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Anime NYC 2017 Fate/Grand Order Panel Q&A

Welcome to Haku Channel! Full of dreams and memes, we have the FGO Panel Q&A from Anime NYC!

If you haven't read the Panel Report yet, you should really do that first!

Do you think you’ll ever able to bring Gudako, the manga mascot, to any of these conventions?

Do you really want to see a mascot start killing people?

Okay… Shishou, you heard that right?

How many people actually want us to bring that mascot over?

YEAAAHH

Okay… Lauren, can you take a picture of people raising their hand?

Say we want GU-DA-KO!

We want GU-DA-KO!

We want GU-DA-KO!

We want GU-DA-KO!

We got Japan now. There’s no way they can say no!

We probably have to localize the manga first. It seems like we do have enough interest. Now that we finished GUDAGUDA and got a lot of positive feedback, it’s something we’ll look into. Most likely, I’m not saying 100%, but like 99.8% we’ll do the Learning With Manga!

Once we start doing it, it’ll be a nightmare to my brain, because we all know GUDA goes cray.

Once we get enough context, who knows, maybe we’ll bring it to the next convention season. We’ll just make sure everyone who enters the convention sign a waiver:

“In case a mascot from Aniplex of America kicks you in the face, you waive all liability and ability to sue us.”

Can I punched too, or just kicks?

The Mascot’s hands are kind of short, so only kicks. If you watched the videos, I’m sorry Saber that the last time you tried to roundhouse-kick, you fell.

It’s okay, we still love you.

Are you bringing Apocrypha to NA?

Event or the anime? The anime is on Netflix right now.

The Summon!

Originally, we’re thinking about it, but Apocrypha hadn’t been released here in the US yet. Now that it’s on Netflix, it’s something we are thinking about.

We have to wait for the characters to catch up too. Or else we can’t put up Mordred, so what’s the point?

Coming Soon™

What are you going to put up for the New Year one now that we had the 10x Guaranteed Summons?

To be honest, I don’t know yet. It’s something we haven’t thought about. This is actually a very elaborate plan to take money from everyone.

*cough*

To make everyone happy, make our fanbase happy. We’re not in it for the money.

We value your honesty.

Will we ever get the animation updates early?

Yes. That doesn’t mean we’ll release it early. A lot of the animation updates we have in the game already are a lot earlier than the same point in time in Japan. We still have to figure out a good way to put in the animation updates.

This is just me speculating, but it’ll be a lot earlier than Japan. You probably don’t have to wait a year and half for Saber Alter’s update. I’m just not sure when they’re coming yet, but we’ll try to figure it out.

I need some advice: how do you train your Servants? Is there any advice you can give me?

How many Apples and Quartz you got?

Can you send Apples?

For Fate/Grand Order, there is an initial grinding curve you have to get through. If you just start to play the game, after the initial summons, for the new players you do get a booster of XP cards.

What I suggest for new players is find a Servant you really like. 3* or 4*, because we all know that 3* Cu is OP. Stella is really OP.

Find a character you really like, and pour all your available resource into that character to make sure he’s powerful enough to grind Ember Gathering, and just stay there.

Once your characters get to a minimum average of say, level 60, then go through the Story Quests. Story Quests have guaranteed material drops, pieces and monuments, when you clear them. Level 60s are a good point.

Find a friend with Waver, Level 90 Saber. I have a friend with Level 100 Gilgamesh.

Boo...

Gilgamesh

That guy whales.

Find a good friend that can carry you. Once you get to average Level 60, you can easily clear the Story Quests. Once you do, don’t miss the Events, because they can give you the materials and good money, QP.

Once you get over the initial curve, everything becomes easier.

I'll give you one minute to sell this game to a friend that doesn’t know Fate.

At all? That friend that says, “Why is King Arthur a girl?”

To be honest, it’s a very interesting game compared to others, other pay-to-win games. I don’t want to say Battlefront, but...

