In the latest developer's blog entry, Astral Chain main scenario writer Akiteru Naka once again takes the lead. In this edition, he reveals some pretty interesting trivia about the cast of colorful characters that the player meets along the way, along with plenty of other early concept development.

According to Naka, when he first developed the NPCs he "started out with one short concept to define each officer: their personality, how they speak, everything, summed up in one concise phrase." After that, each officer was fleshed out with input from the director and artists, but those simple foundational concepts remained unchanged.

We also find out that every Neuron member was originally paired up with someone else and given a Legion. Eventually it was decided that only a few officers should have Legions and, after realizing that two Legionless agents would have issues subduing chimera threats alone, the partner system was scrapped. However, traces of that concept still linger with certain pairs and their dialogue.

Vendor-3 is an interesting case of concept evolution. It was originally planned as two different types of vending machines, one being the standard Vendor-3 that players meet in Neuron HQ and the other a one-of-a-kind called Vendor-0 that was discarded until the Hermits of Zone 09 salvaged and hacked it to sell their own wares. But thanks to the feedback from the dev team it expanded to nine unique types, including an exclusive one located in the Astral Plane.

Another concept change revolved around Olive and Brenda. Back when the protagonists weren't twins, those two ladies were instead. But once it was decided that Akira and the hero would be twins, Olive and Brenda were no longer sisters but remained close.

For those interested, there are several previous developer blogs that delve deeper into the title: localization, UV animation, changes to mission structurevisual effectssound designart directionthe music, and the environments themselves.

The title received some lovely post-launch artwork from both the NieR:Automata and Bayonetta’s character designers. The official PlatinumGames Twitter account also released new art from the studio’s main artist Hajime Kimura, celebrating the title’s success.

Astral Chain launched exclusively for Nintendo Switch and you can order it right now on Amazon. If you need some more convincing before you do, check out our review of the game here.