Title: The Answer to Unfinished Matters - A Story Of Succession: Eshiro Motohide & Yamazaki Takeshi / 「やり残したことに答えが出せた、"継承”を描く物語 江城元秀X山崎剛」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 5 Official Complete Guide + Special Episode Guide
Images are taken from the source. Copyrights belongs to the respective owners.
The Answer to Unfinished Questions - A Story Of Succession: Eshiro Motohide & Yamazaki Takeshi
The Benefits of Working in 3D
Interviewer: The consumers were already all over-excited in anticipation of the game’s release. How did you feel about that?
Eshiro: It was amazing when we first announced the game was in development (*the game was announced at the Gyakuten Saiban 10th Special Court held at Tokyo Mielparque Hall on January 29, 2012). The whole venue was trembling. It honestly felt as if the whole ground was shaking due to the audience’s cries.
Yamazaki: Yeah, it really gave me goosebumps!
Interviewer: The game has been developed for the 3DS, so I assume the “3D effect” must have been quite important in the actual development process too. I was surprised by the possibilities 3D models offered, and for example, the shot in Episode 2 right after Kumabee (Phineas Filch) steals your bracelet. I was surprised to actually see it around his wrist.
Eshiro: That idea would have been shot down immediately if we had been working in 2D, I think. Because you’d have to redo all the sprites. 3D models and animation allow us for example to move objects around, or give them smooth animations. If you want to have extremely fluid animation in 2D, you’d have prepare 60 frames of animation for every movement. The reason why the development Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigations) demanded so much of us until the very end, was because we needed to figure out how to have a limited number of animations, which still would allow us to bring the characters alive on screen. This is a hurdle you face every time you work in 2D. It is also directly connected to the amount of development work necessary, and that in turn influences the time schedule of the project.
Yamazaki: Another big benefit is there’s no need to draw in-betweens even for big motions. If we’d for example done the animation of the galactic scooter of Ōgawara (Yuri Cosmos) in 2D, a tremendous amount of animation would have been needed.
Eshiro: That would have been a nightmare (laugh).
Yamazaki: So that’s a benefit of working in 3D.
Interviewer: How about effects of seeing everything in three dimensions?
Yamazaki: Take for example animations like attacks moving towards the screen. And the characters all have breakdown animations that work because they were made in 3D, helped by the camera.
Kokone was supposed to be a cool-headed beauty?
Yamazaki: When we first announced the game, we tried not to put Kokone (Athena Cykes) too much in the foreground. We were hiding Monita (Widget).
Eshiro: We wanted to make her appear a bit mysterious.
Interviewer: She turned out not at all like you’d guess from that image.
Yamazaki: (Laugh) Yeah, you’re right.
Eshiro: At first, you’d think she’d be more like an older sister-type of character, but no. She was the complete opposite of the calm-headed type (laugh).
Yamazaki: Among the ideas we had for her personality originally, was also the type of the cool-headed, beautiful woman.
Eshiro: Oh yeah, that’s right!
Yamazaki: We played with it, but it just didn’t work (laugh). If she were like that, we’d lose the boke character type (TN: boke is the funny character as opposed to the tsukkomi straight character in a comedy act).
Eshiro: Aha…
Yamazaki: We needed someone to act as the boke in the conversations.
The New Mechanic: Heart Scope
Interviewer: You introduced the new mechanic Heart Scope (Mood Matrix). I believe it took some trial and error to create the mechanic?
Eshiro: At first they told me they were thinking about doing something based on psychology. So I told Yamazaki: “Don’t make it too complex.” It had to be simple enough you could understand the mechanic without having to look in the manual, but it still needed to be fun to play. And I also told him to not make it too difficult.
Yamazaki: We had arrived at the idea of a puzzle mechanic based on psychology early on, but the next question was, how were we going to portray “psychology”? Compared to evidence and testimonies, emotions are vague, so the difficulty was translating that to a game format. So eventually, we decided to settle on the four emotions of kidoaikyō (happiness-anger-sadness-surprise). And then we focused on the contradictions between the testimony, and the true emotions behind them. The next task was to give it an impactful visual look, and we arrived at the idea of changing the images. I brought this to Eshiro, who said he wanted something extra. So I mumbled to myself “What is he saying!? Always working us so hard…”
Eshiro: (Laugh) I felt it was missing just something extra to make it really fun. It was still a bit too light on content.
