This is part of a Siliconera interview...
Like Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, Soul Hackers is a first-person dungeon RPG. How would you say it's different from Strange Journey, for people that have played that game?
Rob: Since Soul Hackers is a spin-off of the main [Shin Megami Tensei] games, the developers had a bit more freedom to play around with the mechanics of the game, and it shows in the final product. Dungeon design philosophy in this game has a much more "open" feeling than previous SMT dungeon crawlers. Magnetite, a sort of "demon currency" that is found in the Devil Summoner games, has to be managed tightly in order for you to succeed. Instead of having demons level up with you, they'll gain loyalty, which powers up the demons attacks the higher it gets.
Loyalty is not gained in a linear fashion either, and there are many tricks that a clever player can use to raise it quickly that don't require grinding. Due to the fickle personalities of your demons, composing a well-tuned team in Soul Hackers becomes tricky but rewarding in the end since the abilities of your demons are so powerful and cost-effective. Of course, there are still staple SMT mechanics like demon fusion, but Soul Hackers is definitely going to provide a fresh experience for veterans of the series.
Aside from the source material, did you look to any other sources for inspiration on how to handle the tone of Soul Hackers in English?
Mike: Being a fan of the Big Cyberpunk Authors (Stephenson, Gibson, Dick, Sterling), it was easy to pick up on the more noir-ish influences in Soul Hackers' story. I wouldn't say we shoveled more in, but where the game tries to be technical, we were able to work in some *cough* actual knowledge of computers to make the techno-speak less amateurish.
Clayton: To be fair, the majority of what I'd call "tone" is set by the original story. The editors or the translators would really have to go off the rails to change the game's tone.
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