Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 1 (2017)

Title: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 1  / 「『大逆転裁判２』開発スタッフと回想する冒險浪漫談 Vol.1」
Source: Nintendo Dream, October issue, 2017

Summary: The October 2017 issue of Nintendo Dream featured a long multi-part interview with the development staff of the 2017 title Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 (The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve). In Volume 1 of this feature director/scenario writer Takumi Shū, art director Nuri Kazuya and producer Eshiro Motohide discuss the game in general. They explain how the game had to be produced under very limited circumstances, but that everyone was eager to get the game out to provide the players with the answers to lingering mysteries from the first game. They also talk about Takumi’s understanding of the characters had changed and how the main visual art was conceived. In the second part of the article, the interviewer showed Eshiro and Nuri columns Takumi had written for Nintendo Dream when the first Dai Gyakuten Saiban  (The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures) was released in 2015 and asked them about the same topics like how they first gotten interested in games and what their hobbies are.

Images are taken from the source article. Copyright belongs to their respective owners.

Creating Cases That Connect In Complex Manners

Interviewer: This interview is conducted after the game’s release, so we want to look back at the game and delve into each episode together with you. And let me warn, once we get started, we’ll keep on going!

All: (Laugh)

Eshiro: Perfect. What this series wants to achieve is keep on going forever.

Interviewer: I was surprised that all episodes were connected in such complex manners, far more so than ever before.

Takumi: Thank you. I studied the culture and habits of London back then for this game, so I put everything I thought interesting at the core of each case. That really gave the stories a unique atmosphere. For example the wax museum, that was actually located near Baker Street back then.

Interviewer: Was the wax museum based on Madam Tussauds?

Takumi: Indeed. And what occurred in Episode 2, that too had happened in the London back then. So I wrote the scenario keeping in mind what had actually happened in 19th century London. But the cases were linked up in really complicated manners, so it was a very difficult scenario to write.

Interviewer: I assume it must’ve been difficult keeping track of the timeline of all events.

Eshiro: It was. Each section in the team had to keep a really good eye on the timeline.

Nuri: A statement made by someone in the first game might come back to haunt you for example. And a statement may have been insignificant in the first game, but it could’ve contained details that would’ve given away the timeline.

Takumi: Episode 2’s Sōseki was particularly taxing. I had to rewrite a lot of the lines he spew out to keep things consistent. This episode connects directly to Episode 4 of the previous game, so I had to keep on making small adjustments until the very last moment.

Interviewer: I was really impressed how it all came together.

Takumi: You need “resolve” for that.

All: (Laugh)

Takumi: Even if you have the truth ready, it can be difficult knowing when to reveal it. For example, there’s only so much information you can unveil within one episode. But the poster had the catchphrase that all the mysteries would be revealed, so I kept on writing, trusting that that catchphrase would be true (laugh).

Interviewer: Mr. Eshiro, in what manner did you get to see the scenario?

Eshiro: First I’d get only the text, then I’d see it implemented as the videogame.

Takumi: He’d play each episode as they were finished.

Eshiro: I’d play the game as a player on his first run, so I’d point out where things were difficult to follow, just little pointers. For example, I’d say that that this or that scene wasn’t clewed well enough, so then things would be changed for the next version to make it easier for the player to pick up on the clue, for example by changing the background or the writing. The team really struck a great balance in terms of difficulty.

Further Depth To The Characters Thanks To The First Game

Interviewer: I feel like the characters feel even livelier than in the previous game.

Takumi: Thank you. I worked on that based on the feedback of the people who played the first game.

Interviewer: Susato especially is cuter than ever.

Takumi: She became more playful. At the cost of Susato Throws.

All: (Laugh)

Takumi: But I think that was not as much a conscious act on my part, but a natural change. After spending so much time with them, you can feel your relation to them changing, which allows for further depth in the dialogues. I think that Susato has now reached the perfect balance between a Yamato Nadeshiko and her more mischievous side. Van Zieks is a character I only got to understand fully with this game, so my connection to them really deepened thanks to the first game.

Interviewer: I see what you mean.

Takumi: To be honest, it’s very difficult to write a straightforward character. Characters that stand out, like Holmes and Sōseki, those I can write without giving it any thought (laugh).

