Interview Translation of a Japanese interview with Robert Woodhead

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Robert J. Woodhead; Wizardry; Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna

Esteeemed community member Helly informs us that he stumbled across a Japanese interview with SirTech co-founder and Wizardry co-creator Robert "Trebor" Woodhead - and decided to translate it for the unwashed Codex masses. In the interview, Robert Woodhead discusses anime and his company AnimEigo, but also the Wizardry series.

Helly posted the full interview in a thread in General RPG Discussion, but here are some Wizardry-related snippets:

4Gamer: And what about Wizardry #4 - The Return of Werdna's ARABIC DIARY(TALES OF MADNESS)? It became Necronomicon in the console game version, was it what it was supposed to be?

Woodhead: Yes, it was supposed to be the Necronomicon. 95% of Wizardry's n°4's scenario was written by Roe Adams, the ARABIC DIARY was his idea too. I read H.P.Lovecraft's works too, so I knew it was the Necronomicon. [...]

4Gamer: In the late 80's, there was a plan to make player character data from the software production house BPS's RPGs※ and SIR-TECH's Wizardry series convertible. I remember reading about it at the time in a PC magazine. What happened to that project?

※"Black onyx" and "Fire crystal", amongst others.

Woodhead: It probably happened while I was working on the Macintosh version of Wizardry, but...I vaguely remember BPS's Henk Rogers' name. I think it's just that it never actually happened.

4Gamer: I see... Ah, I'm sorry, I keep asking questions that kept me intrigued for a while.

Woodhead: No problem. You know, as most games, Wizardry is nothing but a ring in the chain that bind all games together. Games are influenced by their predecessors and cultural events, and Wizardry was no exception. And now, it is Wizardry's turn to influence the work of others. It really does feel like being part of a big chain.

4Gamer: Oh yes indeed. The "ring" that Wizardry created in Japan is quite noticeable. I don't think I would be exaggerating saying that many games, anime and novels are directly influenced by the Wizardry series.

Woodhead: It's an honor. But I do think we were lucky more than anything else. And I do think most of the thanks are due to the localization For Tune and GameStudio as well as Asuki's staffs. I especially think that the Famicon release was our best version of Wizardry. At the very least it didn't contain my badly drawn pictures! (bitter laugh)

4Gamer: When I replay the Apple II version now, I see how Wizardry was born from a melting pot of various influencing works. The character's jobs and races, the monsters, the pictures and text messages. But what did you accomplish with Wizardry that you feel was entirely original?

Woodhead: Well...the presence of a scenario, I think. Older Computer RPGs didn't have a defined goal and were not made with an end goal in mind. We added a scenario with puzzle-like components to our game. That's the thing that make it different from the other titles, I think. The n°4 of the series was the more representative of what we aimed to do.

4Gamer: You added a scenario to the fusion of a net game, Oubliette, and a tabletop game, D&D, on the Apple II, is that it?

Woodhead: Yes, we were really thinking about how to better represent them in that little box. Also, our puzzle-ridden n°4 was made using a faster machine, the PC-9801, thanks to our Japanese staff. They installed a Pascal development environment/operating system and so we were able to work with a "Fast Apple II".​

It's interesting, and pretty cool, to hear that he considers Wizardry IV to be the most representative of what the series originally tried to achieve. As mentioned, you can read the full interview translation on our forums.

I'd also like to use this opportunity to remind you that we interviewed Robert Woodhead ourselves a few years ago, so check that interview out too if you missed it.

 

[ROARRR]

I love helly, because he does stuff. He is a hell of a codexer! keep the flames on bro!

 

[Dorateen]

It's interesting, and pretty cool, to hear that he considers Wizardry IV to be the most representative of what the series originally tried to achieve.

Fortunately it is not, though. No more than claiming Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer is representative of the Might & Magic RPG series.

 

[Lady_Error]

It's interesting, and pretty cool, to hear that he considers Wizardry IV to be the most representative of what the series originally tried to achieve.

Fortunately it is not, though. No more than claiming Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer is representative of the Might & Magic RPG series.

Summoning aweigh.

