Development

Koudelka had quite an interesting development process, and much of the game's design was innovative for its time. It was created by Kikuta Hiroki, who was mainly known as a composer, having done the scores for games like Romancing SaGa and the Mana series. Kikuta opened his own studio called Sacnoth with other former Square employees in 1997 and began development on Koudelka. The development team consisted of about 30 people.

Kikuta wanted to do something different from the typical turn-based RPG combat that was popular at the time. His initial plan was a real-time battle system with free movement and an interactive environment. His employees from Square were reluctant to try this, however, and convinced him to fall back on traditional RPG elements. Kikuta later regretted giving in, but the game was ultimately shipped with a turn-based combat system on a grid and random encounters.

Personally, I wish Kikuta had been able to stick with his original plan. While Koudelka is my favorite game of all time, its combat is admittedly its weakest point. There are aspects of it that I like, such as the ability to customize each character's stats, but I would have preferred a more active combat scenario, and I think it would've added some much-needed challenge to the game. Art director Itakura Matsuzo even admitted the game was too easy in an interview with GameSpot, stating, "It was our intention that even adults, who don't usually play video games, could see the ending of the game. For that reason, we've made the battle system a little easier, but it could have been a bit more complicated."

One aspect of development in which Koudelka was highly innovative was its character models and their animations. Sacnoth used motion capture, which was a fledgling technology at the time, to add drama to each scene and make the characters' physical movements more realistic. Sacnoth collaborated with Futurelight, a technical studio out of Los Angeles, for the motion capture.

The sound was recorded at the same time as the motion capture, with sound engineer Keith Garcia at the helm, and Sacnoth hired theatre actors. The end result is that watching Koudelka's scenes often feels like viewing a stage play. The animations are dynamic and engaging, and the voice acting is dramatic in the best way. It really suits the Gothic setting and the intensity of the narrative.

Coming soon!

Coming soon!