Creator Interview - Takumi Shū (2012)

 Title: Creator Interview - Takumi Shū / 「クリエイター・インタビュー　巧舟」
Source: Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine, March 2012
 

Summary: The Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) special “No objection to Gyakuten Saiban” featured in the March 20212 issue of Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine had essays and in-depth looks at the Gyakuten Saiban series and legal mystery fiction in general, as well as special interviews with the two main writers of the series: Takumi Shū, director and writer of the main series, and Yamazaki Takeshi, director and main writer of the Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigation) spin-off series. In the interview with Takumi, he talks about the mystery fiction that inspired him, how the plotting works in the Gyakuten Saiban series and what books he'd like to adapt as a game if given the opportunity.

 

Gyakuten Saiban Is The Crystallization Of His Love For The Mystery Genre

Interviewer: I’ve heard you love reading mystery fiction. Could you tell us about your first encounter with the genre?

Takumi: The first mystery novel I read was in elementary school. It was the Minami Yōichirō translation of Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes. Poplar published both the Boys Detective Club series and the Arsène Lupin series, but the covers of the Rampo books were so scary, so I was firmly in the Lupin camp. Holmes came after that, and in middle school, I loved reading Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr. I was very much influenced by the translations by Aota Katsu and even now, I pay attention to whoever is translating.

Interviewer: Are there any works that have left a particularly strong impression on you?

Takumi: Carter Dickson’s The Judas Window left quite an impact on me, by showing me how amusing a courtroom mystery could be. The part where Sir Henry Merrivale sets things straight was intense. That got me into reading Gardner’s Perry Mason series. But I’m a fan of orthodox mystery fiction, so I love books with the mark of the silhouetted man of publisher Tokyo Sogen. Both Sogen and Hayakawa have such unique covers for their books. The geometrical designs in the Ellery Queen novels in the Hayakawa Bunko line, or the silhouettes on the Father Brown books in the Sogen Suiri Bunko line. They really left an impression on me, so the modern covers feel a bit strange.

Interviewer: I believe you’re also fond of Columbo and Anthony Berkeley?

Takumi: Yes. In Gyakuten Saiban, the goal is not to find the true culprit: it’s a game about cornering the culprit. That was new for the time, so to make that clear, the early episodes take on an inverted story style. This was of course influenced by Columbo. Berkeley has been in a translation boom lately, so thanks to that, I’ve been able to collect them all. I love the humorous writing and the atmosphere of his books. Jumping Jenny and Trial and Error are great. He’s from the twenties, but he had already noticed that the genre had become formulistic, so he always came up with plots with a parodic twist. The strong intention to do something out of the ordinary, hidden in a mist of comedy: that thought is admirable.

Interviewer: Do you also read Japanese mystery fiction?

Takumi: I only read foreign mystery novels until high school. In my first year at university, someone recommended me Ayatsuji Yukito’s Satsujin Hōteishiki (Murder Equation) and that led to my first encounter with Shimada Sōji’s work. That’s how I first got into Japanese mystery fiction. I like Arisugawa Alice’s work and Maya Yutaka’s work has been very impactful. Kamaitachi no Yoru (Banshee’s Last Cry) was released around the time I first started working, so I also read the works by Abiko Takemaru.

Interviewer: This may be a difficult question to answer, but if you could only one favorite work?

Takumi: If we’re talking about Japanese mystery fiction, my pick is Awasaka Tsumao’s A Aiichirō series. The DL-6 Incident in Gyakuten Saiban was taken from Awasaka’s debut story DL2-Gōki Jiken (The Flight DL-2 Incident). You can tell he’s a magician from the way he looks at everyday psychology and the comedic writing style, and I love it. As for foreign mystery fiction, I’d say the Father Brown series. Mr. A is basically the Japanese Father Brown.

Interviewer: You were in the literature faculty in university?

Takumi: My major was literature, and I had lectures by authors like Mita Masahiro. I wrote a novel as my graduation project. It was the first time I wrote a story where nobody got killed. I was told that the writing was good, but I had failed at portraying the characters. It’s a trauma even now. Sometimes people praise the characters in Gyakuten Saiban, I’ll go mumbling I can’t portray characters… (laugh)
 

The Logic and Plot Within Gyakuten Saiban

 

Interviewer: And this reading history is also reflected in how you create games?

Takumi: I entered the industry because I wanted to make a true mystery game. But if you ask me why I choose Capcom, even I don’t know (laugh). There were games that called themselves mystery back then, but I hadn’t come across any that really satisfied me.

Interviewer: What did you have to do to adapt a puzzle plot mystery into the game medium?