 

[aweigh]

it is very interesting that he considers Wiz 4 to be the creative and technical pinnacle of the series; except it becomes less interesting when you realize that it is objectively true.

it becomes interesting once again, however, when you analyze Wiz 4 and realize that it subverts sometimes entirely every single design of Wizardry 1-3.

in any case if you guys want to hear more fun stuff about how Wizardry and Japan melded together so well you should google the subject. This has been mentioned before but just in case anyone reading doesn't know this piece of trivia the games Dragon Quest 1 and Final Fantasy 1 were created specifically to evoke the best parts of Wizardry + Ultima, or at least in the japanese game developers' minds.

the DQ creator makes no bones about it as you can easily google him saying that DQ1 was born out of a desire to create a mish-mash of Wizardry + Ultima, but it takes a little more googling to get good interviews with Final Fantasy NES developers.

to this day there are still Wizardry clones being made and selling well in the japanese mobile market; i mean can you imagine that shit? can you imagine if Google Play or the Apple store had in their top 50 sellers of the month a Wizardry-clone?

ATM the top developer making Wizardry for japanese mobile is the same studio that did "The Dark Spire", for the Nintendo DS. The game did not sell well enough for them to be able to continue making Wiz-clones on hand-helds or on console, so they have been paying the bills by making "Wizardry: Traditional" for japanese mobile, a series which looks quite good utilizing colored wireframe graphics that look very trippy.

for hand-held, console and PC the top Wiz-clone makers are still Starfish studios with their Elminage series (and previously their Wizardry Empire series), followed closely by Exp Inc / Team Muramasa and their recently released game Stranger of Sword City.

games like Etrian Odyssey are most definitely tile-based, turn-based party-building RPGs but they are too different in their mechanics from traditional Wizardry to be considered Wiz-clones. Games like the Etrian Odyssey games are a japanese specific spin on the traditional Wizardry formula, which is why they involve more "gated content" and which is why they use level-up "skill trees" and which is also why conflict resolution is so dependant on hard-numbered character levels or unlocking of specific abilities, etc, which is complete opposite to how conflict resolution works in any Wizardry game.

the EO games also abandon most, if not all skinner-box elements, something which traditional Wizardry and any game aping its blueprint does better than any other game with its simple trapped-chest scenarios and the variable level up attributes and loot-per-dungeon-floor instead of loot-per-enemy; the itemization is always the best in the traditional Wizardry game because it is not tied to enemies specifically but rather to the floors.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Tags: Robert J. Woodhead; Wizardry; Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna

Esteeemed community member Helly informs us that he stumbled across a Japanese interview with SirTech co-founder and Wizardry co-creator Robert "Trebor" Woodhead - and decided to translate it for the unwashed Codex masses. In the interview, Robert Woodhead discusses anime and his company AnimEigo, but also the Wizardry series.

Helly posted the full interview in a thread in General RPG Discussion, but here are some Wizardry-related snippets:

4Gamer: And what about Wizardry #4 - The Return of Werdna's ARABIC DIARY(TALES OF MADNESS)? It became Necronomicon in the console game version, was it what it was supposed to be?

Woodhead: Yes, it was supposed to be the Necronomicon. 95% of Wizardry's n°4's scenario was written by Roe Adams, the ARABIC DIARY was his idea too. I read H.P.Lovecraft's works too, so I knew it was the Necronomicon. [...]

4Gamer: In the late 80's, there was a plan to make player character data from the software production house BPS's RPGs※ and SIR-TECH's Wizardry series convertible. I remember reading about it at the time in a PC magazine. What happened to that project?

※"Black onyx" and "Fire crystal", amongst others.

Woodhead: It probably happened while I was working on the Macintosh version of Wizardry, but...I vaguely remember BPS's Henk Rogers' name. I think it's just that it never actually happened.

4Gamer: I see... Ah, I'm sorry, I keep asking questions that kept me intrigued for a while.

Woodhead: No problem. You know, as most games, Wizardry is nothing but a ring in the chain that bind all games together. Games are influenced by their predecessors and cultural events, and Wizardry was no exception. And now, it is Wizardry's turn to influence the work of others. It really does feel like being part of a big chain.

4Gamer: Oh yes indeed. The "ring" that Wizardry created in Japan is quite noticeable. I don't think I would be exaggerating saying that many games, anime and novels are directly influenced by the Wizardry series.

