Synduality: Echo of Ada isn’t just a game about piloting robots with cute waifus- the game will also feature male Magus as well.

At Thailand Game Show 2023, we spoke to Yosuke Futami, producer on Synduality: Echo of Ada to talk about the game’s focus on interpersonal connection- specifically between pilots and their Magus partners.

What was the inspiration behind the Magus, because they all look really cool, have a very nice mechanical design, so what was the inspiration?

Yosuke Futami: There are mainly two inspirations, the first one is Final Fantasy 6. Final Fantasy 6 is the first game I have played on the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) when I was in elementary school. And it’s like the Magus is like a magic/wizard being that also comes from Final Fantasy.

And the second one is Zone of the Enders, I love the user system where they have the illustration for the AI operator, and I thought it would be great to be able to properly see them.

Of course there’s inspiration from a lot of different creative works. Other than the work I have mentioned earlier, let me think about this…the one I’ve learned from…Oh right, I’ve also referenced a Japanese novel, The Stories of Ibis, the SF novel.

In terms of the overall structure of the story, since SYNDUALITY also has an anime, in order to create a world setting, we also took inspiration from Star Wars. And for SYNDUALITY it’s Episode 4 of Star Wars.

There’s a story about the previous world that collapsed, and there’s a story during the collapse, there is a lot of story that I wanted to present, which is why there’s this game.

The mecha design is quite cute and with round appearance, and the story is set as a prequel to the anime. Are there any chances for the player to explore or control different mechas in the game?

Yosuke Futami: Yes, there’s a lot of mechas. So basically the body, arm and leg, these three parts you can customise it, and you can use it on the same or different design as well.

 So as a mixed media project, Synduality spans the anime, manga and video game, so how did the idea of having a unified universe come about?

Yosuke Futami: So first of all, having these three different media together is something BANDAI NAMCO has been good at since a long time ago. And the thing that made me think about “I want to join BANDAI NAMCO and make something like this” is quite old, it’s Patlabor. I think not many people know about this IP.

The reason I wanted to do it like this…while I’m involved in the making of the anime and the game, I started out wanting to have different ways of expressing the anime and the game, and if both have the same story then I don’t want to do it.

So for anime, the animation of the motion and staging is really good. As for the game, it’s the way you play the game, and the accumulation of the gameplay, and of course the action. And now since we are using Unreal Engine 5, the amount of data is also increasing exponentially, and so the way you see the anime and how you see the game also have a huge difference.

That’s what gives me the direction of making a product that expresses the stories differently despite it being the same world in this way.

You’ve said that Magus will adapt to players playstyle, could you talk more about how that works?

Yosuke Futami: Magus will at a certain point, tell you that “Well you are better at it now, will you take this road that is a little bit challenging?” And sometimes they say something bad like “Since you have gotten better in the game, so why don’t you try this challenge? That person has some good items on them.”

As you grow accustomed to the game, newer players will want to participate in the next challenge, and Magus would just say “How about going to different risky places to get some items?” or “You can certainly do it with your abilities, right?”  or “I’m not sure if you are good enough for it but why don’t you try?” or “It’s better to not do it now”, the game will have different ways to advise you on the challenges.

There’s been some concern about how often the Magus talks to you, are there any features to tone them down?

Yosuke Futami: So the players who have this kind of opinion are uh, how do I put it…of course we are considering letting people adjust the timing of conversation. But, the game is just like what I have said earlier, I also hope that the new users will get into the shooting game. And so, those people who think the AI talk too much, I think they are probably good at games in the first place, yes.

So those people, the people who think the AI talks too much, they will hear different advice in the game, which is also a feature of the game. Like “Since you are really good at this game, when we find prey, let us think about them having good items and beat them together” or “There’s a difficult quest happening, and your level is good enough to handle it, let’s go” sort of advice.

That sort of advice is the kind of advice you will get after a few rounds of gameplay, the current advice that you see in the demo or video is more towards new players

“Do we really need this advice? You talked too much and it’s annoying” sort of stuff…I think there’s an image of people who are good at games don’t need to be told stuff or talk about stuff that much, but better players will have different kinds of advice, so I think the experience will be different.

A bunch of the gameplay involves grouping, fighting and extracting the team, which I think is fun enough for a short time, but what can the players expect in terms of variety for missions and objectives in the long run?

Yosuke Futami: Yes. Of course there is something related to this, while we haven’t really announced anything about it, what I can say is that by collecting more money and returning, the stuff you can do in game also increases.

There’s also something that you have to do in the game. There are other things that you have to complete other than doing the request, and there are some things that you cannot do while collecting the stuff you want. There’s also other kinds of requests and content that you can play for for the whole season.

Of course there’s PvP game mode, where if you win you rank up, so you can just see yourself going from A to S rank. I think rank up is also one of the motivations for playing the game, for solo players there’s also bringing the money back safely, and keeping on piling it up is also one of it.

