Yoko Taro wanted Drakengard to stand out against Square Enix's flagship franchises Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Drakengard's development proved so stressful that Taro swore off working on a sequel at the time.

Yoko Taro had planned the game for two DVD discs, but time constraints forced the team to reduce its size to one disc and remove a jump feature which could not be debugged within the deadline. Īs Enix went through its merger with Square, the team's advisory board was repeatedly asked to change the game's content, but Saito refused most of the requests. Redesigning Drakengard caused setbacks in development, as the team had trouble running the transitions between melee and flying modes in the ground levels. As a result, the game had to be redesigned to balance ground levels and aerial levels, while adding flying mechanics to the former.

Midway through development, the success of Dynasty Warriors 2 inspired Shiba to push for the inclusion of ground battles. He consulted with Enix producer Yosuke Saito, who flew to Los Angeles to pitch the game to Sony at the E3 event when Saito arrived, the Sony staff on-site had gone through so many pitches that, out of exhaustion, they approved Drakengard without reviewing it. Taro worried that the dark tone of Drakengard's story would hamper the game's release. Yoko Taro had joined the project as art director, but his art did not impress the team since Iwasaki was too busy with other projects at the time, Taro was assigned to direct the game and write its script alongside Sawako Natori. īefore Drakengard, Iwasaki and Shiba had no experience with creative writing. The development team assigned to Drakengard was named Project Dragonsphere. With Enix's support, Iwasaki quit Namco after completing Electrosphere and founded Cavia with Shiba. In 1999, during a night out at the bar, Enix producer Takamasa Shiba and Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere director Takuya Iwasaki brainstormed an aerial combat game with dragons.

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