Woodhead: It's an honor. But I do think we were lucky more than anything else. And I do think most of the thanks are due to the localization For Tune and GameStudio as well as Asuki's staffs. I especially think that the Famicon release was our best version of Wizardry. At the very least it didn't contain my badly drawn pictures! (bitter laugh)

4Gamer: When I replay the Apple II version now, I see how Wizardry was born from a melting pot of various influencing works. The character's jobs and races, the monsters, the pictures and text messages. But what did you accomplish with Wizardry that you feel was entirely original?

Woodhead: Well...the presence of a scenario, I think. Older Computer RPGs didn't have a defined goal and were not made with an end goal in mind. We added a scenario with puzzle-like components to our game. That's the thing that make it different from the other titles, I think. The n°4 of the series was the more representative of what we aimed to do.

4Gamer: You added a scenario to the fusion of a net game, Oubliette, and a tabletop game, D&D, on the Apple II, is that it?

Woodhead: Yes, we were really thinking about how to better represent them in that little box. Also, our puzzle-ridden n°4 was made using a faster machine, the PC-9801, thanks to our Japanese staff. They installed a Pascal development environment/operating system and so we were able to work with a "Fast Apple II".​

It's interesting, and pretty cool, to hear that he considers Wizardry IV to be the most representative of what the series originally tried to achieve. As mentioned, you can read the full interview translation on our forums.

I'd also like to use this opportunity to remind you that we interviewed Robert Woodhead ourselves a few years ago, so check that interview out too if you missed it.

It also seems to be a royal 'I don't give a fuck' to all the reviewers that used to criticism them for designing dungeons more for their own fun (in seeing how many ways they can ask-fuck the player) then the players.

 

[Ellef]

lol dick woodhead

 

[Lady_Error]

ATM the top developer making Wizardry for japanese mobile is the same studio that did "The Dark Spire", for the Nintendo DS.

Dark Spire is indeed awesome. How difficult can it be to take their other Wizardry clones and exchange the animu graphics to something more realistic for Western audiences?

 

[Jaesun]

Why doesn't Dark Spire have a PC port.

 

[Archibald]

ATM the top developer making Wizardry for japanese mobile is the same studio that did "The Dark Spire", for the Nintendo DS.

Dark Spire is indeed awesome. How difficult can it be to take their other Wizardry clones and exchange the animu graphics to something more realistic for Western audiences?

Probably biggest difficulty would be that nobody gives a shit about doing it.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Why doesn't Dark Spire have a PC port.

It does. It's called Desmume.

 

[aweigh]

Jaesun





stuff:

- i was overlelleved for those floors hence the battle steamrolling
- any character can "buy" a class-level in any class, as you accumulate EP and spend it as you wish.
- obviously every class-level costs increasingly larger amounts of EP which is modified slightly depending on the character's initial class and initial race and also the character's primary attribute scores.
- there are some awesome caveats tho, which are taken straight from OD&D: if your Priest buys a class-level in Mage, as you can see in the video one of my casters did; Mage spell-casting is automatically disabled if the character equips non-Mage gear, and the same goes for Priest spell-casting if the character equips non-Priest gear.
- the same gear-related restrictions to class-specific ability usage extends to stuff such as a Thief's chest-disarming/inspection and also their door lockpicking. If your Fighter buys a class-level of Thief but then equips Heavy Armor or the like his Thief-class ability access is automatically disabled.
- that means that while any character can level up any class as they see fit the EP cost is slightly modified by the stuff I mentioned above and their access to other class-specific abilities is restricted as mentioned above; what this means is that you cannot have a super-character like a Priest using Priest-gear, i.e. using a shield and a Medium-range Mace/Flail while also having sweet Mage-spells.
- modifying battle commands like atk, def and spell casting changes two things (that I know of): the character's turn order (i.e. casting "quickly" is risky because it greatly lessens chance of the spell doing its thing, but you gain the huge benefit of having the caster's turn-order bumped up considerably which can make all the difference in the world, as one example...)-- and secondly it also modifies dmg dealt.
- ...and THIRDLY it modifies in some rare cases the amount of enemies affected. For example a character utilizing a Bow-type weapon can choose to launch a "Volley" which targets a random amount of targets randomly.
- the Bow-type "Volley" is roughly the equivalent of a melee attacker's "Fierce" atk which raises dmg output roughly 2.5x, lowers your turn order slightly and forces the char to not be able to choose an ATK-related command the next round.
- however they *can* use a DEF-related command modifier such as the Fighter's "Counter Attack" from their Defense modifiers during their "resting turn" after the Fierce atk.
- if you bother to also watch the 2nd video i switch the graphics to classic mode for a bit, although unfortunately in the desmume emulator the super-duper wireframe graphics look hella bad. even the music changes to pseudo 8-bit.
- map (if enabled!) does not display a character-indicator, which is really cool. preserves the immense convenience of an in-game auto-map for you but forces you to pay just a tiny bit more focus and attention to your floor map as when you open it you will not be able to know where you are just by looking at it.
- unfortunately there are not really any exciting battles showcased in the two vids as, mentioned earlier, i am greatly OP for the area. trust me though... this game is not casual. you will die.