Yamazaki: So after thinking it over, I arrived at the idea of an emotional overload. Thanks to that extra dimension to the mechanic, we could also expand on the stories. The scene with Yumemi (Jinxie Tenma) in Episode 2 was the first scene with an emotional overload we created. It made us realize this was an interesting system, because it could allow us to portray the world as seen by that specific character. Yumemi truly believes yōkai exists, so she would see them. I was really glad to see how this mechanic really connected to the characters’ personality.
Eshiro: Misunderstandings and faulty memories of the witnesses have always been a staple of the series. Those are situations created by emotions, I think. The emotional overload focuses on that, so the idea felt really probable to occur. So you’d need to resolve that and calm the witness down first, and then use the Heart Scope to figure out what they were really saying. At first you’d only have the normal Heart Scope, but starting with the second episode, emotions would sometimes run wild. Making you guess who would be the next (laugh). My idea was that the player would get to the Heart Scope segments, and be surprised each time: “Oh, emotional overload!”, “This part is normal…” This way, they would not get bored by the mechanic and remain excited. People who have been with the series for a longer time, will have gotten used to the format of Investigation, Trial, Investigation, Trial parts. The Investigation parts tend to be on the more monotonous side, so we made sure to create the investigation parts in 3D too, to give the players the feeling they are searching the scenes. And the trial parts too are given some variation by using the Heart Scope mechanic at different points. It’s a matter of creating varied pacing as a game, within one courtroom battle. The same holds for the timing when the trial is adjourned, or where one testimony segment will eventually lead you. A game needs to be designed with consideration of the “wave” of the feelings of the player.
Don’t Stress Out the Players
Interviewer: With the jump to the 3DS, you also redesigned the user interface (UI).
Eshiro: You could say it was a gamble. Long-time fans of the series might have felt it unnecessary to change things around. Perhaps they think the old UI was better, or they don’t like how it feels different. But we felt we wanted to take some stress away from the player, controls that were unintuitive or hard to understand. So we wanted to lift that control-based stress away, and have the player’s stress be more based on the involvement with the story or the gameplay. I think we managed to strike a balance with that.
Interviewer: So now we have the Notes in the investigation part, and Consultation in the trials. While I was playing this, I started getting worried nobody would buy this official walkthrough as they’d not need it. (laugh)
Eshiro & Yamazaki: (laugh)
Interviewer: The first time I just wanted to play the game so I didn’t notice it right away, but the Consultation mode almost feels like a bonus track on an album. So then I started to make mistakes on purpose. (laugh) I felt happy, as I could really feel how you made efforts to make sure the player could make it to the end without stress.
Eshiro: There were both people for and against the Consultation mode in the team. And I understood why some people said we shouldn’t include it, because it would take away from the joy of solving the puzzle yourself. But Gyakuten Saiban by now has also been adapted as a film, and for the stage, so the audience is very diverse, ranging from young people to elderly fans. So we had to find a format that would allow this wide variety of players to play the game without stress. I myself don’t really play games that are a hassle to play, even if they are fun. (laugh) But that’s also why we didn’t make too big a deal of Consultation. The fact you say you didn’t notice it at first is exactly what we as the development team wanted. Once you see it, you feel like you need to watch it, or you feel like it’s telling you the answer too soon.
Yamazaki: Indeed. (laugh)
Interviewer: In that sense, it’s a good use of the hardware’s characteristic, having two screens.
Eshiro: So we added this function to assist the people who need help. The Notes are also tucked away in an inconspicuous spot.
Interviewer: So you made sure that not only people play Gyakuten Saiban for the first time, but even people who play games for the first time would be helped.
Eshiro: The Nintendo 3DS is used by a very wide diverse audience, so I felt we had to be accessible to everyone too.
Yamazaki: I think the team members who worked on the UI and the Consultation and Notes mechanics would be very happy if they hear how people who normally play games would not notice those systems. They worked on it a lot, how to introduce those systems inconspicuously, subtly rewriting the text each time.
Eshiro: The subject of UI design is quite deep, and is an fact a field of study. The designer of the UI actually goes to seminars on the subject. Very good UI design would for example seen in the ticket machines for public transport. Anyone using them instantly knows how they work, yet they offer a lot of functions. So one needs to study that and figure out how to apply those concepts to a game design. I think we can the results of that process in this game.
Wanting To See That Scene
Interviewer: This game allows the player to view the event cut scenes and animations in the gallery. This wasn’t present in the fourth game yet.
Eshiro: No.
