CGMagazine had the opportunity to preview a late-stage build of the upcoming PvPvE mech extraction shooter Synduality Echo of Ada. With numerous closed betas, the team at Bandai Namco has been actively listening to player feedback and plans to continue doing so, addressing issues such as the frequency of weapon breakage in the game.
After playing both the Sortie mode and Amasia Investigation mode (the single-player mode), CGMagazine had the chance to discuss the game’s design with renowned producer Yosuke Futami. Futami, who has produced most, if not all, of the Sword Art Online franchise of anime and games, is also involved with the companion anime series for this game, Synduality: Noir.
Speaking with Futami-san was enlightening, especially regarding the level of detail that went into building the world of Amasia and everything within it. I was particularly impressed to learn about Futami’s vision to create a world where social interactions could happen without the use of voice or text chat. I’m eager to experience the final build of the game, which is expected to release on Jan. 23, 2025.
I’ve really been enjoying the game, and I think one of the things that stuck out to me was the art style. I love how there’s different art styles blended in. How did these various art styles for Synduality Echo of Ada come about?
Yosuke Futami: The world setting for Synduality was created for the game first. And you may or may not know this, but there’s an anime and manga as well for Synduality, and that is based off of the game. You’re in a world where people live underground, and the over-world (world above ground) is in ruins. So, you go out to the over-world to do your own thing. We took inspiration from somewhere in Europe for [setting] above the ground.
“The base concept for Synduality was observing how the interactions of humans and AI could go in different directions sometimes.”
When we were coming up with the whole world setting we had, we came up with a very comprehensive timeline for how things could have happened to end up where we are in this game world today. And with all this in mind, we hired an illustrator named Neco-san. He helped them come up with all the different art concepts and, and that’s how there’s multiple different art styles in the game which kind of fits in with the story as well.
And if you look at the Cradle Coffins, we wanted to design [it] like a tank. But we also wanted to make sure the feeling of the over-world was hard to traverse. So they implemented reverse joints for the legs. They don’t [a certain way], they go this way (gestures to reverse joints of a typical human anatomy). That’s part of the design as well. [The Cradle Coffins] also have little tracks that act as feet so [the art styles] are implemented into the designs of the Cradle Coffins as well.
The layers of the designs are amazing! Going deeper into the inspirations, where do the overarching concepts in Synduality Echo of Ada come from?
Yosuke Futami: The base concept for Synduality was observing how the interactions of humans and AI could go in different directions sometimes. A lot of times you see a game turn into anime and it follows the same story, or vice versa, and that is something we didn’t want to do. So we wanted to maintain that concept of human and AI interactions and how they could kind of go their different ways. But we wanted to show it in a different way, so same world setting, but different media and story.
“Think of the game as being like the prologue to the whole story.”
Think of the game as being like the prologue to the whole story. Technically, the anime is out too but we see in the game how the AI interacts with humans [in one way]. In the anime, which takes place roughly 20 years after the game, you see how the interactions between humans and AI have changed over the last 20 years.
The whole connection with humanity and AI is very interesting because I was curious how Synduality Echo of Ada is an extraction shooter, but it’s also about collecting crystals to make your garage more aesthetically-pleasing and liveable?
Yosuke Futami: For Synduality, the very first thing that came about again was the humanity versus AI aspect, and how they could not always agree on things. From there, they wanted to think of what the best game genre to convey that concept would be and obviously we ended up as an extraction shooter. But even before we came to the extraction shooter genre. I was thinking about the roguelike series Shiren the Wanderer. Are you familiar with those games?
No, but you can go on.
Yosuke Futami: Basically, you’re a person and you go down the dungeon. You take different steps to go deeper into the dungeon, collect items, take risks, and the goal is to try to go as deep as possible. And why I decided to go with a roguelike and decided to base [Synduality Echo of Ada) off of that title was because when you’re playing those games, you’re alone. You’re just doing all this by yourself. But wouldn’t it be interesting if you had an AI partner next to you and you were doing all these things together with them?
That’s where we kind of connect the dots. And obviously Shiren the Wanderer is not an extraction shooter, but it’s a roguelike, and you go deeper into the dungeon. So we’re not going down, we’re actually going up. But yeah, that’s kind of where the ideas came about. And another interesting twist that we wanted to add for [Synduality Echo of Ada] was what if we added other players to a roguelike, which is traditionally a one person game. We wanted to add another twist by adding extra players into this game.
For example, let’s just say you and I are playing a game. I’m looking for a pipe, and you are also looking for a pipe, and we see a pipe at the same time, and we’re looking at it. What are we going to do? Am I going to shoot you? Or are we going to be civil about it, and say, ‘Hey, could I have it or should I get the next one?’
We wanted to create these situations where players are also interacting with each other. Obviously there’s not a right answer [to situations]. I could be like, ‘Hey, Ridge, go ahead. That’s yours.’ Or I could be like, ‘Hey, Ridge, that’s just mine. Stay away!’ Through all these human interactions with the other players, you may or may not start to be wary of what other people are doing. So we wanted to create an environment where you put your full trust into AI because your AI is always looking out for your best interests. We wanted to create this partnership with the AI in the player.
