Interview – Talking Ys and Trails Through Daybreak with Nihon Falcom’s Toshihiro Kondo

thesixthaxis.com:

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to join the team from Nihon Falcom at a preview event to talk about and play Ys X: Nordics and Trails Through Daybreak II. It was incredible to play both of these (at the time) unreleased titles, and the day gave me a not-inconsequential desire to play more of Daybreak II, but I have to wait until February 2025 for that! Another part of the day was getting to sit down with the president of Nihon Falcom, Toshihiro Kondo, to discuss these two upcoming games and his role within the company. As a huge Ys fan, I was more than happy to oblige, and you can find this full interview below. Please note that this interview was performed via an interpreter, and as such I have made some amendments for brevity and clarity.

TSA: Thank you so much for inviting me in and allowing me to come in and chat with you both. It’s been an amazing day. And, wow, there’s now games that I need to play, and that’s a problem. I’ll start with a kind of, like, really kind of big open question, and I’ll kind of make it a little bit more specific.

I think one of the biggest questions, and one of the things I always find really interesting to ask folks in the games industry, especially people in your position, is what inspires you as a games industry veteran. Are there any particular kind of movies or other games or anything that kind of really inspire you when it comes to your work? 

TK: So that’s a difficult question. A lot of the inspiration comes from the anime and manga that I read and watched as a child. Another thing would be recent films or things that I’m exposed to when working on a given game.

In the case of Ys, which has kind of a pseudo history theme going with it, there’s a lot of history things that I will reference when working on it. This then becomes inspiration as things like this are probably impossible to avoid in daily life. Whatever I have been watching or reading at the time would kind of have a way of creeping into my work as