----

- i'm going to record a 3rd video showcasing the out-of-the-Tower interactions you can have in the "Town", and show the game's "Skills" system.
- basically the Skills in this game are bought with EP, just like the Class-levels for the character, and there are a *ton* of skills that range from combat-related (i.e. buying for your Fighter skills such as Painting--yes, painting!--, is part of the process of unlocking Elite-tier classes, and there are also skills that functions pretty much just like Fallout perks like a skill that can be bought by any class which raises their resistance to poisons-- also, and i mention once again there are a *ton* of skills; another useful one is teaching at least one of the chars in your party how to Cook and another character how to Craft and you can easily guess what their purposes/benefits are).
- the obvious drawback to spending EP on buying Skills is that then you have less EP left to buy all-important Class levels.
- omg, isn't the entire system a really, really, REALLY nice mix of classic Wiz-clonage coupled w/ the jap fetish for level advancement based on buying something on every level up? yes, I think so too.

--------

- another interesting tweak to the Wiz-clonage is the choices the game gives you for the party Formation. I am using what the game calls the "Heroic formation" which puts 1 single character in the front row, i.e. my Fighter-char, and that means that enemies without M-range or L-range abilities/spells/gear cannot react the other 3 chars in my party and/or just downright choose not to target them much, if at all, during this early game portions.
- you can have them all up-front, which increases their melee dmg output as expected, and also as expected it increases the chances of them being targeted by enemies and obviously as mentioned above exposes them to being "melee" atk'd by enemies right from the very 1st round, which can result in dead mages/priests/thiefs early on immedieately.
- you can have them all in the back as well.
- you can choose to have 2 up front, or 3 up front and 1 in the back, or whatever. it's a pretty cool system.
- (original Wizzes don't really allow this row ordering as, for example, if you're rolling w/ a crew of 4 chars in a classic Wiz game then the first 3 will *always* be front-row, and the 4th will be back-row).

-----

- while there are no "choices" in terms of having multiple Story States A/B/C, there are reasons to replay such as the fact that all-Good/mixed-Alignment parties are restricted for the entirety of the game from access to the "Hall of Chaos" in the Town, and the mysteries within are... a mystery... because I have a mixed-Alignment party and can only make use of the Hall of Good.
- you can make offerings and pray in the respective Halls of Alignment which I, tbh, i still don't know what the ultimate benefit will be. Obviously I could read a FAQ but I choose not to for now.
- there are also multiple NPCs strewn throughout every single floor of the Tower and there are some that are really interesting. the very first NPC you meet is a Knight that will con you into buying a useless Accessory item for a lot of GP, although it remains to be seen if later on in the game, probably within some out-of-the-way optional room or the like, there is an Event where the thing will come into play. Again, this is why I choose not to read a FAQ for now (as I haven't gotten stuck yet) as this is the kind of game where everything that is set up will almost definitely have a payoff, albeit probably a minor one.

----

- i would also like to showcase more of the NPC interactions for you as the writing is really good. It is not literary writing and it is not verbose; it is however a very good translation that is *obvious* that it was a real labor of love for the people who did the translation as having had my own very limited experience translating these japanese crawlers into english I can attest that the kind of subtle, almost downright cryptic dialog that they achieved is something very hard to accomplish when translating from jap to english. It oozes personality and the descriptions are very evocative.
- oh, also the soundtrack is great.


-----

- a big con for me is the Nintendo DS hardware. I know i'm playing it in an emulator but it's still locked at in-game 30 fps and that makes it feel very sluggish when you're accustomed to lightning fast menu/battle/walking in your 'crawler game.