roducer Kyle Shubel is not afraid to kid around about historical crab battles and massive damage when it comes to his PlayStation 3 launch title, Genji: Days Of The Blade. But he’s serious about making improvements he hopes players will appreciate. Did we also mention that Schubel also works on Heavenly Sword and the long lost Killzone for PS3? Find out the latest on all three games in our in-depth Q & A.

Game Informer: Let’s just get this out of the way right from the start. The infamous historical crab battles, the massive damage, all over the internet, message boards, YouTube… In fact, that’s what Genji 2 is probably most known for at this point. How is the team taking all of this?

Kyle Shubel: First of all, you kind of have to take it with a grain of salt. We’re paid to be kids. We’re making video games for a living. C’mon, how bad can it be? That, coupled with “any press is good press.” Now let’s move onto the next step. The fun part is, the heike crabs, the giant crabs, are actually real creatures. There are over two meter crabs that exist in Japan. Go online to Google and type in heike crab and you’ll get hundreds of links to these things. They actually are a part of history in Japan where they talk about them being the imbued spirits of the dead Heike warriors in the Battle of Dan-no-ura during the Genpei War, which you’re playing the Battle of Dan-no-ura in Genji: Days Of The Blade.

During Days Of The Blade we’re going to do the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani, we’re going to do the Battle of Dan-no-ura. In the Battle of Dan-no-ura hundreds of soldiers died and basically so many ships came into one harbor you could hop from one ship to another without getting your feet wet. So many soldiers died that they say these crabs are imbued with the spirits of the dead Heike warriors, that’s why they actually have faces on them. For us, for Westerners, yeah, giant crabs are a little bit out there. For the Japanese, it’s an extreme version of reality. I would love for it to not be all over the internet. But honestly, I kind of like it. People are talking about the game.

[Editor’s note: We’ll save you the research. The Heikegani (or heike crab) does inhabit the seas of Japan and has a face-like pattern on its back. However, the maximum size of a heike crab is only about 1.2 inches. Not so scary, huh? But Japan is also home to the biggest crab on Earth, the Giant Japanese Spider Crab, whose leg span can reach up to 12 feet and total weight can tip the scales at 40 lbs]

The Giant Japanese Spider Crab vs. The Heikegani

GI: With the film, Snakes on a Plane, they have this certain theme and people love it for its campiness. As part of the localization, do you ever think, “Maybe we can play this up and really have fun with it”?

Shubel: Honestly, I wanted to have this event at Joe’s Crab Shack, but they told me it would probably be a bad idea. Agreed, the campiness is all fine and dandy, but what’s really interesting is we’re trying to tell a story which is very serious to Japanese natives. We’re trying to cover a major era where they went from an aristocratic society to a feudal society. While having fun with it, you know, it’s not our culture, we don’t recognize it, so therefore you can have a little fun with it. Every one of the characters in this game is a real warrior that actually fought in these battles. All of the major battles really occurred during the Genpei War. So we’ve got this interesting balance where we’re trying to juggle between history, legend, and video game – hence giant crabs. You’ve got to dance that line, but I love the Snakes on a Plane reference. That could be quite fun.

GI: In the first game there were a few parts where players returned to some previous environments after the locations had been “demonized.” You mentioned earlier that in Days of the Blade we would see the seasons change. Does this mean that we’ll be playing through repeated environments again or will we keep pushing forward to new ones?

Shubel: You’re generally going to keep pushing forward. This one is more about traveling around the different environments. You’re actually covering most of the body of Japan. You’re not going to the outside islands, but you’re actually covering central, northern, and southern Japan. Ichi-no-Tani, Dan-no-ura, Kyoto – you’re going to hit all of the major areas. You’re going to have very different environments. You’re traveling around during the appropriate seasons as the characters are moving around from battle to battle. The ironic part is, with the hi-res, amazing environments we can do on the PS3 we’re using less of them. Funny that. Who knows? We do what we have to.

GI: I noticed while playing through the demo that the camera’s pretty fixed as it snakes along with the river. Are players going to have much control over the camera or will it be locked in?

Shubel: Players will not have control over the camera. However, the camera will be more dynamic than it currently is. It was completely fixed at E3. It’s partially fixed now. It’s more dynamic as we go along. Basically, the camera’s going to try and focus on the right points of combat. It’s actually going to be sliding on rails and moving around. You won’t have control over it, but it’s going to try and reveal things to you that you may not have noticed. You’ll see more camera movement in the release than you do now, but you see more now than you did at E3.

