In an interview with Weekly Sega Voice, producer Takao Miyoshi and director Satoshi Sakai talked about their upcoming RPG title, Phantasy Star Universe. During the interview Miyoshi explained that he would recommend first playing through the story mode (which is said to last about 40 hours), before tackling the network mode. That would allow players to get used to the game's system. As far as teaching users how to play Phantasy Star Universe, the game's heroine Karen was specifically created for this task. Sakai revealed that the 17-year old blue-haired girl was originally not even set to appear in the game. Since the team however wanted to implement a supervising character assisting protagonist Ethan, Karen was created. Only afterwards, did the team decide to make her the game's heroine. Her implementation apparently also added another layer of depth to the game's story.

Sakai also revealed that the team spent a lot of time thinking about whom to cast as voice actors. Eventually the team agreed on a group of high-profile voice actors and actresses. So high-profile in fact, that they believed it would be impossible to have all of them lending their voices to Phantasy Star Universe's characters. Eventually the team however got its wish and succeeded in bringing in almost all the desired voice actors.

Asked about the difference between PlayStation 2 and PC version, producer Miyoshi explained that both were basically identical. Three features however will be PC-exclusive: The keyboard support, the option to change the game's visual settings (resolution, number of characters displayed on screen) and the function to take screenshots.

Phantasy Star Universe will be available in Japan on August 31st. The Xbox 360 version has yet to receive an official release date. Both, the PlayStation 2 and PC version will retail for 6,800 yen ($59.44 US).

• Official Sega Website