Interviewer: I assume this is also why there’s a backlog now. Are these examples of catering to the player audience’s wishes?
Yamazaki: Yes.
Eshiro: I gave them an order. There were a lot of players who said they’d replay the game just to see specific scene, but that’s quite a hassle, right? Having to replay from the start just to see a specific scene? Some might be willing to do that if the lines would change per play, but I didn’t think it should be necessary for someone to replay the game like that constantly if they just wanted to replay a certain scene.
Interviewer: Another of those points of stress?
Eshiro: Indeed. So to make sure people could replay a scene, without having the stress of having to replay the game, we added the gallery as a post-game extra.
Interviewer: And once you replay a chapter, it’s divided in many sub-chapters now. I was really worried, as the consumers honestly don’t need an official guide now.
Eshiro & Yamazaki: Sorry. (laugh)
The Characters in the Gyakuten World
Interviewers: Rather unique characters appear in all the episodes. Could you tell us about your favorite characters?
Eshiro: Well… First is Biyōin (Florent L’Belle). I knew his character was on the right track right from the first draft. He didn’t change that much from his first design. And then there’s that guy who shouts Justice of course… His design also didn’t change much.
Yamazaki: Biyōin in particular. We basically create the characters in order starting with the first episode. When character designer Fuse started on the characters for the second episode, like Biyōin, he started to get a feel for the designs for Gyakuten characters…
Eshiro: Yeah…
Yamazaki: I think he really got the feel for it when he designed Biyōin. When he came up with idea of having those phones on Biyōin’s shoulder pads, I knew he would be great at designing the rest of the Gyakuten characters too.
Eshiro: Fuse also worked on Gyakuten Kenji 2 (Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Gambit), so of course he was already familiar with the world of these games. But when you have to create completely new characters and animations, well, it’s understandable that, unconsciously, you’d be a bit reserved with your ideas. So at first, I often felt he had good ideas, but they weren’t quite there yet. I think Fuse must have found it difficult too at first. So I told him: “You must go further, to the point you think you have gone too far.” And then he really went too far. (laugh) So he swung between those extremes, until he found the right balance with Biyōin.
Yamazaki: He really found that sweet spot. Like Ichiro (Aristotle Means) in episode 3, he’s really good too. We were all exchanging ideas for him, and when we arrived at that idea of having that [redacted] appear at the end, we knew we had gold! (laugh)
Interviewer: You mustn’t think about where that came from in the first place, right?
Yamazaki: Nope, the moment you start thinking about it, you lose. (laugh)
Eshiro: Usually, you’d wonder about it, right? Character designers appoint meaning to their characters, and have reasons for why something is the way it is. But once you start thinking like that, you’d start thinking props like that have to be prepared in advance too. But the way I see it, it doesn’t matter. As long it’s funny. So once he started creating characters and animations with that in mind, characters that really fitted in the Gyakuten world started to be born.
The Structure Born From the Destruction of Court
Interviewer: The story is structured in a way that episodes 1, 4 and 5 are connected with one case. Was it difficult to integrate those episodes together?
Yamazaki: Yeah, that was really difficult.
Eshiro: Foreshadowing events, chronologically crossing the narratives… I think that’s Yamazaki’s style of writing, his “color” or “characteristic”. We also worked on Gyakuten Kenji 2 together. I think he likes off-setting information and time, and then bring it all together at the end.
Yamazaki: Well, I suppose I do unintentionally end up doing that… So I place clues and foreshadowing all across the story and bring it all together in the last episode. It allows for a big story to develop. The story of the first episode had a lot of conditions to it too. Like having to destroy the courtroom. (laugh)
Interviewer: Oh, that’s how the story started!
Yamazaki: So you need a reason why the courtroom is destroyed. So there must be an incident that destroyed the courtroom. And there was probably a trial in session at the time. So there needs to be a trial about a different case going on. But you can’t leave that unfinished, so you need to address that too. So the story took on its form as I thought about the story structure. It wasn’t like I set out to do it like this…
Interviewer: And every time, you end up doing it like this…?
Yamazaki: Yeah. I always know it takes a lot of work to address everything at the end again and to be honest, I don’t really want to do that. (laugh) As for the first episode, it had to be done like that to have the idea of the courtroom being blown up with a bomb work, and I also wanted to show off Odoroki (Apollo Justice) like that early on too. With his jacket and the eye-patch. And that was of course also related to something in his past, so that had to be addressed too later in the game.