Interviewer: This time Holmes has become even more of a trustworthy ally. He’s really cool.

Nuri: I agree. When we finished the first game, I told Mr. Takumi what I thought the game was lacking seen from the POV of the players. Regarding Holmes, I said I wanted to him to add a side to Holmes closer to the original character, a cool person you could rely on.

Interviewer: And so he did!

Takumi: (Cocks head) Thank you.

Interviewer: Why are you cocking your head!

All: (Laugh)

Takumi: I had my own ideas regarding how Holmes would appear to the player. So I think it’s just he looks cooler because of the direction the story went.

Nuri: You did have the scenes planned where he would be the star this time.

Interviewer: But playing a wax doll for a day, that’s usually not cool at all (Laugh).

Takumi: But that’s also a part of Holmes. He has a lot of faces, but nobody will ever see what lies deepest within him, nor will he ever show it. That’s what a great detective is.

Interviewer: By the way, did you get any reactions from fans of Sherlock Holmes after the release of the first game.

Takumi: Yes. We also got feedback from people who started to read Holmes because of Dai Gyakuten Saiban (The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures). I also saw people saying they were re-reading Holmes because they couldn’t wait until the second game was released. That made me really happy.

Nuri: Mr. Takumi has hidden a lot of little references in the game, so I think it does pay off to read the original stories first.

Takumi: Yep, yep, that’s right (Laugh).

Nuri: There are a lot of characters with unique names in these games, and when I can’t guess their origin, I go ask him, but several times I’ve been told that they come from the original stories.

Takumi: Oh, yeah, right. There are also a lot of very trivial references. Those who don’t get it can just read those parts as is, but people who understand them will probably have a laugh.

An Epic Concept And The Pressure of a New Gyakuten Saiban

Interviewer: When did you plan the scenario for this game?

Eshiro: The story’s connected deeply with the first game, so that’s something people will wonder about.

Takumi: Planning of the main concept of the story started early 2013, when we started working on the first game. The concept behind the previous game was to create a “new, different Gyakuten Saiban.” Now I look back, and I realize I was far too ambitious. I wanted to make something that wouldn’t lose against the original three Gyakuten Saiban games, a game that could stand proud next to them. So the whole thing became bigger and bigger in my head.

Interviewer: You called it pressure, I think.

Takumi: Yes. So the story concept kept on growing. And originally, I wanted to have all of that in one game, but some time into the development process, we were forced to change the direction of the project completely because there was simply too much to cover. So then we decided to make one game that could stand on its own, with all the cases there resolved.

Eshiro: All the cases in the first game did feature a conclusion, but as the scale of the original story concept was so big, it still featured many unsolved mysteries, more than we had expected at first.

Interviewer: Yes, the cases were all solved in the first game, but there were also people who were very surprised it ended the way it did.

Eshiro: Yes, there were also discontent reactions from players, but there were also people who said they were now interested to see how things would unfold and they looked forward to the sequel. Seeing such feedback from both sides, gave me the resolve as the producer to start the project to create the sequel

Interviewer: And this time you yourself joined the team.

Eshiro: It took me a lot of effort to start the project, for example due to internal scheduling. Thanks to the help of many people, we were able to start with the project with as motto to solve all the remaining mysteries. So I told the team countless times to create an experience that would leave the player satisfied. And the team really did a great job there

About The Main Visual

Nuri: I drew the main visual of the first game emphasizing the background, to show it was a different kind of Gyakuten Saiban, separate from the main series, set in a different time period and location. This game was the sequel and the catchphrase was that everything would be solved, so I focused this time on the dramatic relations that tie the various characters. The focus this time was on the characters, with the whole group as the main composition.

Eshiro: It’s like a film poster.

Nuri: Yes. Those awesome posters from old movies. I also added some other elements to emphasize the drama, like cherry blossom flowers flying up.

Interviewer: The cherry blossoms which fell in the first game. And I guess we can’t talk about it in detail, but the character composition also holds meaning, right?

Nuri: I think that if you look at this visual after you’ve played the game, you can discover new elements in it or look at it from a completely different angle.

Interviewer: Did you give any special instructions?

Takumi: No, it’s completely Nuri’s work.