I’ll give you something extra, Magus will be getting a lot cuter. Oh, and there’s also male Magus, you can choose however you like.

First of all, since the game is PvPvE, players can communicate with the opposing players. Can people make a guild or organisation to accept a quest together?

Yosuke Futami: While we haven’t thought about it for now, we will take everyone’s feedback and focus on updating the game after the release, and we will of course take into consideration about guild.

This is because the concept of the game is that even if you are playing it alone, you would feel like there’s two people playing together, that is very important. While at first we talked about the feeling of playing together with friends would be fun or this could be better or stuff like that. But at last our goal is to make something that players can see in their eyes [what he said is “existence”], so for the first couple of months we temporarily put the communication with Magus as top priority over the game.

And the game also has two different styles of gameplay to begin with, one is about collecting items, and bringing the item back, the other one is the PvP, and these two have a big separation.

Players in PvP can be a bad person and always hunting for players who just want to collect items, it can happen. So for example, when you join a 10 player game, there can be one player who is like this and is hunting for the other nine players.

So how you play in this kind of risk is also a part of the game.

So how do you think SYNDUALITY: Echo of Ada would resonate with first timers of the Mecha RPG genre?

Yosuke Futami: While I have talked about the main concept of the game just now, the theme of the game is really just the feeling of having someone close by, like “I am with you”. So in the gameplay itself, the feeling of someone sitting nearby talking and supporting you, telling you to go here or go there, this is what we want the players to feel.

This is a game about when you are playing it, someone is watching you playing it.

Sound design is also really important for selling the tone of the world, could you talk a bit about that?

Yosuke Futami: This is hard, uh…since we are in an abandoned world, this is a story about humans living in this world, so we put more caution into making the environment audio. And then for the audio of Mecha, this time around the mecha will have a more profound feeling to it, and you can differentiate if the enemy is closed by or not with the audio. We are very cautious about this aspect of the game.

So you have mentioned that the longer you play you can get stronger, your mechs will also get cuter. But is it possible to have a modification like, have a strong weapon while looking cute?

Yosuke Futami: We have different weapons, and there are different rarities. The stronger the rarity, the more powerful the weapon is. If you want this equipment and want to customize it in your way, and you get the equipment, you can play with it however you want without inconvenience.

But you can’t change the weapon skin into a cuter one, you cannot make a weapon look cuter. We won’t make it so your opponent doesn’t know how strong you are while looking at you. Doing it this way, you can differentiate if the enemy is strong or weak while in combat. Otherwise you look at someone who seems weak but their equipment is really strong, you can’t win.

In SYNDUALITY: Echo of Ada, and the recent trailer of Echo of Ada – Old Amacia, people saw it features a very creative take on it’s presentation with CG scenes as artistic comic panels as anime as well, so what’s the inspiration for you to adapt these different art styles into the game?

Yosuke Futami: Yes, SYNDUALITY mainly uses three different ways to convey the story. The first if the cool video using CG, and then the Bande dessinée, which is like Kamishibai, the animation moves properly. And then there’s also voice drama, and these three in combination, complete the product.

The amount of information conveyed will be different for each type of presentation, and it will reflect in the game, and the PV you see this time has some hints in it. The properly recorded and stored video will have a lot more information. There’s 3D CG animation. The video stored and managed by AI will be played out just like that, and it can be trusted. The beautiful 3D video that you see is the data that doesn’t have any problem with it.

The video in the style of Bandes dessinées has some broken data in it, so the AI took to themselves and imagined the broken part of it.

With the kind of world setting, we have prepared different ways for you to enjoy the story. We will also add in more ways for you to enjoy as long as possible.

What’s some advice you can give to new players, especially with the threat of PvP?

Yosuke Futami: Pack up your stuff, go home. Also, be careful while you traverse.

As stuff happens, people with the same goal in the same place won’t attack, and the others also recognise the players that will not attack. Sometimes problems might occur, and you might face difficulties, but that kind of problem is the center of PvE gameplay.

There’s a lot of penalties for PvP in this game as well. Like, if PvE players will always be notified when players that do bad stuff log in to the game. And there’s a bounty on their head as well. The bounty money is far more than you collecting items and going back.

For people who don’t do PvP, you can also gather around with people who also don’t do PvP, and take down that target.

PvP has a very high risk. But I think people who are good at games will do PvP, people who are just starting out will do PvE. And also, there are two types of missions in the game, the organisation for PvE mission and PvP mission is different.

Our thanks to Yosuke Futami for the great chat about Synduality: Echo of Ada. Don’t forget to check out our hands-on impressions with the game, or potentially check out the game yourself at Thailand Game Show.

You can go check out Synduality: Echo of Ada alongside other titles like Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth and Tekken 8 at Bandai Namco Entertainment’s booth at Thailand Game Show.