Eshiro: I had a lot of things I wanted Yamazaki to do.
Yamazaki: You sure did. (laugh)
Eshiro: Naruhodō had to be there, and Odoroki of course too. But it would be boring if he was just there like always, so I told Yamazaki had to change something. As for the cases, I told him to think big, like the courtroom being blown up.
Interviewer: A big tower of ideas.
Eshiro: When Yamazaki came with his first proposal, it said: “The theme is the destruction of the courtroom.” So I asked him how it was going to be destroyed. He said: “I’ll think about that later.” (laugh) We always worked like that.
Interviewer: And then you had that image of the destroyed courtroom created.
Yamazaki: Yes.
Eshiro: It was physically damaged, but social order was also destroyed due to the Dark Age of Law.
Yamazaki: We needed a visual representation of the law breaking down. From the start, we wanted to have something visual to tie to the Dark Age of Law. Also, the destruction of the courtroom (hōtei hōkai) sounded a bit like a pun, so that was good too, Eshiro said. (laugh)
Eshiro: Did you know that on the back of the box of Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 – Trials & Tribulations), the catchphrase was The Courtroom Shakes (Hōtei Shinkan)? I thought that sounded nice, with a clear message. So I figured, hōtei hōkai rolls of the tongue and is easy to market! (laugh)
Their Own Stories, and Succession to the Turnabout
Interviewer: Looking at the story mainly from a character viewpoint, I felt the story was about two things: Kokone dealing with her past, and Odoroki’s development.
Eshiro: Yes.
Interviewer: Yugami (Simon Blackquill) also becomes involved near the end, and the composition of having Naruhodō and Mitsurugi (Miles Edgeworth) leading the way for the successors of their own beliefs made quite the impression on me. Please tell us about the themes in the game.
Eshiro: I think we have a man sitting right here with a lot to tell us about that…
Yamazaki: (laugh) When it was decided we’d create this game, I knew from the start I wanted to tell Odoroki’s story, and have him go against Naruhodō. Odoroki was designed as the protagonist of Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney 4 – Apollo Justice), but that game didn’t tell us his story, so this time, I wanted to focus on him, to show he would develop. So he became a darker Odoroki, who went up against Naruhodō. And through their confrontation, the truth would be unveiled. That was what I had in mind. And one of the themes of Gyakuten Saiban has been how defense attorneys and prosecutors had to trust each other and fight each other with all their hearts in order to uncover the truth. I felt I too had to portray the true meaning of a trial as shown by Naruhodō and Mitsurugi throughout the first three games, and how the clash between these two beliefs in justice would lead to the truth. I also wanted to give a kind of answer to the theme of the Dark Age of Law of this game. It was hard figuring out how to portray that though. The Dark Age of Law was first mentioned in Gyakuten Saiban 4, but it was left vague in that game. So the answer to that, lies in the conclusion of this game.
Interviewer: What can you tell us about how Kokone and Yugami set out to deal with their past?
Yamazaki: It was quite difficult working out Kokone and Yugami’s relationship. After long consideration, we figured that to Kokone, a determined person who fights at your side, would fit best as someone who fights facing the past. So she takes psychology into the courtroom as her weapon in order to prove Yugami’s innocent. That felt the most exciting. And her fight with her past would also be her fight with the Dark Age of Law. I wanted her fight to be a symbol of hope in the Dark Age.
An Exciting Scenario
Eshiro: He was like that during Gyakuten Kenji too. We worked together on those two games, and his scenarios have their own characteristics. Of course, Takumi Shū also has his own characteristics. It’s a given that Yamazaki’s writing would be influenced by the person who up until then had worked on the series. But when we decided to create Gyakuten Saiban 5, I told him not to mind that anymore. He needed to create an interesting himself, that’s all I wanted. And I think this is his personality shining through, but the scenario had these exciting, hot-blooded elements. Friendship, love. Lately, I’ve come to see he likes to portray emotions like that.
Yamazaki: I guess so. (laugh) This time we had Odoroki and Kokone’s stories, with Naruhodō helping them resolve their problems. That was the format involving the balance between those three I arrived at after trying all kinds of things.
Eshiro: With three attorneys, each with their own stories, but Naruhodō as the main protagonist…
Yamazaki: And there were many prosecutors too… We wanted Mitsurugi in, but Yugami had to be there too of course…
Eshiro: And Auchi (Payne) too.
Yamazaki: And Garyū (Klavier Gavin).
