Right after this morning’s talk, Mr. Toffee manages to have a chat with Ninja Theory’s Chief Development Ninja, Nina Kristensen.

GameAxis: How did Sony enter into the picture when it came to Heavenly Sword?

Nina Kristensen: At the time while we’re under the Just Add Monsters moniker, the PS3 and Xbox 360 weren’t out. It was very hard for publishers to understand what they were looking at; whether it was appropriate for something to be considered “next-gen” or not. We showed it to a lot of publisher, but it was Sony who wounded up digging it. A major contribution to that was because Sony knew what the PS3 was. They were looking at Heavenly Sword and they went “Yeah, that’s what our console should be like.”

It was really hard. If I said that we’ll be doing these amazing things in our game, publishers would go “Well….I don’t know if that’s viable”. There’s really nothing to compare it against at the time.

GAX: Being a professional in the business, creating a new IP is very risky. Heavenly Sword did pretty well for itself. What helped raise it above that stigma?

NK: A lot of the success came from a deep passion from within Ninja Theory. In our desire to form what we have, we manage to form great collaborations. Andy Serkis is certainly a huge example of that, and apart from directing the dramatic scenes, he also hooked us up with people from Weta Workshop and instrumental in casting. And he cared deeply about the game; those collaborations raised the calibre of the game.

And for us going forward, we’ve retained that relationship with Andy. We’ve also kept in contact with composer Nitin Sawhney (The Namesake, Living Goddess). Our foley house is in New York; we found them while we’re working on Heavenly Sword. I think all of these collaborations helped raise the quality of our game, as well as bring them into our industry.

GAX: Looking back, were there any things you wished to change about the game at all?

NK: We know that the game’s not perfect. The game’s never going to be perfect; there’s always something you can do better. If you think you’ve made a perfect thing, you’d probably stop bothering. Obviously, people wanted Heavenly Sword to be longer. I certainly would give the players more, but I wouldn’t want to pad the game out with rubbish. I’d rather have the experience shorter and better. On a personal level, I’d appreciate a short game because I get to finish it. But I appreciate the people’s thoughts on value over money when it comes to the length of a game.

GAX: How about the future of Heavenly Sword’s world and story? Will there be a future for Heavenly Sword after your next project?

NK: The Heavenly Sword IP is still with Sony, so we’re now moving on to new things.