We got to sit in on a presentation of Puppeteer at Gamescom last week by the game’s creative director Gavin Moore. It is a new title by Sony Japan Studios out on 11 September on the PlayStation 3 for €39.99. The presentation began by letting us see the original concept video of the game shown to Japanese management in order for the game to get the green light; it still looked like Puppeteer but with a stronger Japanese style. The video was hand animated by Gavin and one other animator in six weeks and Gavin proceeded to tell us more about the development:

Japan loved it but Europe and America needed to green light it as well and they thought it was too Japanese. They asked “can you make it more western?” but I was adamant I didn’t want to make it more western; I wanted to make this, my original vision. I sat down with the team and talked about stuff, fairy tales, in particular Grimm’s fairy tales and Japanese fairy tales and how we could mix those together. So we decided to come up with an art style and this eventually led to Puppeteer, how it looks today.
But unbeknownst to everybody the first act of Puppeteer is western; all set in the dark castle, all very western, that dark fairytale. The second act is all Japanese but marketing were never told that so we basically hid that from marketing for the whole production of the game and we only ever showed them act one. So when you play act one its all western and then it switches to Japanese and switches to lots of different stages, under the sea with a sushi chef and a giant octopus who is the rival sushi chef. Really mix up the cultures in the game and as it progresses you get more mixing up, so that’s the original concept.

Are you happy with the final result?

Yes I’m really proud of Puppeteer. To make a game that changes every five to ten minutes is really new and exciting and to actually survive the creation is quite a feat. I said to my team we can’t use anything that we’ve used before so basically they would make something, you would run past it in three seconds and that was it. They would spend a week making something and you would never see it again in the game. Everything is hand animated, we don’t use a physics engine or anything so everything is done in a kind of craftsman-like way

Is there any knowledge behind making it more European for the European market? I saw your presentation last year and I liked it but I really love this.

I think Europeans are much more open to this style, a more cultural background than the Americans are. I’m not saying all Americans but there are some Americans that will go ‘No, not touching it at all’. It’s a really difficult sell. I can understand if you’re a marketing person you want to sell the product so it’s really difficult to take something that’s difficult to sell in the first place and then try and sell it rather than something a bit more western looking to sell. But yes I love this too so hopefully the next one will be more Japanese.

Which idea did you come up with first, did you want to do a game about fairy tales or the puppet style and presenting it on a stage?

I wanted to do a game with a scissors, I don’t know why. The real idea came from my son, the fact that he put down the controller and walked out, went outside and started playing games with his friends rather than playing games with me. Which is good because he should be outside but is bad because I’m the creative director of Japan Studios so he should be in the dark playing games right? When he came back we talked and he said ‘I want a game that changes every five to ten minutes’, which is really difficult to do and I didn’t know how I could do it but I knew I wanted a game with scissors in it. I inherently had this thing in my head that instead of cutting with a knife or a sword but actually physically cutting with a scissors with that sound is really interesting as a gameplay mechanic so all I know is I wanted a game with scissors. That’s how it started really and something has to change every five to ten minutes and then this whole theatrical idea came along and using the theatre as a base gave us that ability to change the sets all the time which allowed us to give you exciting things all the time.

You mentioned the mix of European and Japanese style so how do you combine them, what is the progression from act one to act two?

We use motifs, the art style stays the same, everything has to look like it was built in the theatre, it has to be made as a set. So the physical way its designed is as the theatrical set but the actual motifs we are putting in for instance you start in a bamboo forest and end up going up a Japanese mountain through these red torii gates to fight this drumming torii boss so we’re just using motifs in there but the physical look stays more western in that sense but we use Japanese motifs. And what’s kind of bizarre is I would be putting in Japanese stuff and my staff would be putting in western stuff. I’ve lived there ten years I love Japanese culture, it’s interesting to me but they’ve lived there all their lives so it’s boring to them. Something from Germany, France or Italy is far more interesting to them than their own culture in that sense.

Will there be stages not on Earth but the moon and other places outside our planet?

Yes there is off the moon in outer space, chasing the monkey general through space and crashing into the sun so there is a load of variety in the game and that’s what we really wanted to put into the game, that variety. You as journalists are also gamers and I’m a gamer as well so it’s great when you’re playing a game and it suddenly changes on you. You clear a stage and it goes on to something new but in this game it changes every five to ten minutes so you never know what’s coming so you have to keep playing and its full of crazy stuff so you really want to.

A video showing the making of Puppeteer was then shown to us before Gavin summarised the plot.

Puppeteer is all set in this magical theatre, you don’t move through the world the world moves around you. In our story the poor boy’s soul has been stolen away by the evil Moon Bear King. He shoves your soul in a puppet, you anger the king and he rips off your head and eats it and absorbs your power and throws you away. Working in the kitchen is this crazy witch and she has this flying cat called Yin Yang and they’re using these puppet boys to try and steal the magic scissors. Whoever holds these magic scissors basically controls the moon. So she sends Yin Yang to find your headless body. He finds objects that he gives you to use as heads. These heads are your lives so basically if you get hit your head falls off. You get three seconds to pick it up which is the food rule right? So when you drop your toast on the floor you get three seconds to pick it up before your mum slaps you and tells you you can’t eat it.

There are a hundred heads to find in the game, you can only have three at once. Each one of these heads has a special ability so somewhere in the game it might help you unlock a bonus stage or defeat a boss, unhide hidden characters etc.
There are also four hero heads to find in the game and these once you’ve found them you never lose and these were the four heroes of the moon. When the moon bear king took over the moon they rose up against him. They were absolutely pathetic; he basically just swept them away, ripped off their heads and threw them across the moon.
But they each have an individual special power and you have to use those four special powers together with the scissors which you steal from the moon bear king to basically fight your way across the moon against his generals to eventually return to the dark castle and face the moon bear king to get your head back because without your head you’re not going home.

That’s exactly how I pitched the game to my Japanese bosses and they all just went…huh? And they just went go away and make it and we did that’s how it happened. There’s a lot of love in this game, it’s done by some incredibly talented Japanese game creators. It is an amazing little adventure that will just change on you all the time. There are lots of wonderful things to see and I think you’re going to be surprised with what we’ve crammed into the game. Its over twelve hours long, 3D as well, a secondary character can be controlled with the move controller so if you want to use move you can.

Will there be an invisible audience reacting to you as you play the game?

Yes, so if you play better the better reaction you’ll get. We recorded in London and hired out an audience. The composer was Patrick Doyle, world renowned composer of Brave and Harry Potter. He wrote seventy tracks for this alone so it’s full of wonderful music, it changes every scene.

The demo for Puppeteer is available now on the PSN.