PALGN: Firstly, can you please introduce yourself and your role on Naruto: Rise of a Ninja?
SP: I am Sébastien Puel, Producer of Naruto, Rise of a Ninja.
PALGN: Can you please tell us a little bit about how Rise of a Ninja is different from the other Naruto titles released on several other platforms?
The best looking Naruto game yet.
SP: Rise of the Ninja is the first title built from the ground up for new generation consoles. Of course, the power of the X360 allows us to do things that have never been tried before on a Naruto game like a fully open, entirely navigable city or integrate a complete fight engine along with platforming and RPG elements.
In the end, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja feels radically different than other Naruto games. I hope it will be the opportunity for a new crowd to discover and appreciate Naruto’s world.
PALGN: Rise of a Ninja is exclusive to the Xbox 360, can you explain to us the reason behind the game being exclusive to the Xbox 360? Wouldn’t it make more sense to bring the game to a platform which is more successful in Japan?
SP: We did not develop the game with a specific market in mind – like Japan. But we realized since the beginning that the manga community – one of the most active on the internet – has very scarce opportunities to play online. We wanted to offer, for the first time, a place for manga fans to exchange and play. As we talk, Xbox Live is the best place for such ambitions.
PALGN: What sort of environments from the anime series will feature in Rise of a Ninja?
SP: We wanted Naruto: Rise of a Ninja to be very true to the manga and anime. So, the vast majority of environments are directly taken from the anime. We had the chance to be given a huge library of references by the creators of the series, so from there we only had to work hard on porting it into a 3D living world.
The look of death.
PALGN: Will the game support downloadable content at all? For say new characters?
SP: Yes, the game will offer downloadable content and there will be new characters added to the fight mode.
PALGN: Will the game force players into battles or will they be able to roam around exploring the Naruto universe?
SP: Actually both. We wanted the player to feel as in Naruto’s skin. So Naruto has to explore his world, go on mission and ultimately, if he wants to progress, test his newly acquired strength in fights.
PALGN: When developing your character what sort of options will be open to players?
SP: Players will be able to develop different kind of strategies: you will be able to acquire offensive scrolls or defensives scrolls or rather invest in weaponry. Same goes for trainings as you will have the choices to develop close combat skills or ‘Jutsus’ – special technics. In the end there is a vast array of options and I doubt 2 players will have exactly the same fighter at the end of the game – and hence different strategies.
Step into the shoes of Naruto.
PALGN: How far into the anime series will the game go?
SP: We wanted to cover a story arch that really made the player feel a great progression. You start the game at episode one – as a dropout, rejected by your village. Thanks to your efforts, you will progress and in the end – which corresponds to episode 80 in the anime – you will be able to demonstrate your strength and mastery during the Gaara fight. In between you have the choice of the strategies you want to develop to reach your goal.
PALGN: And finally, why is it that Naruto fans should be excited about Rise of a Ninja?
SP: Well, we should maybe ask them first
I think that for the first time, the hardware allows us to fully and accurately represent the manga world. Additionally, Ubisoft has put a lot of effort – time and money – to give Naruto fans a game at the same level of quality than the best game franchises out there. We know the franchise is popular – but we don’t count on this to sell games. We want people to buy Rise of the Ninja because they know it’s a high quality production.
PALGN would like to thank Chad at Ubisoft for helping to coordinate the interview. We'd also like to thank Sébastien Puel for his time.
. Talk about a waste of money. So i just looked on the net and lucky i found a map of all the people 
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