Q&A with Capcom's Shu Takumi on Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Capcom's Shu Takumi / Photo: M.Concepcion

As both the director and storywriter for the Ace Attorney series, Shu Takumi has a knack for creating both characters who defend the lives of others and characters who speak for the deceased. In his latest title, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Takumi-san delves into the afterlife itself, by featuring a dead protagonist named Sissel who is trying to figure out the cause of his own death. As a spirit, Sissel can possess inanimate objects and even save others from death. Examiner spoke to Takumi-san to learn more about Ghost Trick as well as his fondness for mysteries.

What was it like having spent so many years on Ace Attorney and now transitioning to a brand new property like Ghost Trick?

Indeed, I worked on Ace Attorney for a really long time. Actually when I finished the third game on the GBA back in 2004, I had felt I finished the story of Phoenix Wright and I felt I was ready to move on to a new project. That was when I started to think about Ghost Trick, but Capcom decided they wanted to make a fourth Ace Attorney game due to fan reaction and the great sales. So I went ahead and made the fourth game. I also helped with the DS ports for the first three games and brought them to America. It was a long time coming. I've been sitting and stewing on it for a while. Finally in 2007 I was able to get started on Ghost Trick.

In a period where developers are continually jumping from platform to platform, you've spent a better part of the decade focusing on Nintendo's portables. Guess it shows how comfortable you are with those devices.

One of the things with portable machines like the DS and GBA is that they're so easy to carry around. They're easy to pick up and read. When I want to read a mystery novel I can simply open it, read it, and when I'm done, I close it and then put it down. That's the beauty of the portable machines. Another reason is that because the cost is not as high. The great thing about making a mystery game is that it's not necessarily dependent on the hardware. All you really need is a good story and good gameplay. In that respect, it's very easy to develop for a portable game machine.

I get the feeling you were a big fan of mystery novels long before you got into the game industry.

You hit the nail on the head. Actually since I was 10, I've read mystery novel after mystery novel. It's almost like I haven't read anything but mystery novels since then. (laughs) One of the reasons why I got into the game industry was because I wanted to do something like a mystery novel. In my mind, games are a great medium to convey these great stories.

And do you consider yourself well rounded in your enthusiasm for mysteries? Do you read Japanese mysteries as much as you do Western ones?

Actually, I've read a wide range of mysteries including ones by American and European authors. I've read a lot of Sherlock Holmes and a lot of Arsene Lupin. Western mysteries nowadays are a little bit different in their nuances and my preference is more toward the 1920's style of mysteries, so I'm more a fan of older more classic mystery novels.

When you think about games like Fatal Frame, Calling and Shadow of Memories, Japanese developers show this high level of interest in the death and the afterlife. Do you feel that your own desire to explore similar themes in Ghost Trick is indicative of Japanese culture's comfort level with death?

Yes, people in Japan do write about death quite a bit and can treat it as a main theme. As a Japanese person, it is not something I'm consciously aware of when I wrote Ghost Trick. It's not something that was a conscious goal of having death as a theme. For me, writing for a mystery game, one way for me to pull a player in is to talk about things surrounded by life and death. With the Ace Attorney series for example, we had this lawyer who was protecting the lives of his clients. So you have this life and death situation, where if you failed, the client would most likely be sentenced to death. In Ghost Trick, you have this main character who is already dead. He's curious and wants to find out who killed him and how it happened. It's the gap between life and death that you find a lot of motivation and interesting points for the player to keep on playing. It's a good way to convey the mystery.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is due for release in Winter 2010 for the Nintendo DS.