Source: Nintendo Dream, October issue, 2017
Images are taken from the source article. Copyright belongs to their respective owners.
Episode 2: The Memoirs of the Clouded Kokoro
Episode 2: Behind The Scenes
Interviewer: Let’s move to Episode 2.
Takumi: The concept behind this story --what I wanted to write-- was a case that could only have happened in the 19th century, an incident occurring in the everyday life in the city of London. A classic approach to the classic mystery story.
Nuri: I believe that the one thing you wanted to do most with Dai Gyakuten Saiban ("The Great Ace Attorney"), to write such a story, right?
Takumi: Yes. Initially, I had planned to make one story revolving around two incidents, but due to reasons like scheduling, it was impossible to incorporate everything in the first game. But I was lucky this story would still work even if we’d cut it up in two. Well, that’s why it ended up like that in the first game.
Interviewer: So Episode 2 of this game had already been planned for already since the previous game?
Takumi: Yes. So what I really regretted about the first game was that Viridian never woke up then.
Nuri: It was painful to me too, because Petenshy wouldn’t be featured in the story either. The design and the modeling of his animations had already been finished.
Interviewer: I remember that his concept designs were included in the art book for the first game.
Eshiro: As “the mysterious man” then.
Interviewer: And now the whole story is finally finished. It was also refreshing as a case. The victim hadn’t died after all!
Takumi: What I wanted to achieve with Dai Gyakuten Saiban as a whole was to not only have cases that could only occur in London of that time, but also cases that were connected. For example, the puzzle pieces of the story also fall in place in Episode 3. The way the first and second day of this story interlink was the first thing I thought off when I first considered how to have connected stories.
Interviewer: I see. The story really conveyed well how cold it must’ve been in 19th century London.
Takumi: It’s a frozen world in February. It’s how I imagined London to be after reading mystery stories from that period.
Interviewer: And the idea of the gas lamp was quite informative.
Eshiro: The first time I saw it, I thought this couldn’t possibly be true so I went to Takumi to ask him about.
Takumi: I read that it actually did happen back then. I always wanted to do something with that idea, so I was glad I finally got to use it.
Interviewer: It’s a trick that could only work in that time and place.
Takumi: Yeah. Actually, I had even more ideas that could only work in that setting.
Interviewer: For example?
Takumi: Back then there were too many horse-drawn coaches, and the roads were covered in dung. So I wanted to use dung for some trick… But yeah, it’d be about horse shit.
Eshiro: Let’s not.
All: (Laugh)
Takumi: I do think it could’ve worked. The automobile was seen as the invention everyone dreamed of back then, one that would do away with the manure pollution. Now the automobile is seen completely differently, so I wanted to write about that, but alas, that idea was canned. It can be interesting to research all kinds of things when you play this game.
Episode 2: The Secret Stories Behind the Characters
William Petenshy
Takumi: He was the first character of whom we created the animations through motion capture. The idea was that his movements were like avant-garde, like The Rite of Spring ballet of Stravinsky. We also had about twenty kinds of theatrical movements. Timing them with lines as “Out, out, brief candle!” gave us really funny results we had never used before. I myself was really impressed with how amazing he turned out when I tried linking his animations together. He was the first of the Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 characters who really left an impression.
Nuri: It also pointed us in the direction of what we wanted to with the animations for this game.
Takumi: Yes. It felt like we had achieved something completely new. Of course that’s also true for some other characters.
Interviewer: It wasn’t only what he did, but what he said that left an impression. Now I want to know who’s stronger, Romeo or Juliet (laugh).
Takumi: Petenshy was easy to write. He’s the type of character who fits me, I think.
Interviewer: I remember you also said that Hoshiidake Aiga (Luke Atmey) from Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) was easy to write.
Takumi: They’re obviously the same type of character, right? Now I think about it, I can easily imagine Aiga in London.
All: (Laugh)
Interviewer: What can you tell me about Petenshy’s design?
