One of the reasons .hack is interesting is not just because of the main story, but because of the extra stuff like the news stories. In .hack//G.U. there's a story about GPS tracking chips in kids; recently, on US TV, there has been a commercial for a GPS cell phone for your kids, so you can track them. We were wondering how you find the inspiration for these news stories - they seem to be what's going on right now.

Matsuyama: Essentially, we did that on purpose. The setting in the game is near future. It's not like 100 years from now, it's about 10 or so years from now. So we kind of guess and pinpoint what is going to come out in that time frame, based on real technology now, or technology that we could see being realistic within that time frame. Since it is a game, if we went 100 years from now, it would kind of lose that pseudo-reality aspect, so we try to keep it within when we can still keep that reality aspect of it with the news, but then still have the game itself. So everything was done with all of that in mind.

But it's not just that it's realistic or believable but it's socially relevant. The news stories seem to strike a chord, and we were wondering where that comes from.

Uchiyama: We obviously do everything with this in mind. To keep them socially acceptable, within the social boundaries of how today's world is. That's kind of relevant if you look at the game, a lot of things like how there are emoticons in the discussions, to the news and information - things that are hot topics right now, or things that we foresee being hot topics. We try to keep it in that realm of reality, so that when people play the game they can think that this is possible, or these are things that are coming up, or things are even maybe happening today, like you said, with the GPS thing. We kind of went through that, thinking through things thoroughly and bringing them into the game.

Matsuyama: For example, the forums that are in the game. In Japan, we have a concept team that focuses on that, with me also involved. We went through and made 100 topics for discussion. From there, within that group, we picked and chose what would impact the game the best. We did a lot of research and said "OK, these may be coming up" or... something that people are starting to discuss. From the 100, we kind of narrowed it down to things that would impact people the most, and implement those into the game.

Also, as for ones that we've actually cut out, there are some that are currently available or that people are looking into. For example, there's a technology for a synthetic arm that can simulate a real arm. Kids these days will see that and say "ahh, that's not true!" because they're not really reading up on that. But as for the GPS cell phone, these kids are going to be able to click right onto it right away. We take things that relate to people and that people can get into without thinking too much about it. Even though things may be relevant or realistic - even in the realm of reality that's going on now - they might be harder for people to grasp. We've chosen carefully.

Uchiyama: That's a place where Namco Bandai's marking worked team really well with us.

At Tokyo Game Show last year we had noticed Haseo seems much more aggressive, and that certainly has proved to be the case. The character is much bolder than [original .hack lead] Kite was. Can you talk a little bit more about why the decision was made to make such a different type of main character this time?

Matsuyama: As discussed last year at TGS, for the previous series of .hack it was the first attempt and we wanted something more of a clean slate - the first attempt for this kind of system, type of environment and world. So we kept it very simple so people could get into it and understand it right off the bat.

However, within the new series, .hack//G.U., we wanted someone a little more eccentric, more emotional. That's why in the game all the sudden Haseo might become a little upset, or depressed, or something like that. So we created a character like that so people might get attached to and relate to the emotional aspect of it. That's one of the first things we decided upon after the end of the previous series.

Last time you worked with other external creators on it - this time, too - but would you say that CyberConnect 2 has more control over .hack this time around?

Matsuyama: What you said is correct. For the previous series, since it was our first foray into this whole project, we worked very closely with [character designer] Yoshiyuki Sadamoto [Neon Genesis Evangelion] and [scenario writer] Kazunori Ito [Ghost in the Shell ]. But it's been four years since then. To put it bluntly - they're still involved in it, but not as involved in it as the previous series. That was CyberConnect's time into this, but from there we've gotten a lot more experience with this whole thing.

For example, Haseo's character has been created by CyberConnect, but whenever we finished some artwork we'd take it to Sadamoto-san and get his input and his comments. We'll be like, "What do you think of this character?" and he'll be like "Maybe you should change this, or add this part here." So we still get input from everybody else. But your comment is correct; we get input from everybody else.

Now, this is just for [GamesRadar]. If you look at the E3 2005 trailer, when we first made the worldwide announcement, there's a hint of where Sadamoto-san made some input into the game. If you look at the trailer, you can see that Haseo doesn't have any markings on his face. After that trailer was made, we brought in Sadamoto-san to get his input, and he said that since the character's face is the major point of the character of itself, we should put some markings on it. The first version doesn't have any markings.