“For people in the United States, it can be like driving to Las Vegas from Los Angeles”

If you’re even remotely interested in the somewhat cryptic nature of splatoon lore, you’ll love this new interview with the Nintendo developer.

In a conversation between Hisashi Nogami (producer), Seita Inoue (co-director), Shintaro Sato (co-director), and Toru Minegishi (composer), we get a glimpse of what happens off-screen in the splatoon universe. After a brief description of what the franchise entails, they get to work.

A map of the Splatoon world

In what could be the highlight of the interview, the developers ponder where things actually sit in the splatoon world, including the new locales in Splatoon 3. The studio created a “tentative document” to fill in the world, and even has precise real-life distances in mind. Inoue notes, “As you can see, Inkopolis Plaza in the first title and Inkopolis Square in the second title are located in the heart of the city, and they’re as far away as Shibuya Station and Harajuku Station on the train in Tokyo. In terms of distance, it’s about 1.2 kilometers (about 0.75 miles).”

However, Splatsville (the third hub) is “in a faraway region” and has a “completely different climate.” Sato also explains where Splatsville is in relation to everything else:

“Splatsville is barely accessible from Inkopolis Plaza and Inkopolis Square by taking a single local train line. The distance is similar to that from Tokyo to Atami or thereabouts in Japan. It is in a rural area that would take a few hours to drive down the road. For people in the United States, it can be like driving to Las Vegas from Los Angeles. Although geographically quite distant, the roads that were opened in the five years between the second and third titles allow easy access to the area.

They also touch on a few other changes, namely how much Murch (a previously present character) has grown between splatoon 2 Y 3. Nogami provides a summary of why they decided to go with the time passing angle: “We wanted players to feel like time in the game passes with their own real lives. In that sense, we could say that it is a game franchise in which players and developers have walked side by side during the seven years since the first launch.

The team explains how the world’s sense of style also changed. If you want, you can read the full interview while you wait for another day to play. Splatoon 3.