Nuri: There were no instructions. I think I just talked with Mr. Eshiro whether I should include the Masked Disciple, and after that, I was free to whatever I want.

Interviewer: The Masked Disciple?

Nuri: Story-wise, it would be odd not to include him, so I asked whether I could use in such a manner.

Eshiro: We couldn’t have him appear too obvious, so we talked it over first. I remember I gave the OK when Nuri suggested pairing him with Van Zieks and I thought that would like nice.

We will look back at the individual episodes and delve into the creation process of the characters in the following parts. But before we do so, we asked Mr. Eshiro and Mr. Nuri about some themes Mr. Takumi wrote about in his columns when the first Dai Gyakuten Saiban was released.

The Roots of Mr. Eshiro and Mr. Nuri

Interviewer: Mr. Takumi’s roots in storytelling lie with Dr. Dolittle. Mr. Nuri, where do your artistic roots lie?

Nuri: I have mentioned this earlier, but when I was a kid, I had a cousin who was really good at drawing, and each year, they would draw a New Year’s card with a character from manga that were popular then. They were really good. I would ask them to draw something, and they’d would draw Dr. Slump's Arale-chan right in front of my own eyes. It was like magic to me.

Interviewer: And what is that cousin doing now?

Interviewer: Teaches art. My parents’ occupations had no link with art whatsoever, but because of that cousin who could draw illustrations as good as the originals, I too became interesting in drawing. So I started copying and drawing for myself. 

Interviewer: Mr. Eshiro, were are your roots as a game creator?

Eshiro: I became part of the game industry because I simply loved games. I played my first games when I was a child. There were no home consoles back then, so analog games.

Interviewer: Pinball and things like that?

Eshiro: Yes, games like that. With pinball, you have all those moving gimmicks, right? When I was in elementary school there was a shop with a lot of pinball machines, so I’d go there after visiting the public bath. Seeing all those gimmicks made me think how fun games were. I think my roots as a game creator lie there.

The Starting Points of Mr. Eshiro and Mr. Nuri

Interviewer: Where did your paths start?

Eshiro: When Space Invaders became popular all across Japan, I started playing games on the PC. Back then, source codes of programs were printed in magazines, so I’d input those programs myself to play those games.

Interviewer: You are originally a programmer, so that’s where you started.

Eshiro: Yes. I think many programmers start with the job because they like algorithms or something like that. But I just memorized programs because I wanted to play games. So I guess I started on this path because I wanted to play games! (Laugh)

Interviewer: You really love games, don’t you?

Eshiro: When I first started at Capcom, I never wanted to go home. You see, there were games in development on each floor. I could look at all those games all I wanted, I could play them, it was like a dream (Laugh).

Nuri: Yeah, when I started I too thought: “so I can draw and they’ll give me money for that?”  I wanted to stay at the office all day (Laugh). As a student, you have to study, right? I felt really blessed I could just do the one thing I loved.

Interviewer: And what got you on your path?

Nuri: I think what really influenced my art was the original manga I drew when I was in elementary school.

Interviewer: I believe you’d draw manga and hand them out in class?

Nuri: They’d read them and pass them on to others. It was a complete, 13-chapter story.

Takumi: That’s really long.

Nuri: You know you can request books at the school library for them to add to the inventory? My manga was actually also on that request list (Laugh). I think it all started then for me.

The Colorful Hobbies of Mr. Eshiro and Mr. Nuri

Mr. Takumi has the rather unique hobby of magic. What kind of hobbies do you have?

Nuri: It used to be travelling, but I’ve been too busy these last few years… It’s a lost hobby now.

All: (Laugh)

Nuri: I love Europe in particular, like Czechia and Ireland. I also visited London in the past. Seeing those places for yourself really does influence your art greatly. So I loved going to places with unique atmosphere and cultures. Bali too. I like travelling not to relax and enjoy my holiday, but to get a feeling of the local culture and the weight of its history.

Interviewer: What a fabulous answer, spoken like a true artist.

Eshiro: Yeah (Laugh).

Nuri: But lately I’m just “I’m tired… I wanna relaaaaax!”

All: (Laugh)

Interviewer: And Mr. Eshiro?