Takumi: To create a game where the player is rewarded for their deductions, I first came up with a game style that was about exposing the lies of the culprit. So then I had to think about professions where you’d need to expose lies, and I finally arrived at a defense attorney.

Interviewer: The mechanic where the story advances by pointing out contradictions seems inspired by Ellery Queen.

Takumi: Queen’s logic works along “lines”, mine as “points”. The fun in the game lies in the way the player has to make deductions, and seeing the reaction to that. So what makes the game fun is the quality and quantity of these distinct “points”. I only think of the “lines” that connect these “points” later on. What’s important next is the type of mystery story. I’m desperately focused on that especially since the second game (laugh). And then there’s structure. I make it so players can identity contradictions on their own, which provides them new clues or new plot developments. And that function is delegated to the prosecutor. That automatically makes it a series of grand turnabouts occurring one after another in the courtroom. 

Interviewer: It’s not the prosecutor who’s after the true culprit, but the defense attorney. Was it because of the plot that the whole game is filled with turnabouts?

Takumi: Yes. And also, I’m a fan myself, but while the conclusion of classic mystery fiction is often exciting, the middle part is often a bit boring. So I really focused in my mind on the idea of writing an entertaining story. I like humorous worlds, so I wanted a world with a warm atmosphere, like in the Shlock Homes and Ruby Martinson series.

Interviewer: In classic mystery, the middle part is often a repetition of questioning people, or another murder happens to bridge the gaps.

Takumi: That’s why the cases in Gyakuten Saiban aren’t about series of murders. Also, I’m pretty bad at remembering characters, so I try to keep it the number as small as possible. These games aren’t about guessing whodunit anyway, and there are no multiple murders happening, so you don’t need many suspects and victims. And to make it even easier for me to remember the characters, I give them fancy names, flashy appearances or animations… I’m really not joking around when creating the characters, I’m dead serious (laugh).

Interviewer: There are a lot of popular characters who return in the games.

Takumi: At first, that was just because of the development schedule. I had the defendant of the first case in the original game appear in the fourth case, but that was just our last resort, because we didn’t have the time to create a new character. But surprisingly, people liked that, so we had more characters re-appear. These elements, where the players and us work together to build something up, are really important. In the send game, it was at first planned to have Mitsurugi (Miles Edgeworth) appear again as the prosecutor and have him lose every case again, but he was so popular we had to create a new rival prosecutor in a hurry.

Interviewer: Was it already decided from the start Gyakuten Saiban would be a series?

Takumi: No. The first game didn’t even sell that well at first, but my boss liked the game, so he ignored what the people around him told him and decided on his own to greenlight a sequel. The years after that I only lived for Gyakuten Saiban.

Discoveries and Realizations Give Birth To The Fun of Mystery Fiction

Interviewer: While there are many mystery games, few of them actively ask the player to think to push the story forward. To me, it seems like the Gyakuten Saiban series focuses especially on the fun of “figuring something out”.
 

Takumi: Back when the first game came out, there were actually non-mystery games that did the mystery element better than the games that were called mystery games. Take the Myst series for example. You have that rewarding feeling of coming across foreshadowing, making discoveries and finally realizing how a puzzle works. I too wanted to make a game that was not just taking the “appearance” of a mystery story, but one that also captured the “essence” of a mystery story.
 

Interviewer: So the emphasis did not lie on the crimes or the appearances, but on making the player figuring things out. In Ghost Trick the key too lay in figuring out the puzzles.

Takumi: Ghost Trick started out with the idea of how fun it’d be if the player from outside the game world could just peek partially into the lives of the game characters and indirectly influence the world to change their destinies. Making the player figuring things out based on visual information became the theme of the game and I made it so Ghost Trick became a multi-protagonist full-length story where eventually the destinies of all the characters fit together like a puzzle.

Interviewer: If you could adapt a translated mystery story as a videogame, what would you pick?

Takumi: I guess the Nationality novels by Queen. I love the style and atmosphere of those novels. Or perhaps something that collects Carr’s locked room mysteries. The puzzle-element of locked room murders fit very well with the videogame medium. I absolutely adore the world of classic mystery, so I’d love to bring life to such a world.

Interviewer: Do you have a final message for our readers?

 

Takumi: The Gyakuten Saiban series is made to appeal to both game fans and mystery fans. We work hard so beginning fans can solve the mysteries, but seasoned mystery fans can also grin at these mysteries. The medium may be different, but the games are made by mystery fans with love for the mystery genre, so I’d be happy if you’d try the games out. Finally, I hope we all come across new, wonderful encounters with mystery stories in our lives.