Panzer Dragoon - Development

Development

The game was created as Sega was getting ready to release its Saturn console. At the time, the Saturn lacked third-party games, and had to internally develop games in every genre, including shoot 'em up. The project that was to become Panzer Dragoon was given in early 1994 to a team assembled for the occasion, Team Andromeda, lead by Yukio Futatsugi and Manabu Kusunoki, who were then named respectively creative director and art designer on the project. The project was designed as arcade-style from the start, as core members of the team like Kusunoki came from Sega's arcade department, and they wanted to create a fully 3D arcade game (since games they had previously worked on like Outrun were only 3D games with 2D sprites). With influences like Space Harrier, Starblade, Star Fox, and RayForce, the project became a 3D rail shooter. Usually, in 3D shooters, the player rides a 3D object like a jet fighter or a tank. Futatsugi and Kusunoki decided it would be more original for the player to ride an armored dragon, a living creature which would also allow for richer animations. The game's name originates from its original concept, referred to as "armored dragon" (kiko-ryu in japanese). Futatsugi, feeling that this was too bland, decided to translate it to German.

With this basic concept in mind, the creators then had 3 months to define a visual identity and a setting for their game, prior to development. The game would be set in a post-apocalyptic science fantasy world, featuring ruins and relics of a fallen civilisation and mankind struggling for survival, something typical in anime at that time. Futatsugi was particularly influenced by one of his childhood readings, The Long Afternoon of Earth, a science-fiction novel by Brian Aldiss, in which one side of the earth became perpetually hot, the other perpetually cold.

The first presentation video featured a green dragon, in line with tradictional european/medieval depictions, however the team quickly decided to change it and make it "more sci-fi". In order for the dragon to be more original, it was made blue and covered in a white, bone-like armor. The dragon was supposed to come from the ancient times, so ruins and ancient flying technology also featured this white, shell-like material. The overall fantasy look of the game's world, which mixed natural and technological elements, was also chosen in order to set it appart from classic science-fiction 3D games of the time. This world, as well as dragon and character designs, was mainly the work of Manabu Kusunoki, who took inspiration from various sources, including anime and manga, and who pushed the art direction toward a more Turkish/Ottoman style to avoid the european aesthetics of the early presentation video. Critics have noted similarities with the works of French artist Moebius (notably his comic book Arzach), of whom Kusunoki was a fan, as well as with Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and David Lynch's Dune movie. However, Kusunoki was adamant not to include big robots from popular Gundam-like anime, and unrealistic designs like the spiky and colorful-haired characters wielding impossibly large swords from the Final Fantasy series. Kentaro Yoshida, texturing and modelling artist, described the creation process as similar in style to Star Wars, in that it "made an unearthly world appear so real". Takashi Iwade, in charge of the opening cutscene and character models, designed the enemies using a lot of various influences: "I got inspiration from antique clocks and various industrial products from the era of the industrial revolution for mechanics, and myriapods, marine mollusks, ammonite, and a rusty fishing boat for creatures when I started thinking of the original battleship".

The Saturn's hardware was new to the team, and it was their first attempt at creating an original environment. It was also Futatsugi's first year working at Sega, so he was only able to do simple things while having a clear vision of what he wanted, which helped him to keep the overall style pure, with stark and minimalist cutscenes. Similarly, Iwade kept the ennemies easy to understand visually, with simple shapes, and this overall simple style fitted well with the Saturn's hardware.

Then, Team Andromeda set to work on elaborating an extensive back story, and Futatsugi, to be original and to avoid using Japanese or English, went so far as to create a new language for the game, a mix of Ancient Greek, Latin and Russian. This was apparently inspired by the anime The Wings of Honneamise, of which team members were fans and which also features an invented language.

After the story and art were settled, it was time to work on the graphics. Working on new hardware proved difficult for the young team, and the game ended up missing by a few months the initial deadline given by Sega, which was the Saturn Japanese launch on November 1994. One of the problems was that the Saturn hardware was only finalized in mid-1994, and without actual Saturn prototype to test their progress, the programmers initially had to work with hypothetical hardware performance. Team Andromeda created its own graphics library and mapping tools instead of using Sega's, in order to make the most of their first game on the new system. The game's graphics and cutscenes were done with Softimage, and the 3D elements were programmed on SGI workstations using OpenGL. The programmers were eventually able to transition to the debug Saturn they had received, but the process was difficult and the game had a very low frame rate at first, before it could be settled at 20 FPS. The six levels of Panzer Dragoon are barren landscapes with ancient ruins, which is consistent with the "simple" style appropriate for the Saturn. The first two levels that the team programmed, a desert (level 2) and a forest (level 5), didn't have any objects or anything besides sand and forest effects, again because the team was unsure how far the hardware could be pushed. Keeping CPU limitations in mind, simple tornado effects were added to level 2, so that it didn't look too bland.

Work on the soundtrack began after completion of the game, similar to the way movie soundtracks are made. The idea was to create musics that would specifically reflect each level art-style and events. As the game had an "on rail" progression system, the developers knew exactly where the player would be at any given time, so they showed videos to the composer and asked him to write specifically timed pieces that would match the player's progression in each level. The soundtrack was outsourced to Yoshitaka Azuma, who was composing musics for NHK TV programs at that time. The music of Panzer Dragoon is a mix between orchestral and synthesizer tracks.

The team wanted a famous artist to make the game's cover art. Manabu Kusunoki suggested Moebius, as he was a great fan of the French artist's work. Moebius accepted, and the team sent him designs that he was to interpret. The resulting illustration, which perfectly matched the atmosphere envisioned by the team, was used as the cover art for the Japanese release of the game.

Overall, development lasted almost a year, and 15 people worked on the game. Panzer Dragoon was first released in Japan on March 1995.