Eshiro: I started golfing a while ago. Until a while ago, golf was really the one thing I didn’t want to do. I used to look at golf not as a sport, but as part of work, you know, having to entertain business relations? But then we started doing it with just friends, so we’d have a chat first and then stroll over to the course. And now I’m hooked.

Interviewer: A producer whose hobby is golf. It’s perfect.

All: (Laugh)

Eshiro: I like how there’s a reason behind everything with golf. I thought it would be easy hitting a small ball, but I was so wrong. It’s perhaps not exactly like completing a game, but there’s a lot more depth to it once you try it out. I’m still far away from that level though (Laugh). But it’s fun.

The Games Mr. Eshiro and Mr. Nuri Were Hooked On

Interviewer: What were the genres you liked, or games you were hooked on?

Nuri: For me it was Lode Runner on the Famicom. At the time, I really believed I could play that game for the rest of my life (laugh).

Interviewer: What was so fun about it?

Nuri: The course editor. You could make your own courses, so I believed I could play this one game forever. It’s also when I realized how fun it was to create something yourself and have others enjoy it. I actually completed Lode Runner again a while back, and I was still impressed by the graphics and the music. So the Famicom Lode Runner means a lot to me. Later my parents bought me Family Basic too.
Takumi: Your parents did?

Nuri: My parents were always quite willing to buy educational software for me (Laugh). Mr. Eshiro talked about learning programming to play games, but I was more interested in graphics, in creating worlds. The castles where Mario would be running. For a while, I studied programming really hard.

Interviewer: In his column, Mr. Takumi wrote about the Cassette Vision version of Kikori no Yusaku (Woodcutter Yosaku).

Eshiro: That brings back memories. I didn’t play the port, but the original arcade Yosaku.

Takumi: Wow!

Interviewer: Your genre roots lie probably in arcade games?

Eshiro: Yep. But old arcade games were usually shooting games, so I guess it’d be the shooting genre. But once I started playing on the computer, I think my favorite became adventure games too. I too played Mystery House and I played a lot of text adventures which I had typed in myself.

Gyakuten Saiban and Mr. Eshiro and Mr. Nuri

Nuri: Gyakuten Saiban is a game series that’s not only attractive because of its story, but also because of the character graphics, with funny animations and the facial expressions. With action games for example, you not only have the characters, but also the controls, the feeling of the game, and special effects: there’s a lot to focus on as a game. But Gyakuten Saiban is an adventure game, so the importance of the character graphics as a medium to convey information the player is greater in comparison to other genres. So as a designer, I know it’s a difficult task, but it’s definitely a series I want to work on. Especially as these type of games are becoming rarer nowadays.

Interviewer: You and Mr. Takumi have been working for a long time now.

Takumi: We started with 2005's Rise from the Ashes, so more than 10 years now.

Interviewer: Is it because you have worked together so long now and trust each other that you can just leave things up to Mr. Nuri?

Takumi: That’s definitely true.

Nuri: Now he is able to leave things up to me, but with Rise from the Ashes, I had to draw dozens of designs for him of the smallest details like bags, and he’d check them all.

Takumi: Oh, Akane (Ema Skye’s) bag.

Nuri: Yeah. So I can really sense how we started to trust each other more over these ten years. It’s a tough, but rewarding job. Tough though.

Takumi: You keep on repeating tough.

All: (Laugh)

Eshiro: I think Gyakuten Saiban could only have been made at Capcom. Capcom had always worked on action games, so we always focused on in-game response and how a game would feel when playing. Adventure games usually don’t have much to do with that. But it all came together with Gyakuten Saiban. It was an adventure game, but it felt so good to play. I believe it was possible to create a game like that because of the company culture and the way we approach videogames.

The Challenge of Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 And A Final Message

Interviewer: In the last Dai Gyakuten Saiban column you wrote for us, you wrote about that with the Gyakuten Saiban series, you tried to tackle all kinds of challenges. What did you want to achieve with Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2, and do you have some final words for our readers?