Eshiro: You’re right, that’s a lot of prosecutors.
Yamazaki: It really is. There were a lot of conditions I had to deal with, so I had to start thinking about the story from there.
Eshiro: It seems you had extremely more hurdles to clear compared to the two Gyakuten Kenji games.
Yamazaki: Yeah. (laugh) With Mitsurugi appearing, you of course want him in a confrontation with Naruhodō. It was hard figuring out how to have those two do battle again. But if you just had them face each other normally, it’d easily just become too friendly. Because those are besties already. (laugh) The first draft I wrote ended up like that. So that is why I came up with the structure of the two fighting each other, in order to protect their subordinates: Naruhodō protecting Kokone and Mitsurugi protecting Yugami. The story in episode 5 is set-up so we could have this moment where these two would be able to go against each other in full.
Interviewer: And you see the same structure when it comes to succession.
Eshiro: Yeah.
Yamazaki: And that’s why Odoroki in a way ends up standing alone. Naruhodō made a name for himself as an attorney in the first three games, stopped being an attorney in the fourth, and has now returned as one in the fifth, but his position has changed a bit. He has a higher position than in the third game. He is now in the position of the chief of the agency, and has things to pass on to his subordinates. Mitsurugi too has become the Chief Prosecutor, and rather than dealing with individual cases, he is now overseeing the whole of the legal world. Naruhodō shouldn’t just return as an attorney, he had to return in his position as the agency boss. So I think the theme of succession of positions is very important. I can’t tell what will happen in the future though.
Eshiro: No, that’s really hard to predict.
Yamazaki: When everything is succeeded to, what happens next?
Eshiro: What?
Yamazaki: It’s kinda busy with the three of them there. (laugh)
New Experiments Outside the Main Game
Interviewer: This time, there’s extra material beyond the main story, like downloadable content.
Eshiro: Yes. We have DLC in the form of the Special Episode, but also a new idea in the form of Quiz Turnabout Deduction. Quiz Turnabout Deduction was originally something like a novel with mystery puzzles. But then people said it was hard to understand without visuals, so we decided to add that. So then the puzzles themselves started to feature puzzles too, and we wanted to have both easy and more difficult puzzles and so it became bigger and bigger. It’s now so big it could almost be a game on its own. This is the first time the Gyakuten Saiban series has offered downloadable content in the first place, so we thought about what could work. In an action game, you can do a lot, like adding characters or stages. We did add new costumes too though. But adding a scenario takes up quite some resources. The Special Episode really offers the volume of a full episode. So when the team had finished the master ROM of the main game and gone gold, they all thought it was done, but nope!
Yamazaki: Because we still had work to do. Now we mentioned the DLC, I remember the time we thought about what could work as costumes. For Odoroki, we asked Nuri Kazuya, the designer of Gyakuten Saiban 4 to create an original design for us.
Eshiro: He is busy working in a different team at the moment, so it was a bit cheeky of us. (laugh)
Yamazaki: “Please, try find some time!” we said. (laugh) He designed Odoroki’s casual outfit.
Interviewer: You’ve added a lot of features to this game, like the DLC.
Eshiro: Really, it’s completely packed full. You’d almost think this was the last game and we went all out. Talking about the story, Gyakuten Saiban 4 had mysteries that had been left unanswered. We were bothered by that, as well as the players. They were wondering how it’d go from there. So we build on that, and explain what it was about.
Yamazaki: Yeah, from the start, we did feel like we wanted to address things left unaddressed in the previous game. One of those points being the conclusion to the Dark Age of Law.
The Dream: A Grand Robot Sci-Fi Work Together?
Interviewer: We’ve been talking about Gyakuten Saiban until now, but now at the end, I’d like to talk with you as creators. What kind of works would you like to work on in the future? Of course, within the limits of what you can tell us now.
Yamazaki: A good question. I have only worked on Gyakuten games… I love mystery fiction, so I am happy I get to work on mystery games but working on this game, I noticed I like to work on a large scale stories like this. So I’d like to work on something that can be made big, like a sci-fi or fantasy story.
Eshiro: Well, I started out as a programmer, and I love shooting and action games. I am bad with puzzle games, so I doubt I’ll ever work on them. (laugh) The genres I have not worked on since joining Capcom would be… I guess I never worked on a game with robots.
Yamazaki: That’s exactly the kind of game everyone would like to work on!
Eshiro: Yeah.
Yamazaki: That sounds fun!
Interviewer: So Mr. Yamazaki will get to write the story?
