Source: Gyakuten Saiban 4 official site
Images are taken from the source article. Copyrights belongs to the respective owners.
About The New Features
Hello. My name is Endō, and it’s my first time working on the Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) series.
I still remember that when I heard that they were going to develop Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney 4 – Apollo Justice), I went to a Capcom bigwig so they could sneak me in the team.
Endō: Please, I want to join the Gyakuten Saiban 4 team.
Bigwig: Well, but, you know…
Endō: Oh, yeah, I once shared a yakisoba with Mr. Takumi! Look here, a photo of that!
Bigwig: … Endō.
Endō: Yes?
Bigwig: You’d better not show that picture to other people. It… it’s easily misunderstood.
Was it the picture of the yakisoba that had worked? Anyway I safely managed to join the development team of Gyakuten Saiban.
For those who have just joined their companies, I recommend you taking photographic evidence if you go have a meal with your bosses. You never know when they might come in handy.
***
Let’s talk about making Gyakuten Saiban 4. New features that fit a new Gyakuten Saiban. How these ideas turned out? I’ll talk about them as I dig through my muddy memory.
Right after development was decided, we had three planners. It was a very Humanities-like set-up, as we all loved mystery fiction, and hated exercise. We were the irregulars among all the brawlers in Capcom (← just my own personal image). We had heated discussions, and ideas for new features kept coming up.
“What about a situation where a lot of bullets are shot within a small room, and you’d need to figure out the exact order?”
“It might look nice if we could show the trajectory of the bullets in 3D!”
“What about a composite picture? Reconstructing the face of the suspect yourself…”
“And the face you’ve completed is that of somebody very unexpected!”
“What about a power where you could “see” the monetary value of everything, like testimonies and evidence?”
“There'd be 100 yen lighter, but then you’d go: 'But this is worth 500 thousand yen!' And there's a suspicious fingerprint on the other side!”
From normal ideas for mystery fiction, to totally unexpected ideas. We came up with a lot of ideas.
Then we looked more detailed to questions like “what are the rules and how will the controls be?”, “What is the synergy with the scenario?”, “Doesn’t it look a bit boring?”, “Does it work as a game?”
The new feature we thus added to the game is Perceive. It was the first time we’ve done something like this, so we had to do some experiments. At the moment, “Perceive” is in black-and-white, but there was a time it was in color.
Black-and-white, or in color?
When we asked around in the team, many said that black-and-white looked good, so that’s what we settled for. If things had turned out differently then, Perceive would have been very different now.
We also looked all kinds of ideas of presentation. For example, we’d have a cut-in from Odoroki’s face from the side just as you’d use Perceive, like with “Take That!”
This is the rough sketch Mr. Takumi made then.
Endō: …That’s intense.
Takumi: Impact is important with these kinds of things.
Endō: That’s how he has those witnesses go “Oh my!”
Takumi: Endō
Endō: Yeah?
Takumi: You sometimes say things in a really outdated way.
How Perceive turned out? I hope you can try it out on the release day. When Pressing and Presenting doesn’t work on a witness, try Perceiving them and have them say “Oh my!”
***
I’ll passing the baton (another old saying) to Yamazaki, one of our planners who has worked on Yomigaeru Gyakuten (Ace Attorney DS) and now this game. It’s the first time I’ve worked with him, but even in this short period of time, we’ve managed to share more laughs and tears than I can describe.
We love the same writers, but the things we like about them are slightly different, but taken all things together, he’s one of my precious comrades.
We’re not that close we can share a yakisoba, but he’s a man I can trust. I’m sure he’ll be able to talk enthusiastically about Gyakuten Saiban 4 from a young and flexible point of view.
And that is it for today.
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