NCsoft has selected 50 internet cafes in Seoul to allow any one to play <Blade & Soul> during the 2nd CBT period.

TIG came across AD HyungTae Kim at an internet cafe nearby NCsoft headquater and asked a few questions about graphics and arts.

One of criteria for players to choose their outfits is how it looks like in NPCs. Then can the players wear the outfits of NPCs some day?

I’d correct the question to if they are available to the players. Every costume in the game is dressable. Even white mourning garments of HoSook, a Korean traditional ghost NPC in early story of <B&S>, can be dressed. But unfortunately they are not provided to public. You may expect more and more outfits.

What would you say about the best outfits available in the CBT?

I can’t tell exactly how to get them but would like to leave a hint. The outfits in the posture behind me(below in this article) are also available in this 2nd CBT. But I can’t imagine how long it would take for someone to get them…

In <B&S> the outfit does not consist of more than one piece and accessaries do not have visual appearance. What would say about them?

We have no plan for changing them. In designer’s perspective, there is a harmonious style in costumes and we have devoted to make the best items to match the outfit. Collecting all of them, it would look great.

Earrings and necklaces actually had visual graphics in the game but they seemed like dots and unnoticed. So we abandoned their appearance.

Tradiotional MMORPG costume system is somewhat like ready-made suits, isn’t it? For women, they dress up their best looking dress and matching shoes and necklace when going to parties. But they just wear casual clothings when going to office, right?

So don’t you want to feel little bit more special in the game? That’s why I used the term ‘Pret-a-Porter’ in the last interview I had.

I wanted to make the players feel they are hanging out in a party when playing the game. So I thought all-in-one design which is current outfit system is more suitable than the compound system. I am not saying it is an answer but a direction of <B&S>.

I believe there would be much less feedback on male characters than female characters have.

True. So I want to tell everyone that we are awaiting more feedback on male characters. Of course our development team is working on it very hard but we are having hard time improving it because of less feedback.

Then in what direction do you intend to make the male characters?

Nothing special. We are considering hair styles, face types, animations, etc. What we are currently thinking is that they are too ordinary.

It is quite difficult to give unique characteristics such as sleazy or evil guy styles to online game characters unlike console games. That’s why the boring characters are made, I guess. So we need more and more feedback on male characters.

What if the players want smaller thighs?

Reducing the size of thighs should match with others harmoniously too. I don’t like to hear such words like “I like this character but I won’t play him/her because I don’t like this part.”

It is your something like trade mark.

I know, so there might be some kind of limit in changing the style. Since we are not working on couple of things, we would like to keep updating their favorite styles. It is an idea of addition instead of change.

Since <B&S> features awesome graphics, I heard lots of people are put into the graphic team. So do costume and character designe groups have the most people among the graphic team?

Background and animation groups have the most developers. The character group consists of very few people in order to maintain same style in the course of the development. Yet they are so good. :)

I believe animation is a key to the play quality of the game. I dare to say that <B&S> has triple animation works than other well made online games.

What’s important in animation is not hitting but being hit. <B&S> provides various motions and reactions of being hit in accordance to various ways of hitting.

Not only human looking creatures but also every monsters in the game follow all the animations such as choking, airborne, tripping, or rolling.

That could stress the servers a lot. Actually the test server went down every hour.

So our server team is having very hard time improving it now. Incidentally, playing in a typical field of <B&S> actaully stresses the server as much as what a seige warfare of other MMORPGs does. In other words, we are very good at utilizing the server. (lol)

Does single character has lots of resources since they look magnificent?

We didn’t add extra polygons or use any special features. We used a feature called ‘mise en scene’ in film industry. It is about modelling overall composition, placement, color of background and characters, contrast in characters, light fall, and catching the light, and so on.

We managed to control it in just right balance so people think our graphics very good. As you might know if you played it, <B&S> is not a heavy game.

I see so many monsters out there but they all look different.

We prefer change in fighting style when facing new monsters in new regions rather than making fresh new designed monsters. So you will not be playing against differently designed monsters but with same boring fighting mechanism. Our animation team is working hard on skill motions.

I guess that’s why I feel like playing PvP against human looking monsters.

We weight more on human versus human fighting in <B&S>. Yes, there are monsters but we count human relationship more. There will be more action based human enemies and monsters for you.