Yamazaki: Yeah, let’s do this. Robots!
Eshiro: I do like to work on a robot game. I grew up watching Sunrise’s robot anime series. If it comes to that, I’d like to not only produce, but also direct…
Yamazaki: Why not? You’ll get to write P(roducer) and D(irector) next to your name.
Eshiro: No, but that doesn’t really work well. Being both producer and director… only someone with two personalities could pull that off in a good manner. A producer’s mind is there to be able to say “No” to the director, and the director has to be able to say what’s on their mind to the producer. They require different skill sets, and it’s very difficult to accomplish both tasks as one person. You’ll end up compromising sooner or later. If as the director you start thinking how this will mess up the schedule, delaying the release, you’ll unconsciously start thinking shrink the scale of the project. And if you only think of a game as the producer, you might end up thinking more of games that sell, rather than of games that are fun to play, so I think it’d be rare to have someone acting out those two roles in a satisfying way.
Interviewer: Speaking of robots, Lost Planet 3 (August 29, 2013) of your company has released, right?
Eshiro: Yes. Lost Planet 3, and DmC Devil May Cry, which I worked on too with a studio abroad. Studios abroad really do feel things differently than us here.
Interviewer: I hope to see a sci-fi action game developed in Japan in the future.
Yamazaki: It’d be fun, for sure. I think some things can only be created by the Japanese.
Eshiro: To be honest, I have been influenced a lot by a certain sci-fi film. I saw the first film in the theaters… Luke Skywalker takes place in Han Solo’s Millenium Falcon’s gunner seat, and starts gunning down TIE-fighters with the laser cannons. When I saw that scene, I felt I wanted to play this scene in the game arcades one day, so that’s why I ended up in the game industry.
Yamazaki: So that’s where you came from!
Eshiro: Yeah. I really want to experience that myself too, I thought! (laugh)
Yamazaki: What a dream!
Eshiro: But will it sell? (laugh) If only I could work on a game like a bonus, with a budget, but no set goals for profit. Just give me a budget and deadline.
Yamazaki: That would be nice.
For Fans Now, And For Future Fans
Eshiro: Gyakuten Saiban 5 has now been released, about six years since the previous mainline game. Gyakuten Saiban itself is a series that has been around for over ten years now. Someone who had been 12 during the release of the first game, would be over 22 now. This game is a game with a very unusual, and unique style. It’s not an action game, but does offer the same stimulating experience. As the producer, I feel it’s my duty to make it better known such games also exist on the market.
Yamazaki: We talked about the backlog and UI and how they make the game easier to control before. So I think that Gyakuten Saiban 5 is certainly not a difficult entry point for those who have never played a Gyakuten Saiban before. In fact, I am interested to hear how they feel if they then for example continue to play the first game.
Eshiro: That’s probably something people who played the first four games in order will never experience.
Yamazaki: It’d be nice if a lot of people will try 5 as their first game.
Eshiro: Yes, that’d be nice.
Interviewer: Thanks for your time today. I look forward to your future games
July 28, 2012.
Location: Capcom Research & Development.
EXTRA COLUMN
Naming is Part of Characterization
Interviewer: This is almost nitpicking, but in episode 1, Kokone calls Naruhodō “Naruhodo-san” using katakana script, but Shinobu (Juniper Woods) uses hiragana script. What is the reason for this difference?
Yamazaki: This holds for every character, but naming conventions are part of their personality. Kokone is an energetic woman, while Shinobu is much softer, so they are differentiated with their use of the katakana and hiragana script. Other examples would be calling other characters by their first or last name, or with nicknames. This is decided based on their interpersonal relations.
EXTRA COLUMN
Pay Attention to Red Text!
Interviewer: Sometimes the in-game text features word in a different color. This has been a staple of the series. Is there some rule to this?
Eshiro: Red words are kinda important.
Yamazaki: Yes. Words we want the players to remember, we do in red.
Eshiro: So you point out it’s important.
Yamazaki: And then internal thoughts are blue, and setting messages are in green. Those are the rules. Oh, but while usually text in red is important, we also use it for jokes sometimes. (laugh)
Eshiro: So basically, red is something you want to draw attention too. So don’t think of it necessarily as a clue, just think of it as a message of the developers directly to the player. (laugh).
