miketendo64: Since we like to start every interview with a brief introduction, would you be so kind as to introduce yourself to our viewers and tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Nihon Falcom?

Toshihiro Kondo: I’m Toshihiro Kondo, I am the president of Nihon Falcom, which you know, is an executive role. I’m in charge of the company’s finances and overall direction but within that I am also originally a part of game development and I actually still take part in game development for example I work on as the producer of the Trust series as well as I am the writer and the director of the Ys series as well.

Miktendo64: Since becoming president of Nihon Falcom in 2007, you and your team have accomplished much in the last 14 years. Is there anything you have achieved in that time you consider one of your greatest achievements?

Toshihiro Kondo:Honestly speaking, in terms of going from title by title, each title that I have worked, that has been under my direction in the last fourteen years, I’m proud of, I can’t single out anything in particular.

But what I can say is that fourteen years ago, since becoming the President, the Japanese market was in a very difficult position, particularly in terms of PC games as we were a PC developer, so by becoming the president, I had a mission to transition the company from being predominately a PC developer to one that develops for consoles as well.

So you can say I am most proud of taking on that mission and being able to successfully navigate the company from a PC developer to a console developer.

Miketendo64: Having first started as a fan of The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch and creating the fan site, “The Saga of Tirasweel” in 1996, to joining Falcom in 1998, and becoming heavily involved in game development, your career makes for an inspiring tale. What was it about The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch inspired you so much?

Toshihiro Kondo: The thing about the White Witch is that it’s got such a detailed story. The game has an incredibly huge amount of text and normally speaking when you know a think has a huge amount of text, you think “I don’t want to do it.”

But the text was so well written, the characters were so well portrayed and the things that they said were so interesting that I couldn’t help but be enthralled by it.

The story follows the titular White Witch, and the characters are following in her footsteps, and searching after her. Following that adventure, and seeing where they go, until finally you reach the climax and the end of the story, and how it all resolves, it’s just so amazing to him. I thought, “Wow, an RPG story can be something like this.”

It was so inspirational, that it changed how I looked at RPGs, and that’s probably what caused me to want to actually join the company (Nihon Falcom), and why he decided to apply to them.

Trails series itself is actually, it’s directly because of the White Witch, that we were able to start and create, and then maintain and continue this series.

Miketendo64: And from one The Legend of Heroes game, we jump to another. With The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II releasing next year in the west, what can you tell us about this sequel in terms of gameplay and story?

Toshihiro Kondo: Talking about the story, obviously this takes place after the events of Trails from Daybreak 1, and Trails from Daybreak 1 is, in contrast to what came before in the Cold Steel series.

So the Cold Steel series of games focused on a place called the Erebonian Empire, whereas Trails Through Daybreak takes place in the Republic of Calvert.

And so that’s one of the big differences that you’ll see, and you’ll be able to see throughout the course of the Daybreak games just what kind of country this Republic of Calvert actually is, and this is what these games explore. So, well, what is this country of Calvert, you might ask?

Calvert is a very complex country, it’s got a very complex society, because not only do you have a different form of government, for example, in the Erebonian Empire it was obviously a class-based system of nobility, in the Liberl games you had a queen, and so you had this kingdom situation.

In contrast to that, the Republic of Calvert is very different, it’s got all these different groups that are kind of vying for control of different areas and different things, and within that you also have a huge immigrant population in this country as well, which creates a really complex society, and because it does have this kind of seedy underbelly to it, there is within it a character named Van Arkride, who’s the main character of this story, and he works in this underbelly, and it’s his job, he’s called a Spriggan. His job is to kind of solve these problems that other groups, maybe lawful groups, don’t necessarily take. So that, in a nutshell, is what the country of Calvert is, and who our main character is for these games.

Miketendo64: As previously stated Trails series is nearing its end, as the series is around 90% complete in terms of story. Having maintained a continuous story across multiple decades with many different characters, what are some of the hardest difficulties you faced when it came to maintaining lore?

Toshihiro Kondo: So there’s plenty of difficulty things about managing a story across multiple years, one being managing the story itself, making sure everything lines because the games have a continuous story.

Another other thing is maintaining staff morale because the staff has to work on this for so long, it’s very important as a leader to make sure the staff is fulfilled in their work. So making sure that the staff is adequately managed, that they keep that level of enthusiasm and love up for the stories that they’re working on.