In Genji: Dawn of the Samurai it was fixed. It may have rotated, looked at you, and snapped to the next camera. We’re adding a lot more fluid motion, a lot more camera on rails, to give you that semblance of you’re actually moving through an environment rather than just snapping you from one cinematic sequence to another.

GI: There was some limited weapon swapping in the demo. Benkei seemed to do the same moves with both weapons, but Yoshitsune had two different combo sets. Are combo changeups going to be a major factor in the weapon switching?

Shubel: Absolutely. The five to eight different weapon sets that each of the four different playable characters have are going to have different animation trees. Benkei actually does more jabbing motions with the secondary weapon, the one that looks like something out of a temple. And he does swinging motions with the one that looks like a telephone pole. The jabbing motions are much worse defense-wise, but much better on the attack. We tried to make every weapon have a benefit and a weakness. As you move through them you can go “Oh, I’m fighting a boss. I need to do more damage.” Or “I’m fighting a bunch of guys. I need better defense.” We’ve got this balance of the different weapons and the different animation trees.

Most of Yoshitsune’s burst weapons, the two katanas, are sweeping attacks, which will actually hit every member around him. So if he’s in a crowd he’ll do a little bit of damage to every guy. The double-bladed ones are more jabbing attacks. They’re very pointed and attack heavy. But they’re horrible for defense. If you block with that you don’t stop but half of the damage.

GI: When I was killing enemies in the demo they kind of poofed into flames. In the last game you were able to chop guys in half. Are you trying to tone down the violence at all or is this just a design choice?

Shubel: When it comes down to it we’re a sword fighting game. You can’t tone down the violence too much. Obviously, the guys bursting into flames is going to be more palatable to a wider market. We also, in this title, have added English voiceovers. It’s actually the primary language throughout the game. You never have to read a subtitle. Since we’re a launch title we kind of want to make it palatable to a larger variety of people. Whereas with Genji: Dawn of the Samurai, we were targeting guys who like Japanese films. You go out and get The Killer on DVD all in subtitles, you like your anime, you like your sword fighting games – we were going for the purists. With Genji: Days of the Blade we’re opening it up to a larger group. We’ve slightly toned it down, but c’mon. You’re running around with superhuman powers and swords. You’re going to tear people up.

GI: What we played today felt very similar to the first game. You spoke earlier about fights on horseback, massive battles, and the clash at the harbor. Can you explain how these sections will help add variety to the gameplay?

Shubel: As you’re going through Ichi-no-Tani on horseback it’s going to be a very different combat mechanic. It’ll be more timing specific as you’re going by certain people. As you’re in Dan-no-ura you’re hopping from ship to ship. It’s going to be small clusters of people fighting. In a few of our other battles you’ll be able to see 80 to 100 people onscreen, but you’ll only be able to interact with 20 to 30 of them. If you go to the right characters you’ll be able to break down barriers and open up more of them as you’re fighting your way through the battlefield.

Effectively, the battle is occurring around you. In some of the sequences you’re seeing a status meter at the bottom which shows how many Heike warriors and Genji warriors are on the field. And you’re watching the bar slide one way or the other based on your behavior. So you’re actually having an influence on the greater battle without having to be the, you know, large scale battle that we see from some of the other groups out there. We don’t want to be that god character mowing through hundreds and hundreds of people. You are very powerful, but you still have to fight people. We’re trying to give you that experience, but you shouldn’t have more than 20 or 30 guys chewing on you at any given time.

GI: So if people say “Oh, this is going to have some Dynasty Warriors and Ninety-Nine Nights stuff,” you’d say “No, nothing like that.”

Shubel: Exactly. What we’re trying to accomplish is more of an action adventure focused on story and individual characters. You’re powerful. God, you’re crazy powerful. But you’re not a god among men. You aren’t wading through hundreds of people at a time. You’ll wade through a dozen or so but, hey, video games are fun like that.

GI: Speaking of fighting dozens of enemies, you also work on Heavenly Sword. Can you give us an update on how that’s coming along?

Shubel: I can’t wait for you guys to see the TGS demo we’re putting together. Let’s put it that way. You guys are going to be able to lay hands onto it at TGS and I’ll have much more to tell you at that point.

GI: We saw a Killzone PS3 trailer at E3 2005 and nothing since. As part of the Killzone PSP team, can you comment as to whether the PS3 project is still coming together?

Shubel: Obviously, with Killzone: Liberation coming out this year we’re definitely focused on the PSP title because, honestly, if you were to put a PSP game next to a PS3 game, which one are you going to look at? We’re definitely focused on Killzone: Liberation, which is coming out this Halloween. But shortly afterwards there might be some more information on the future Killzone project on PlayStation 3.