Feelings of MOTHER 3

Part 2

Itoi: Another reason I wanted to try making MOTHER 3 again is, well... it’s hard to explain. But it feels like MOTHER, as a game, has come to feel surprisingly like something under collective ownership.

Itoi: Right. But—and this is the important part, if not a bit complicated—I don’t necessarily want it to crumble under the weight of its fans. Or rather, I don’t want people oversimplifying it by simply declaring that MOTHER belongs to everyone. Whenever a band makes it big and I hear fans say things like, "We're the ones who made them," that doesn’t sit quite right with me. The band put a hell of a lot of work into it. And with MOTHER and MOTHER 2, those of us who made the game are proud of our creation.

Itoi: But. (Laughs) It’s the same thing with Hobonichi. Both with MOTHER and Hobonichi in particular, there are certain aspects that simply cannot be described as solely the result of our own efforts. That is, now that email is part of our everyday life, when you’ve got people saying it was good, bad, made them laugh, made them cry, that all makes it to us directly. That’s the environment in which we’re doing our work.

Itoi: Especially since MOTHER 1+2 came out three years ago, I’ll hear that someone’s son played it, or an actor I meet at work will tell me he played the game a ton back then, or I’ll meet someone who tells me about their experience, or I’ll get emails that bring tears to my eyes. And that’s when I know that this is more than just us. It certainly carries a lot of weight, but even more than that, it carries joy.

Itoi: And amid all that, there’s MOTHER 3. We’d had a roundtable discussion upon its cancellation, but back then, it felt like we were speaking from somewhere else in some kind of dream... This is just me talking, but even having done that, I hadn’t quite felt a full sense of closure.

Itoi: I still had all the memories from it. I mean, MOTHER 3 had been left unfinished. No matter how much of a resolution we may have reached procedurally, I’ll never be able to forget all the people who refused to accept it as a resolution. (Laughs)

Itoi: The fan response was incredible. Both when we cancelled MOTHER 3, and later when we released MOTHER 1+2. Sure, there were people who were angry, and cried about it, but that’s all because of MOTHER. There were even more fans who were light-hearted. And when we announced that we’d begun development again, we asked people to wait quietly. And they did.
With the internet so developed these days, there’s a certain sense of melancholy when negative opinions flood in so easily and stick around to create a sort of gray area. Then, right when we’re lamenting how gray is not white, the noise fades away. Hearing from the fans amidst all that, though, was really a lifesaver.
If I take a look at my entire life, the MOTHER series is what will always be remembered. It’s only natural to feel that way. So I couldn’t get myself to face all those people with such deep feelings on the matter and say, “I can’t do this after all.” I decided to carve out my own time—which Takaaki Matsumoto refers to as a “job that starts at 1 AM”—and take it on. Boy, that was a long-winded answer. (Laughs)

Itoi: I didn’t want to give an oversimplified answer of just “It’s thanks to everyone,” so it got a bit long, but if I summarize it, that’s how it comes out. (Laughs)

Itoi: And just to add, I consider myself one of the people included when I say “everyone.”