Okay guys, now I’m waiting for Nier Replicant to download is the right time to resurrect this thread, consider this post a crossover with the recent one dedicated to those beautiful games of that beautiful man.
So here is the thing, it wouldn’t make much sense for there to be a connection between Drakengard, and by extension Nier, and the Ace Combat games. Well, YOU ARE WRONG.
In 1999, during a night out at the bar, Enix producer Takamasa Shiba and Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere director Takuya Iwasaki brainstormed an aerial combat game with dragons. With Enix’s support, Iwasaki quit Namco after completing Electrosphere and founded Cavia with Shiba. The development team assigned to Drakengard was named Project Dragonsphere.
Before Drakengard, Iwasaki and Shiba had no experience with creative writing. Taro Yoko had joined the project as art director, but his art did not impress the team; since Iwasaki was too busy with other projects at the time, Taro was assigned to direct the game and write its script alongside Sawako Natori.
Taro worried that the dark tone of Drakengard’s story would hamper the game’s release. He consulted with Enix producer Yosuke Saito, who flew to Los Angeles to pitch the game to Sony at the E3 event; when Saito arrived, the Sony staff on-site had gone through so many pitches that, out of exhaustion, they approved Drakengard without reviewing it.
Midway through development, the success of Dynasty Warriors 2 inspired Shiba to push for the inclusion of ground battles. As a result, the game had to be redesigned to balance ground levels and aerial levels, while adding flying mechanics to the former. Redesigning Drakengard caused setbacks in development, as the team had trouble running the transitions between melee and flying modes in the ground levels.
As Enix went through its merger with Square, the team’s advisory board was repeatedly asked to change the game’s content, but Saito refused most of the requests. Taro Yoko had planned the game for two DVD discs, but time constraints forced the team to reduce its size to one disc and remove a jump feature which could not be debugged within the deadline. Drakengard’s development proved so stressful that Taro swore off working on a sequel at the time.
So yeah, this is basically the reason why:
1) The dragon sections are the only part of Drakengard that actually doesn’t suck (Drakengard is one of my favorite games guys, but we must accept the truth).
2) We got the E ending conceived and presented the way it is, with a couple of jet fighters shooting down the protagonist and Angelus, as a homage to this franchise.
3) This is an unlockable in the game: