Pash! interview 04/2020: reader submitted questions to FKHR

Pash! magazine allowed readers to submit questions to FKHR, and he answered 28 of them in the latest issue! Let’s dig in.

Q1: I’m curious what Gran and Djeeta’s heights are!

FKHR: Gran is 170cm tall (5’7) and Djeeta is 156cm (5’1)

5’1 vs. 5’6 (but hunched over)

Q2: When you list a character’s height, does that include their heels?

FKHR: The official height listings do not include heels or ears.

Q3: Will we ever see more stories of characters who have exited the story?

FKHR: I can’t go as far as saying that we’ll never see them again. The dramas of people’s lives are shaped by the past and the future both…

Q4: Will there be more animal characters like Young Cat? We want a bunny or a doggie.

FKHR: We don’t have any plans for that right now, but if there’s a good opportunity for it then it could be fun. I’d also like to be able to change the pattern of Young Cat’s fur with a few new skins when we rerun The Many Lives of Cats.

Q5: Will Team Chickadee play a bigger role in future events?

FKHR: We’ve had a general idea of how Arthur and Mordred will grow and how their fates will unfold since before they appeared in Divergent Knighthoods. Please be patient.

Q6: Will there be a Nezahualpilli event?

FKHR: It’s not good for me to answer any question that involves “Will X character get an event?” I hope that people stay excited for new monthly events. As for characters who have never appeared in any events, I always have them in mind and want to wait for the right timing for them.

Q7: Is there anything you have to be careful of when it comes to the balancing and development of the Dragon Knights? Is there anything that you have to avoid or have a rule that you will never break?

FKHR: This isn’t limited to the Dragon Knights. When it comes to the Society, the Irestill characters, Yuel and Societte, etc. we try to make their roles and balancing fit in line with the other members of their group. We can’t make the Four Dragon Knights into the Five Dragon Knights, while the Society will almost always have Zeta, Vaseraga, Bea, and Eustace in the lead.

Q8: Will there be a sequel to “Eye of the Storm”?

FKHR: I would like to write more of Yurius’ story.

Vane!

Q9: Will there be a 5* uncap for Vane?

FKHR: We announced his 5* uncap on March 8th on the anniversary stream. We hope you look forward to seeing a new side of Vane, since we’re focusing on him and his own growth for once.

Q10: How do you decide what characters will appear in an event? Is there any kind of pattern or plan to taking characters who haven’t been around for a while and putting the spotlight on them?

FKHR: We do think about characters who haven’t had much spotlight, but more important to us are considerations about how characters fit into each month’s story, and how that fits into the flow of the full year. Put simply, if we did 3 straight serious and dramatic events in a row, then we would want to give players a breath of fresh air by having a more comical event. That kind of balance helps keep them from getting exhausted. That’s how we decide how the event flow goes, and we can’t try and force characters into events that don’t suit them. However, all that said, this year we’ll have more characters than usual where you’ll see them and say “Hey, it’s been a long time since we saw them!”

Q11: Do you have any hints about what will happen in future Dragon Knight events?

FKHR: We’re going to do events from an entirely new perspective.

Q12: Why did you decide to give us a free Eternal in the 6th anniversary event?

FKHR: Originally, we wanted the 3rd anniversary event to focus on the Eternals. However, there were many players who didn’t know who each of the Eternals were as characters at the time, so we reworked it and came up with a new group of Primarchs instead.

Three years later, even if you haven’t recruited them, all of our players have at least met them and kind of have an idea of who they are. With that as a base, we decided that we could do it for the 6th anniversary. As a note, this event was very different than what we had originally planned for the 3rd anniversary.

Q13: How will the GBVS story affect the main story after this?

FKHR: It will not. We thought that it would be better if people who only played one of GBF or GBVS could continue playing the story of their game without missing anything. However, since they’re both Granblue Fantasy titles, there will be some things that will be more fun to people if they have played both and understand the references. Of course, as the developer of both games, we would love for players to be playing both at the same time (laughs)

Q14: Please tell us about the flow of creating a new character. Also, how long does it take between coming up with the concept and releasing the new character?

FKHR: There are all kinds of time frames involved, so I can’t give you a solid answer here. We come up with them about 3-6 months before they are released. I think that concept aside, once we get to the illustrations, the story, the animation, and the stats it takes about 2-3 months.

Q15: Are there plans for more crew-based events like Unite and Fight? We want more crew content.

FKHR: Not really. We want to make sure that we don’t make anyone feel left out by not being in a crew or not communicating enough with that crew, so we’ll most likely keep doing lighter competitions like mini-game score rankings.

How is belial formed

Q16: Tell us the secrets of how Belial was made!

