Mistwalker is about to sell 1,000,000 copies

[Dodece]

@Naznatips

You really need to understand the design nature of these titles. Specifically what they do not have to do that other games in other genres are required to do. First the fixed camera angles allow the developer to bypass real virtual world design. These are not full three dimensional environments. Actually they get by in many cases rendering less then half of an environment. The lack of perspective change even allows the environments to behave like two dimensional back grounds the worlds only have implied depth. The battles are actually fought against two background plates. A environment basically cannot get any simpler then this.

There are no complex physics engines at work. Your character can move in the cardinal directions, open boxes, open doors, climb ladders, and push objects. That is simplicity itself. You can't really put it more succinctly these games were not designed around complex physical interactions.

The artificial intelligence would be laughable in any other genre. The enemy moves towards you or merely appears. In the combat arenas they go through a set list of animated moves. Which are recycled between the same battle, and all battles in general.

The games are really simplicity themselves the nature of their design allows them to make due with a lot less development effort then say a Bioshock, Mass Effect, or even a Fable. The difference is in walking around in a city, and walking around in front of a picture of a city. Walking around in front means you don't ever have to build the city or have a real complex interaction with it. That is the best analogy I can give you. I suppose if you cannot understand why a title like Lost Odyssey is comparatively simple when compared to other titles in other genres. Well I am not sure how else I could explain it.

By the way three plus years allows for a year of design and storyboard. While the rest of the time is Freeplus spreading its resources over many different projects its not like the hundred person staff is working on that specific title all the time. Nobody does that except the absolute smallest studios. Everyone else works on multiple titles at the same time. That is how you make games efficiently. You don't have the background artist just sitting there waiting till its his turn in the chain. They have him working on another game at the time. Development at its best is far from a linear process.