One of the most prominent features in Sony’s upcoming multiplayer action game, Freedom Wars, is the android AI assistants who will be helping you fight the giant beasts in the game and rescue civilians. During an interview with Famitsu magazine, three key developers talked about these androids while discussing customization and multiplayer.

God Eater developer Shift’s game designer Toshiyuki Yasui, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 developer Dimps’ director Takashi Tsukamoto, and SCE World Wide Studio’s Junichi Yoshizawa begin by sharing a little information on the game’s multiplayer features.

“Freedom Wars will allow up to 8 players to play together, but each player will have their android partners, called ‘Accessories,’ so when you’re playing with 8 people, there will actually be 16 characters moving at once,” says Yoshizawa on the subject of teaming up with allies.

“At first, we also thought ‘can you really do that on PS Vita?’” shares Tsukamoto with a laugh. “However, in addition to the main characters, Yasui and the others wanted the Accessories, weapons, clothing, and faces to be customizable as well.”

“Not only [can you customize] your Accessories’ looks, but you can also enter your own words, and the get your Accessories to say them out loud using synthesized speech,” adds Yasui. To us, this sounds like a feature that would only really work in Japanese, due to it being a language that consists almost entirely of syllables, which means there’s very little room for mispronunciation.

“You can make them call you ‘Master,’ or have them say ‘No’ in a tsundere-like fashion, so everyone will get to freely set their Accessories’ lines any way they like,” emphasizes Tsukamoto. “Things such as weapons can also be customized, so taking that and going into cooperative or competitive multiplayer will also be something to look forward to.”

Additionally, Yasui mentions that while he can’t say more for the time being, the developers will be sharing more information on the game in the near future. He also says that so far, the game has such so much content that he doubts they’ll even be able to announce everything by the time of its release.

Finally, the Freedom Wars developers share a message for the fans:

Yasui: “The theme of the game is ‘suppression and freedom’. Please look forward to seeing what kind of freedom awaits you at the end of your million-year prison sentence.” Tsukamoto: “Slice, shoot, and save civilians. Our goal is to make a multiplayer action game we’ve yet to see. By the end of the year, there will be an opportunity to try it out, so please let us know what you think when the time comes.” Yoshizawa: “Being able to play for a short while, a long time, together with friends, or against them—such a freedom in play-style is another one of the game’s themes, so we’re working on making something that different people can enjoy. As Tsukamoto mentioned, during an event towards the end of the year, we’re expecting to have our first demo available for you to play, so we’d love it if you could try out the game’s first action part we’ve worked on.”

Freedom Wars is slated for release in 2014 for PlayStation Vita.