EXTRA COLUMN
The New Hero Great Kyūbi
Eshiro: Great Kyūbi (The Amazing Nine-Tails) is a hero like Tonosaman (The Steel Samurai). The first game had Tonosaman and the mascot figure of Taiho-kun (The Blue Badger). In this age, players mind the details, so when making Gyakuten Saiban 5, we felt we had to create such extra characters too. I think Great Kyūbi came out great.
Interviewer: Aha, so a new hero.
Yamazaki: Yes. We couldn’t have Tonosaman and Taiho-kun go on and on forever. (laugh)
Eshiro: And Tonosaman and Taiho-kun appeared a lot in Gyakuten Kenji anyway. (laugh)
Yamazaki: But that’s because they are set in the time period of the first three Gyakuten Saibans.
EXTRA COLUMN
Atsume’s laptop
Interviewer: About Atsume (Myriam Scuttlebut) from Episode 3, where did that idea for the cardboard box come from?
Eshiro: I think it was already in the first version of the scenario. It just said, she was wearing a box on her head. I was not sure about that at the time. (Laugh)
Interviewer: And then her laptop falls from the box, and on the screen is a picture with all four of them.
Yamazaki: Oh! You noticed that!
Interviewer: So as they had a picture of them taken, that means they must have been close friends? It seems odd…
Yamazaki: Atsume is a character who wanted to become part of that circle of friends, but couldn’t. And the team all added little hints to her feelings about that. Atsume probably photo-shopped that herself (laugh).
Eshiro: (Laugh). The Gyakuten teams often hide little things like that in the games.
EXTRA COLUMN
The Secret Story Behind The Creation of Lift-Off
Interviewer: The Lift-Off animation of episode 4’s Hoshinari Taiyō (Solomon Starbuck) really made me laugh.
Eshiro: The scenario did mention “Lift off” but I couldn’t imagine what it meant. So I asked art director Fuse, and he told me “Like, he’s going to float like this.” (laugh)
Yamazaki: That was really just a joke we wrote in on a whim. So we got that out, and we could think freely about an animation later.
Interviewer: (laugh) And then to see how such a funny person could sigh that loudly…
Yamazaki: His mood swings were an important part of his character, so he was written like that, in an exaggerated manner. Once we came up with the animation of the lift-off, the idea of all the other people helping him count down was born. So something extra funny was born involving everybody because that animation was first created. An example of an idea being improved due to interaction.
EXTRA COLUMN
Wonderful Libido
Interviewer: Yūgami Kaguya (Aura Blackquill) from episode 4 is absolutely wonderful!
Yamazaki: Really?
Interviewer: Especially how she keeps bashing those robots. And she’s 37! That’s splendid too!
Yamazaki: Oh, yeah, sure. (laugh)
Interviewer: Whose preferences did she spring from?
Yamazaki: Hahaha!
Eshiro: I think it was Fuse. (laugh)
Yamazaki: Yeah. I came up with the background story, but visually… First we had her age, and she was supposed to be an attractive woman with a sadistic side. She’d be slapping the robots like that.
Eshiro: Haha.
Interviewer: And she has those syringes....
Yamazaki: Yeah. Because they’re robots, they’ll be fine. But Fuse really got into it, and came up with a very nice design for her. When I proposed we could make her younger, Fuse was like, “No, that’d be wrong. This is the way, with her being 37 like this.”
Eshiro: He’s picky about that. Libido.
Yamazaki: Well, she’s Yugami’s older sister after all. So the two being a bit twisted like that fitted well.
EXTRA COLUMN
What Does GYAXA Stand For?
Interviewer: I assume GYAXA is based on JAXA, but what does it stand for in the game? I believe you talked about this?
Yamazaki: I guess it’s not GALAXY, there’s no Y at the beginning. (laugh)
Interviewer: Did you come up with an answer?
Eshiro: (Looks at Yamazaki)
Yamazaki: Ah, you got me. Sorry. When the background was first designed, I was thinking of what to write there, so joking around, I wrote “We’re working on GYAKUTEN so why not GYAXA? (laugh)”. And the next time, it really said GYAXA. The person who wrote the extra investigation texts used that to joke about it, but the truth will forever remain a mystery…! (laugh)
EXTRA COLUMN
Series Fan Service
Interviewer: When at the end of episode 3, they started playing Guitar’s Serenade, I got a bit worried. It was just a year since that previous incident…
Yamazaki: Worried something would happen again? (laugh) Related to that: Odoroki’s ringtone is also the Guitar’s Serenade. Because he mentioned how he didn’t really like the loud music of Klavier, but he did like that song. And the logo of Themis Legal Academy is the same logo as found on the uniform of Gyakuten Kenji’s Ichiyanagi Yumihiko. You might think he’d appear too… but he didn’t. (laugh)
Eshiro: He probably graduated from Themis.
