And that's the way I try to write all of that. So the player's forced to approach it the same way Naegi is, with this feeling of, "Well, on the one hand there's this, and on the other hand there's this." He has to deal with conflicting emotions in both of these things to move forward.
But at the same time, she did something wrong. Of course, he feels bad for her, because he cared for her. However, by making her actually the culprit, suddenly there's this conflict within Naegi. There would be no real growth there's no way to move forward from that. And the only thing you would feel would be sympathy for her. She presents herself one way, and she ends up doing this horrible thing.Īnd so, if she was the one who was simply murdered, the player would probably go with Naegi, and feel sympathy for her. In a way, Naegi, the main character, is betrayed by her. Like you said, it's surprising because she's the culprit. To give you an actual example of how I do this, let's go back to Sayaka's case. Here he shares her character traits and the events that shape the direction the story around her takes - note the contrast. Kodaka's slide on Sayaka Maizono from GDC. I definitely put thought into it to make sure those surprises have an outcome and have a connection to the plot itself, and the characters. So I try as much as possible to make sure that the surprise elements and surprise scenes are also connected to the characters, and allow the plot to move forward. By the same token, if you only do that, what you end up with is a wasted chance. A part of that is just that I want to have a good shock and scare in there. Would you say that when you create a situation in the game, it's not enough to have it be entertaining, but it also has to move the plot forward, or the characters forward? By the same token, if you only do that, what you end up with is a wasted chance." "A part of that is just that I want to have a good shock and scare in there. That ended up being a really good vehicle for me to have that character move forward and act. Naegi ends up having to shoulder the deaths of these two, and go on with his life, as it were. The point of the matter is that what that ended up doing is hastening Naegi's growth as a character, through this idea. Maybe she did it because she wanted to live, obviously. What that kind of means is that Sayaka herself obviously had her own feelings, and maybe she did it to send him a message, or leave him a message. Part of it was to provide a vehicle for Naegi's growth. KK: Going off what you just said, yeah, you're right. So what I thought would be one of the best ways was to have the Sayaka Maizono character meet her untimely death.Īnd not just that, but she also tried to frame the hero for a crime - that's the more twisted part. It was the first in the series, and I felt there had to be something that would really grab players so they'd want to play and keep playing. And it sort of tells the player, "this is not going to go to your expectations." Can you talk about that decision, and why it was important? In the first game, you killed off the heroine very quickly - in the first case. In my mind, American "mystery" is more like suspenseful drama, whereas I feel like in Japan, that genre means surprising your reader. I figured, well, what if you were going to do a mystery-style game - a mystery as a game, instead of a novel? That would be Danganronpa.
I'm actually a pretty big fan of mystery fiction. Kazutaka Kodaka: I guess you could say one of the representative things of Japanese mystery fiction is that it's got a lot of twists, turns, and surprises. Can you talk about where the idea first came from, and how you approached it? It seems that the idea behind Danganronpa is to create something surprising to people. NOTE: As it concerns the writing and development of the franchise, this interview contains MAJOR, UNMARKED SPOILERS for the first two Danganronpa games. In the following Q&A, conducted during GDC, we get into his method, the characters, and what he wanted to accomplish creatively - and into the mind of Monokuma, the series' anti-mascot.
He starts with a series of characteristics, and then chooses a sampling that will result in an interesting character - taking note to mix-and-match intelligently for the biggest emotional impact. The second game does the same thing, but this time on a tropical island - and makes fun of itself for recycling its premise.Īt this year's GDC, the series' writer/director Kazutaka Kodaka gave a talk on his method of creating his brand of memorable stories and characters. The first game is about a group of high school students, all exceptional, pitted to kill each other in a locked high school - by a teddy bear mastermind. What's it all about? It's macabre but hilarious perverse and amoral strange but relatable.