Extended Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido interview
Parts of our interview with Shadow of the Colossus' director and line producer ended up on the cutting room floor, so we put together an extended cut for those who want to read the full thing.
One of the big ideas behind Design Room is that for every oral history we publish for free, we’re going to publish bonus stories exclusively for paid subscribers. Those might be spinoff articles on related topics, behind the scenes anecdotes that don’t fit elsewhere, or, as in this case, an extended interview transcript.
When I was arranging our Shadow of the Colossus story, it quickly became clear that one of the key pieces was the interview we had with Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido, the game’s director and line producer, respectively. The two led development of the game at Team Ico, and hadn’t done an interview together in years prior to us getting them together.
I couldn’t fit all of their quotes into the main story, so I figured I’d post the full text here for anyone who wants to soak up everything they had to say. Read on for insights into Wander’s character design, Warp’s influence on Team Ico, Bluepoint’s remaster and remake, why Kaido left Sony, how to keep motivation up when working on a long development cycle, and why Ueda feels conflicted about the game’s ending.