Takumi: We have been working on Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1 and 2 for four to five years now. Like I mentioned earlier, it was a chance to work on a completely new Gyakuten Saiban, so I wanted to create the best game I could think of, one that could stand proud next to the original three games. But that feeling had been so intense, it went the wrong way with the first game, and it caused me some agony too. For the sequel, the whole team took the subtitle “resolve” to heart and I believe that this game is the best we can create at this moment. At the start of the project, one of the concepts I had in mind was “Back to the beginning” but now I realize we can’t go back in time, and I don’t think we should. I have done everything I wanted as a creator, producing the game that we can make now, a game that could only be made now. I sincerely hope everyone will enjoy it.

Interviewer: It’s been a while since I’ve heard you speak in such a satisfied manner.

Takumi: Really? (Laugh) I always become like this when a project’s done. I think that this time too, I went far beyond I had first imagined. It’s been a bumpy trip, but now I think I feel happy as a creator, I feel content. Like it was a karmic task now fulfilled (laugh).

Eshiro: I’ve been working on the Gyakuten Saiban series for a long time myself too now, but I think this is the game where I really feel everything came together, the game where we poured everything we had into. We wanted to lay the foundation for a new kind of Gyakuten Saiban, and many years have passed now since I first started thinking about the whole project, to present the player with so much content as covered in the two Dai Gyakuten Saiban games. With the first game, I think we succeeded in the visual aspect exactly as we had hoped, but in terms of content I have to admit it may have been a bit uneven. So with Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2, we wanted to improve the points that earned praise and make them even better, while eliminating the weak points and we wanted to expand the world even further. We packed this game full too, so you would see what further exists in this world and I am quite relieved we’re done now. I believe the player can enjoy the grand story that unfolds within these two games and I also think that after playing this game, you can go back to the first and further deepen the experience.

Takumi: It sounds a bit weird coming from me, but yeah, it really makes you want to play the first game too.

Interviewer: I think there are definitely people out there who are replaying the first game now. And there’s a lot in the second game that fleshes out the first game.

Nuri: As a creator, you always want to make something that surpasses the previous work, so the first game automatically became the hurdle we had to clear.

Takumi: Yes, we had to surpass it.

Nuri: But it’s becoming more complex each year.

Eshiro: And we’re not getting younger either (Laugh).

Nuri: The circumstances are also becoming more difficult. But the players who have been waiting for this game have of course nothing to do with that, so it was important to make a work that surpassed the first in terms of quality, a game of which the players could never tell how difficult the circumstances that lie behind it were. We really poured everything we had in it. I doubt we could’ve done more.

Takumi: It’s always like that. At this point in our careers, it’s something more than just “I like this work” or “It’s fun work”.

Nuri: Karmic tasks, huh? I did think countless of times why my tasks would never end, or how drawing wasn’t fun anymore (Laugh).

Interviewer: But when you start out, you think you could do this work forever, right?

Nuri: I’ve become an adult now (Laugh).

All: (Laugh)

Nuri: But even among those circumstances, we managed to make a game that surpassed the first, the best game we could make.

Interviewer: Mr. Eshiro, anything to add?

Eshiro: They use the word karmic task, but Dai Gyakuten Saiban was really a huge challenge. They had to make a new Gyakuten Saiban, and it was the original creator who was tasked with this huge pressure. I wasn’t involved with the first game, but when I played it myself, I could sense I could feel the thoughts of Takumi and his team in that game. Knowing what they wanted to do through that game, I thought we definitely needed to make the sequel, a game also necessary because of the players. The project had to be started, but it couldn’t just be about what the development wanted, and so there were a lot of hurdles to clear to get the go sign. As the person responsible, I had to do a lot to get this project approved and thanks to the cooperation of a lot of people from our various departments, we finally succeeded in getting this sequel out. I told the development team throughout the process that a lot of people were invested in this project so do your best. But we were dealing with really tight circumstances so that also meant the team was quite limited in what they could do.

Takumi: (Whisper) It was though.

Nuri: (Whisper) Yeah

All: (Laugh)

Eshiro: I can’t talk about it in detail in this interview, but there was a really tight schedule on this project. I think Takumi and Nuri had probably never worked on a game under such strict circumstances, but they really managed to overcome any obstacles. For me the challenge was to get the game out, and for the development team the challenge was to create the game within those limitations. So I hope that people who have completed the game will go for a second or third playthrough. If you haven’t played it yet, I hope you will play the two games together, as it will make the world of Dai Gyakuten Saiban even more enjoyable. Thank you for your support!