And finally, because the series has been going on for so long, trends change within the gaming industry and within storytelling and things like that. So it’s important to know when to keep things more orthodox and more traditional within it, and when to incorporate new things and new elements that are popular at the time.

All these things are difficult things to manage over the course of a long-running series such as the Trails series.

Miketendo64: With the end of Trails in sight and Nihon Falcom already looking to the future with many other projects in the works, including new IPs, if you had to put a number on it, how many more Trails games do you think there will be before the final instalment comes knocking?

Toshihiro Kondo: Honestly, I can’t say how many games there will be. Part of the reason for that, is because in the past we said there will be “X” amount of games that we’ll do for whatever and we haven’t been able to keep to that. A great example will be the Cold Steel games, obviously they ended up as four games but originally they were meant to be two.

So I’m not going come here and say specifically the series will finish in “this amount of games.” What I will say now is we are in the Calvert arc of the series and so far we have Daybreak 1 and 2 and a game that just released in Japan called “The Legend of Heroes: Kai no Kiseki,“ which is also part of this arc. What I will say is that once this arc ends, the Calvert arc ends, we do want to make the next arc the final arc. I can’t say how many titles will be in this final arc, but we have talked amongst ourselves and said “this is it. The series will conclude in the next arc.

Miketendo64: Has there ever been an idea or a scenario that you wanted to do in a Trails game that you were unable to incorporate, but made work elsewhere?

Toshihiro Kondo: Originally, this was a game that was derived from the Cold Steel games. When we were making the Cold Steel games, there was what’s called field actions. We were trying to figure out the best way to use these field actions within the game. However, one issue that we encountered was that if we made them too detailed, it ended up losing the turn-based aspect that we were going for from a combat perspective.

So I said, no, in the midst of creating this, we could almost have this be its own game. Which suddenly turned into, actually, this totally could be its own game. So we decided to make Tokyo Xanadu eX+ do its own thing. However, when I approached the staff with this, they said, look, if we’re going to make another game, please let’s not do fantasy.

Let’s make it set in the modern world. So these two things came together. The fact that we have a system in place here which we could turn into its own thing. And this desire of the staff to want to make a game that was set in modern times. And so these came together to form what became Tokyo Xard.

Miketendo64: In your opinion, what are the main attributes that every Trails game needs in order to be a “Trails” game?

Toshihiro Kondo: This is actually originally derivative from the White Witch, which we were talking about earlier, but story is of the most importance. As times changed and graphics became better and better, at some point, the conversation had to be had. Do we decide to fight on the side of graphics and go for these absolutely gorgeous graphics?

There are various issues involved with that, many of them relating to money. It is not necessarily true that even if you make a great graphical looking game, it is going to be a good game. So, we thought carefully about what is an arena that we can fight in. We said that arena would be the story. As the game changes, the story is very strong. That is what keeps the player invested. That is what keeps the player wanting to play, having a great story.

For the Trails series in particular, the story is always at the forefront. The story needs to be wonderful, so that even if graphically it might not be at the top, the story is what is going to drive people to want to keep playing the game. Ys, which is obviously the other big Falcom series, is different. Honestly speaking, the gameplay comes first. The gameplay informs what they want to do with the story. But for Trails, the story comes first. For Trails, it is the most important thing. Every time they work on a new Trails title, they think carefully about how to make the story the best that it can be. That is what makes Trails what it is. It is that story.

For even more from our interview with Toshihiro Kondo, feel free to check out the full video above, or check out Part 2, which is available here and sees Toshihiro Kondo answering questions pertaining to Ys X: Nordics and the Ys series.

About The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II:

No longer threatened by the mafia organization Almata, the people of Calvard have returned to their peaceful lives. But one day, a shocking series of murders involving a mysterious crimson beast sets the wheels of fate in motion once again. Various factions spring into action – both those who abide by the law to uncover the truth and those looking to capitalize on any new developments wherever possible, no matter how sinister.

With chaos once again looming on the horizon, the spriggan Van Arkride receives an unexpected visitor, prompting his own investigation. Who is behind the murders, and what is their goal? The sands of time bring old and new faces together for this thrilling second installment in the Trails through Daybreak saga.