Fate/Grand Order, first of all, all the characters are based on historical characters. While we do have King Arthur as a girl, a lot of the settings and backgrounds stay true to their legends. Mr. Nasu did a lot of research, and all the writers did their research to make sure that the characters they’re portraying do reflect their actual legend. To people that really like history, they’ll find it fascinating, “Oh, they even put that legend in there?”. But we do have a very special spin on it as well.

The story is deep. It’s not like a lot of other mobile games that says they focus on the story, but the story takes 10 minutes to finish. We actually have a pretty elaborate story, and each chapter update is free. When you go through the stories, you stay with the characters, grow with the characters.

The story is good, and the characters are well designed. It’s not like you need a 5*. We all know everyone needs Scathach and Gilgamesh right now, but for those playing right now, if your favorite character is Cu Chulainn, he's still a very good character!

This game, as long as you put energy into it, every character, no matter the rarity it can be a good character. To be honest, even in my JP account, without Mash, without Anderson, I couldn’t go through a lot of battles… because I don’t have Waver on my JP account.

I don’t have Merlin.

I have two Wavers.

WHAT?

I think for [how you can always use your favorite characters], it’s worth trying. It’s easier on the wallet, well…

It’s definitely not pay-to-win. High rarity characters are not a necessity.

The battles at the beginning, you can just go Berserker BBB and kill everything, but later on, you have to think about strategy. Team Synergy becomes very important. You have to think about how to use the skills, and that becomes very challenging as well.

I hope your friend for whom you’re recording right now - which makes me very nervous by the way- can see this video and it sells it.

Fou, fou, fou!

(That answer took three minutes, Albert!)

Name one thing he needs to do to start.

Reset marathon please. I’m not saying he has to do it, but if your friend’s favorite Servant is say, Saber.

Time to get that reset marathon going.

Find your favorite Servant at the beginning. Without a favorite, it makes the grind a lot harder to do. But if you have a favorite, it feels like you’re the Master commanding your servants in the anime as well.

What about timings? Are the Strengthening Quests coming out years later? JP is getting their Heaven’s Feel promotion, where you go to the theaters. Most of us can’t go to Japan and travel the world like Okita. Are those events going to happen two years later, when Heaven’s Feel is no longer in theaters?

Those go different ways. For major content releases, they’ll go semi-according to Japan’s schedule. For all those stuff that can be shifted around, we’ll try to shift them around. You don’t have to wait two years for that.

For Extra/CCC, will you have to localize those like you did for GUDAGUDA Order first?

Well, for Extra/CCC, I’m not going to localize it on the PSP, a dead console. No one plays PSP anymore.

We’ll have to think of a different way of gives context, but we’ll definitely try to give context prior to the event for Extra/CCC.

When can we expect the change to the Saint Quartz amount in paid packs?

Those we will have to talk to Japan too, because it’s not just going to be in-game. We’ll have think about different kind of risk, and we’ll have to talk to legal as well. We’ll try to put that out, once we have that sorted out.

At any point of development or localization, did you ever think about fixing the drop rates?

So far from what I know - NO.

I actually have a present for you. You said something about not getting Waver on your JP account. This is Waver. *presents a Waver Card*

I actually have Waver on NA, but I’ll still take that present!

There’s an event coming up that parodies a certain big holiday Sci-Fi film. When you’re localizing, do they give you any leeway to get more into that franchise, or are you directly localizing what’s there?

There's a reason I sit on this seat and talk to you guys. I won’t say I’m the super-master of Fate. I know the Fate Universe to a certain extent. I played JP from Day 1, so I suffered through all of that.

For me, I know the context of the events that come out. I still play JP right now. That gives me enough context to know whether we need to put out additional materials, like GUDAGUDA Order or Extra/CCC. Right now at this point, I know what I need to do so players don’t just get a random event.

So no extra Star Wars-themed jokes in Saber Wars?

Actually... I might?

Because Star Wars is coming out, and we have Saber Wars. I might sneak some jokes in there.

Before we get back to furiously grinding GUDAGUDA Honnouji, we also got the chance to sit down and interview Albert on the future plans for Fate/North America! Check it out here!

Fou, fou!
(Please, Haku, we need more time to edit that!)

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Media: Hakurai