FKHR: At the beginning, Avatar was going to be the boss of the story, but because Avatar has no personality of its own, there was nothing we could do to make it a real villain that you hated and wanted to defeat – it was more like a natural disaster than a villain. So we wanted to make a trickster archetype as the mid-boss of the event, and that’s how Belial was born.

His backstory and his way of speaking were the suggestions of the lead writer. It took a lot of courage to unveil such a deviant character at such an important time as the 4th anniversary, but I’m very glad that we did.

Q17: You said on your Twitter that the title of “000” had a lot of meanings. Could you tell us some of those?

FKHR: “000” serves as the number of the angels, it also means Ain Soph Aur, and from left to right, the zeroes also mean “The end of the story” “The end of the Primarchs (as they relinquished their roles)” “and then saying goodbye”.

In other ways, the zeroes also represent from left to right Lucillius, Lucifer, and Sandalphon. The final Zero with the strike through it represents Sandalphon’s new role and the many-colored wings that were born from the relationship between the three of them. There was a lot.

The title of “Seeds of Redemption” has just as many meanings, so I hope you think up many of them.

Q18: Please tell us how you thought of all the abilities on the Belial summon, and how he came to be as a summon.

FKHR: Belial was very popular as the epitome of Granblue Fantasy evil, and he’s maintained an extraordinary level of popularity since. We wanted players to be able to put him in their teams somehow, and that’s how we decided to make him a summon. Summons basically feel like items, and they don’t really have connection to the character being friendly or not. Then we thought of things he could only do as a summon, and we think that his aura, his summon effect, and all of his game effects were good ways to express his character.

After this, we’re going to make Belial playable as a character in GBVS, so we hope you’re excited for that. I think we did a good job with him!

Duffle coats.

Q19: What do you focus on when coming up with character designs?

FKHR: At the beginning, we designed Vyrn, Lyria, Katalina, Rackam, Io, and Sierokarte with the following concepts in mind: as long as you played the game, they would be there with you, so we wanted to make sure that they were “selfless friends”, “people who are close enough that you won’t get tired of them”, and “they won’t be hated.” That’s kind of the same thing we apply to all characters. As for the rest of the design, we have so many designs these days that it’s hard to create any single answer, but we do work on their silhouette a lot.

Q20: Sometimes, R and SR characters becomes SSR characters. How do you choose which ones become SSRs?

FKHR: Ah, that’s what fans call “getting promoted” – we consider all characters for that. It’s just like what we said about events – we need to consider things like timing, release flow, company policy, and many other things. I can’t say there’s any one thing that decides it.

Q21: Will you add more past stories and reruns to Side Stories?

FKHR: We’re working hard and making sure that we get one event in Side Stories every month.

Q22: We’ve heard that you love movies. What are your favorite movies?

FKHR: I love Clint Eastwood’s works, minimalist movies that have a lot of human drama. In recent years, I’ve loved The Mule, The 15:17 to Paris, Miracle on the Hudson, and American Sniper. I also love the movies that Clint Eastwood made when he was a younger actor. He was so cool.

Q23: How much sleep do you get every day?

FKHR: 6-7 hours a day. On days off, I nap for about 2-3 hours, too. These days, I feel like death if I pull an all-nighter, so I live pretty quietly now.

Q24: What music do you listen to while you work?

FKHR: I listen to music from GBF, Relink, and GBVS that hasn’t been released yet. I listen to it with the pretense of helping me imagine the scene, but honestly I just love it and never get tired of it. Narita’s just awesome.

Q25: What do you do when you have writer’s or artist’s block? How do you shake that off?

FKHR: I walk my dog, I go out for a drive… I feel like these days the most important thing for that is some time alone.

Q26: What have you been into lately?

FKHR: Drones. We don’t get to fly them in the city, which hurts sometimes. The Mavic Mini went on sale last year and is still legal, but I’m worried that someone will use one of those to cause trouble and get it restricted too.

FKHR and KMR wearing the mask

Q27: Do you have any comments about the person who made the FKHR mask a reality? Also, will there be more chances for us to pick up a mask of our own?

FKHR: The man who planned the mask was KMR. I told him “I don’t think we’re going to get many extra pre-orders with this” in an attempt to show my disapproval, but I was overruled. The idea was to make something that was fun but wasn’t a punishment for people who didn’t wait until December to preorder the game, so it would be something that would be fun to have at the event. We got more pre-orders at the event than we expected, so I guess it was fine. Doing that mask again won’t be as fun, so we’re not doing it again.

Q28: Please tell us what to look forward to in 2020 for GBF.

FKHR: With a new battle system, and new events, this will be a year with a lot of changes. I hope people continue to enjoy the game like they always have. We have GBVS season 2 coming, and we have a lot of things happening outside of the game, so I hope players enjoy all of that.