Two weeks ago, Koei Tecmo and Gust announced BLUE REFLECTION Quartet, a special compilation title of the BLUE REFLECTION series, set to launch on July 30 for PC (Steam), PS5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Tying together refreshed versions of all four entries in the Blue Reflection series (including a fully gamified version of the anime), Quartet will have a bunch of extra content, additional features, and quality-of-life improvements.
To commemorate the big announcement and celebrate the franchise’s 9th anniversary, AUTOMATON interviewed illustrator Mel Kishida, who told us more about the background of the title’s rather unconventional approach to development.
“I still think Blue Reflection is a strange game […] If you play it thinking it’s just a normal RPG, I’m pretty sure you’re going to be like Huh, what even is this? And partly due to the fact that it has taken on many different shapes, like a console game, anime and a live-service game, I think sometimes it’s difficult for the franchise to convey what it’s actually trying to do,” Kishida comments. In this sense, Blue Reflection Quartet is meant to assemble all of these stories told through various media forms into a more “cohesive” package.
However, as Kishida suggests, the multimedia storytelling isn’t the only thing that makes Blue Reflection stand out as an odd work in Gust’s catalogue. “First of all, we didn’t develop the title in an orthodox way (laughs) […] When we tried laying out all the possibilities [in terms of development], we ended up with a strange approach from the start, so yeah, the result also ended up being unusual,” Kishida explains.
Originally, the Blue Reflection project was envisioned as a “proper RPG,” but when Gust, Kishida and other development staff started compiling all of the elements they wanted to include in the game (a school setting, a story featuring only high school students, magical form), the production quickly turned into a pursuit of “something they wanted to create the most” within the scope of their capabilities.
As for how strange the development process actually was, Kishida explains that the first thing the development team for Blue Reflection did when starting on the game’s production was a thorough “fetish meeting.”
“The first thing we did was a fetish meeting where everybody discussed their fetishes (laughs). If we’re going to make something, there’d be no point in half-assing it, so we tried to push things to the absolute limit. There are many different types of fetishes, which is why we started by getting everyone on the same page. And we were serious about it. It’s a weird game, so I think people who want to play weird games will appreciate it.”
Being a game that really falls into the niche of what developers at Gust truly wanted to make, Blue Reflection is, in spirit, “an indie game,” despite hailing from a major developer, Kishida suggests. “I think we were able to create a title that is conceptually an indie game even though it was released by a major video game company. I don’t think anything similar will come out in the future, and I believe we managed to make something truly unique, something both us and the players would call a once in a lifetime game.”
BLUE REFLECTION Quartet is scheduled to release on July 30 for PC (Steam), PS5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.
