Nintendo of Europe recently conducted an interview with Stephanie Langlois, the Senior Project Coordinator for Ubisoft, about their plans for Red Steel. Although most of the information has already been revealed in previous previews, a few interesting pieces of news came out.

First of all, it looks like there won’t be online play.

NoE: What can you tell us about Red Steel’s multiplayer mode?

SL: “It’s tough to discuss multiplayer in detail as it’s still a secret but there will be four-player split screen, but no LAN. Online will maybe one day be announced by Nintendo but it won’t be for the launch [of Red Steel]. In terms of gameplay I can’t reveal anything really but what I can say is that internally we are making tons of tests.”

This confirms the rumors that we’ve been hearing about Nintendo not sharing their WFC libraries with 3rd party developers. Another rumor that has been floating around has been squashed, Red Steel will make use of the controller’s speaker.

NoE: Are you using the Wii Remote’s built-in speaker for gun and sword sounds?

SL: “Yes it will be used in single player and multiplayer. When you hit with your sword the sound will come from you, as in reality, instead of the screen. So there is simple use like that or more complex use, as you will discover later.”

In an interview with Nintendo-Lan.de, a couple of other interesting tidbits popped up.

The sword fighting has been completely reworked. Instead of the odd series of button presses shown in the E3 demo, the sword actually corresponds to controller movements.

That’s the case indeed. A developer has confirmed that the control scheme will be completely redesigned so that the controller moves are converted into the game precisely. Besides the controller sensitivity will be completely adjustable in the final version. And the graphics were improved very well since E3, now the atmosphere is much more darker and thrilling. But that’s not all, there will be even more improvements on the graphics side.

Also, Red Steel will not have load times. In fact, Wii will have the shortest load times of any of the new consoles.

In Red Steel there will be no loading times at all because of smart streaming techniques. How it’s handled in other Wii games we can’t say at the moment. But it’s a fact that Mario Strikers Charged will have loading times similar to the Gamecube version of the game. We were not told if that will be changed in the future. But we’re sure that it will work like on the Gamecube. And as you know the loading times on Gamecube - if they have existed at all - actually were not a big deal.

Transcript of NoE Interview
Nintendo-Lan.de talks to Ubisoft