Nuri: I was told the keyword was Shakespeare, so that was easy. In Professor Layton VS. Gyakuten Saiban, there’s a poet who sings while playing a guitar, and I was told to build on that idea and blow it even further up, so I was on the right trail with Petenshy’s design from start to finish. I gave him those posh-looking, but weird clothes that look a bit fake, like stage outfits. They kinda look they belong to the time period, but also out-of-place. Oh, and I was also told that he’d wear fancy clothes, but that he wasn’t rich at all and actually broke.
Takumi: So his clothes are ripped here and there.
Nuri: He’s just keeping up appearances. I gave him large, but cheap-looking accessories not only because they fitted him, but also because it’d look good in his animations.
Takumi: To tell you a secret, he usually carries a cane, but the cane disappears whenever he moves around dramatically.
Interviewer: Now you mention it, the cane does disappear.
Takumi: You can really see how good the animators are, making the cane disappear and reappear without it ever feeling odd.
Interviewer: I hope that the people who read this article will play the game again and check for themselves.
Takumi: Petensy is a character I definitely want people to experience.
Decargo Mieterman & Mrs. Altamont
Nuri: These two characters were created as a set.
Interviewer: Mieterman with Mrs. Altamont?
Nuri: Yes. Miterman has to collect money for the gas company, so he goes around houses collecting money. That made me think of worker bees, and that’s why Mrs. Altamont was designed after a Queen Bee.
Interviewer: Which would fit their relation in the game perfectly.
Nuri: I figured Mieterman would be wearing the gas company’s uniform, so I gave him clothes with an usually bright color for this world, almost a primary color, to make him a bit different from the other characters. I also wrote this in the art book, but Mieterman’s head is also designed to look like a bee depending on the angle.
Viridian Green
Nuri: I’ve liked her since the first game, but she never woke up in that game… (laugh). She looks very round, but in my mind, I did design her to look beautiful. If you’d just trim away the middle of her face you’ll see she’s actually quite beautiful (laugh). She’s an art student, so I tried to draw her in a way so the modern player could imagine her as someone who goes to art college. The hairstyle and her whole atmosphere. When I showed the design to other people, they reacted with “Yeah, I’ve seen people like her!” so that’s how I grew fond of her.
Takumi: She had to be lying unconscious with a knife in her for a while, so I wanted to her to have a body build that suggest she could take it. Also, that trick wouldn’t have worked unless she stood out physically.
Nuri: This is the first time I hear about her needing to be strong enough. It was changed eventually, but at first I was told she had to be built portly because she’d always be eating chocolate, so I thought she was a gourmet. So when that idea was canned, I thought, why keep her round?
All: (Laugh)
Jurors
Interviewer: What were the concepts behind the designs of the jurors?
Takumi: Juror No. 1 was the head juror, so I wanted him to look like a gentleman, but I didn’t give any special directions regarding his design. The scenario did specify his occupation, but I left it all up to Nuri.
Interviewer: With occupation, do you mean you’d for example ask for “a male conjurer” or something like that?
Takumi: Yes. I did tell Nuri about anything that would have something to do with the story.
Nuri: I designed the jurors basically simultaneously, by looking at the balance between them when they were lined up. These were characters that would always be lined up on the screen, so I paid special attention so there’d be some variation with ups and downs. The order for No. 1 was that he had to be a reliable person, so I designed him accordingly, and the rest followed with me making sure there was variety between them, including their occupations.
Interviewer: Is there some idea behind each of the various jurors?
Nuri: The jurors from Episode 2 are mostly the same as from the previous game, but what I imagined back then was that No 1. was the man I imagined as the most standard person in London back then. No. 2 was similarly the stereotypical English lady, and taken together with No.1, the appearance of this duo is balanced well. No. 3 is perhaps a very ordinary young man, I guess his characteristic is exactly the fact that he’s very normal. No. 5 was designed as a physical laborer in that period. I had been given directions about the physical build of No. 6, so he became an elderly, Santa-like man. Once I had them all, Mr. Takumi would take a look at them and gave them more pronounced personalities in the script to diversify them even further.
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