Though From Software was no stranger to mecha games at that point, interestingly enough, Metal Wolf Chaos didn't come out of the Armored Core team. As Takeuchi explained, the developers took notes.
"It was actually a different team from the Armored Core guys, but we did receive some advice from them about how to go about making a different kind of mecha game. A little bit more action-based, a little more arcadey. So we took some advice and some reference from them in order to see how we might make that happen. In terms of reaction, it was quite fun because people knew what sort of game it was becoming, but they had no idea about the protagonist or the crazy story. We think they were pleasantly surprised. It was a nice harmony between the two teams."
"At the time it was a team of 30 who made the original Metal Wolf Chaos in about 11 months, so it was very compact and short-term," he continued. "Nowadays you might have people who are more specialist –someone who does the animation, someone who does texture."