Digimon Story: Time Stranger, launching on October 3 for PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, is the series’ first new standalone entry in 10 years. Although fans got an expansion for Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth in the meantime, the Digimon team wanted to put out a brand-new title much sooner. In a recent interview with GameWatch, Digimon Story: Time Stranger producer Ryosuke Hara shared insights about the game’s development period.
According to Hara, the initial idea for Time Stranger was already formed around the time the Hacker’s Memory expansion came out in 2017. From there, developing the game took about 7 to 8 years, but Hara cites an unexpected cause for the prolonged dev cycle – the narrative. “We actually wanted to release it sooner, but what took the most time was fleshing out the game’s setting in order to really highlight the game’s central theme: ‘the bond between humans and Digimon,’ as well as building a story and world centered around the Olympos XII.”
Time Stranger’s narrative and central theme are what Hara hopes players will pay attention to the most, and it’s designed to be engaging for both longtime Digimon fans and newcomers to the franchise. “It’s a story that can only be told through Digimon, and I think that when players finish it, they’ll understand what makes Digimon so special.”
That said, it’s not only the story that took so long to create – Time Stranger boasts the biggest roster of Digimon in the series’ history (over 450), with their respective 3D models and motions. Hara notes that while the team was able to reuse some motion data from Cyber Sleuth, they had to remake basically all of the 3D models due to the leap from the PS Vita to modern hardware. Aside from battle animations, each NPC Digimon that appears in town has unique motions, and mountable Digimon all have their own riding animations. “I genuinely feel like we were able to make this game thanks to the development team’s passion, or rather madness,” Hara comments.
Time Stranger’s gameplay follows the series’ format of exploration, monster training and turn-based battles, but with significant improvements to playability and game balance. Based on player feedback from past entries, the team has implemented a new Attachable Skill system that lets you customize your Digimon’s abilities. This is meant to add a more strategic dimension to the battles and tackle the issue of specific Digimon feeling overpowered.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger launches October 3 for PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S,