Fascinating. I was going to say, there’s no chatbox or proximity chat either. There’s only emoting. So, will there be no voice chat at all then?
Yosuke Futami: No. There’s no chat at all. In this game, only your Magus is giving you information on other players. So again, let’s say I ran into you and you happen to be the most notorious player killer ever. My Magus is probably going to tell me this guy’s a PK. ‘You should probably watch out.’ The AI might also tell me, ‘Oh, they’re way stronger than you are, so don’t fight them.’ I don’t know word for word if they’ll say that but these kinds of [hints]. They’re always thinking about what’s in the best interest for you.
“We wanted to create an environment where you’re becoming fully reliant on your AI companion… your Magus is always only looking at your best interest.”
So again, we want to create an environment where you’re becoming fully reliant on your AI companion. Your Magus is always only looking at your best interest. My Magus does not care about you. You might be the nicest person and never killed anybody. But if you have that item that I’m looking for, my Magus will let me know.
I love how all of this adds to the human elements in Synduality Echo of Ada, and how this affects players’ minds. On a separate note, the other thing that stood out to me was the amazing sound design and music—especially the music in the garage. What was the thinking behind music and the sound design, and will players be able to change the music in their garage in the future?
Yosuke Futami: Yes, thank you for pointing that out. For Synduality, when we were creating the music for it, we actually created the music for the anime and the game at the same time. And today, you were playing the Amasia investigation mode. I’m pretty sure when you were in your garage, you heard the music and you liked that music.
I think the concept for this music is that when you’re underground, it’s a very comfortable place in the garage. Maybe not in the beginning, but when you’re able to make upgrades to make it a more comfortable place to live. At the end of the day, you’re underground, and there’s a sense of claustrophobia going on, right? And even though outside is a very dangerous place, everything’s open and you’re free.
So we wanted to create music that kind of wanted, there’s like that sense of adventure, of going outside into this dangerous, but at the same time, liberating, open world. That’s where the music comes from. And to answer your second part of the question, there is a way to change the music in your garage. One of the upgrades that you can make in your garage is some kind of sound facility…we’ll call it a sound facility for now, so we don’t spoil too much.
That’s awesome! I can’t wait to see and hear the upgrades. One last thing was how big the final maps are going to be Synduality Echo of Ada, and how many players would be the maximum per server?
Yosuke Futami: The northern area is roughly a four kilometer by four kilometer square. That translates to roughly 2.5 miles by 2.5 miles, which is pretty big. That’s just the North. South is also the same size, so another 2.5 times 2.5 which totals out to be 12.5 square miles. Shortly after the game releases, there’s going to be a map where the north and south are combined, so you’ll be able to access all that at the same time.
To answer your question regarding how many players on a server at a single time? The North and South maps will have 12 players each. When the maps come together, it’ll be a total of 24 players.
Okay, that makes sense because in one Sortie or run, I ran into a player a minute or two at the start of my run.
Yosuke Futami: Yeah, I think, on average, you’ll probably cross paths with one or two players in a 12-player server. But going back to what we talked about, we want the player to put their full trust into their Magus. Some interviewees asked, ‘Am I supposed to trust my Magnus?’ And we’re like, ‘Yes, please do.’
You don’t have to do as she says. She doesn’t tell you to do things. She tells you information like if there’s somebody near you or there’s an item near you. It’s up to you what you want to do with that information. And again, going back to how you run into one or two players, obviously, you could [emote] as a way to say something to them. Hopefully you don’t have an item that they’re looking for though because they might shoot you, or maybe for some reason, you had a bad day at work, and you want to shoot somebody.
It’s really up to you to decide on what to do. We want to see what kind of interactions are brought out because of the situation that we created in the game.
This game almost feels like a social experiment of trusting your AI companion wholeheartedly over other human players.
Yosuke Futami: Yeah, depending on how you look at it, it does indeed seem like a social experience. And I don’t know if you have Siri or Google or whatever at home, but I personally don’t ever doubt anything Siri tells me when I’m asking something. She tells me the answer [to things like] how many ounces in a cup? Eight, cool. But it’s an interesting microcosm of the world that we live in today.
There’s a lot of parallels to this game and the world that we live in today. People make decisions based on what an AI is telling us. Or we may go on their internet and go somewhere that somebody writes up something and take it as, ‘oh, cool, I should do this thing from now on.’ But we don’t know if it’s actually a person that’s writing this thing. It could be AI, but I think there are a lot of parallels to the world that we live in today with this game.
I really love that deeper meaning. Thank you so much for your time and wonderful, thorough answers. I can’t wait for it to launch.
Yosuke Futami: Thank you for interviewing us. The build that you played today is not a final build. We’re still constantly working on balancing up the game. We’ll continue to balance out the game in the Sorties and Amasia investigation mode. You may or may not have noticed that your weapon was breaking a lot. We still want the weapons to break, probably not as often. That’s huge feedback that we’ve been receiving.
That’s among many of the other adjustments we’ll be making to this game. I think there’s going to be more items that you could loot and whatnot too. So please do look forward to the game.
Awesome, will do. Thanks again so much!