Interviewer: Now you mention him, his uniform isn’t the same as the uniform of the prosecutor’s course at Themis now. Did they change the design in those seven years?
Yamazaki: Yeah, the designs must have changed. For this game, we designed the uniforms to fit with the personalities of Rei (Hugh O’Connor) and Chishio (Robin Newman) in mind foremost. Oh, and Ichiynagi and Garyū are the same age, so rumors were bouncing around they might have met. And now we know they attended the same school.
Eshiro: So now it’s fact…
Yamazaki: Surely, they must have done something together… perhaps.
Eshiro: Perhaps.
Yamazaki: Oh, and the DLC costume of Odoroki has details that will surely make people who have played Gyakuten Saiban 4 smile. Mr. Hat is an accessory, Akane (Ema Skye)’s badge on his chest. It’ll make you think of Gyakuten Saiban 4.
EXTRA COLUMN
The Highlights of the Special Episode
Eshiro: The special episode is about the first case Narohodō handles after returning as an attorney.
Yamazaki: Yes. When we started thinking about what to have as the DLC, we decided to have everyone play through the first case he took on, as one of the themes of the game was Naruhodō’s return. So then we started thinking who’d be a good defendant for him, but a normal defendant seemed a bit boring…. So at an aquarium, it appears an orca end up killing a person, and now Naruhodō has to defend the orca.
Eshiro: The orca!
Yamazaki: It makes you wonder what’s going on.
Eshiro: It’s quite shocking.
Yamazaki: Every time I work on a case, I pay a lot of attention to the impact of the initial hook. So one of those ideas was, “What would you do if you’d defend an orca?” The moment I thought of it, I thought this could work.
Eshiro: But once you got started on it…
Yamazaki: The setting is an aquarium, and that aquarium itself is themed after pirates. And the characters are all quite unique, so I think the story is really fun. Please purchase the special episode. (laugh)
Eshiro: Via download.
Yamazaki: Pretty please. Oh, and I also have to mention Harumi (Pearl Fey) appears in it too.
Eshiro: She appears too. And she has a lot do there! (laugh)
EXTRA COLUMN
About the Gyakuten Series
Eshiro: What we hope is that people who play this series for the first time via Gyakuten Saiban 5 will think: “I never knew there was a game like this.” “This was fun” and then start thinking “If this is the fifth game, that means there is a fourth game, and a third etc.” and get into the rest of the series like that. And when they are done with that, they realize: “Hey, but there’s also a Gyakuten Kenji series. (laugh)” And in that series, you play as Mitsurugi Reiji and you can control him directly. So people who play the series like that will then understand what the references in 5 meant.
Yamazaki: People who have played the series from the very start, will know what the line “A lawyer is someone who smiles no matter how bad it gets” means, but someone who started with 5, will finally realize it was a reference when they play the series from the beginning. I’m quite interested in such experience.
Eshiro: The first game is twelve years old now, so mechanically, the game might provide a few hurdles to someone used to modern games, but it remains an important game, as the one where it all started.
EXTRA COLUMN
Talking About Gyakuten Kenji
Eshiro: Gyakuten Saiban and Gyakuten Kenji are all part of the Gyakuten series.
Yamazaki: That’s the way to put it, yes.
Eshiro: We don’t use the word “spin-off.” They share the same name. When we use the word “spin-off” you are more likely to think of for example an adventure game which becomes an action game. Naruhodō appearing in Mei’s Whippity Whip Trip, fighting enemies with the whip. That’s my idea of a spin-off.
Yamazaki: I am actually still waiting for that game to come out… (laugh)
Eshiro: But Gyakuten Kenji is in essence the same as Gyakuten Saiban, as an adventure game that lets you experience the thrills of turning things around. The flow of turnabouts in the story and the truth being uncovered at the end is the exact same. So it is a different take on the Gyakuten series and should be played as part of the Gyakuten story.
Yamazaki: Yeah.
Eshiro: Personally, I think the second Gyakuten Kenji in particular turned out great. That game is really Yamazaki gone all out.
Yamazaki: Yes, I did my best!
Eshiro: And I think he went all out to with Gyakuten Saiban 5.
Yamazaki: Yeah, for sure.
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