Monday 9 October 2017

Suda51 Discusses His Strange Approach To Game Development And The 25th Ward: The Silver Case Remake

Goichi Suda (aka Suda51) has made a name for himself with surreal games such as Killer7 and The No More Heroes series. He also created a slew of smaller novel experiences from Flower, Sun, and Rain to The Silver Case. The latter received a remaster last year with some new content, and now he's giving its sequel, The 25th Ward, similar treatment. The upcoming remake features completely rebuilt HD graphics and new content.

The game, which is due out sometime in 2018, takes place five years after the events of the original, when a woman's murder sets off a chain of strange events. The tale will bridge across multiple protagonists, including The Silver Case's Tokio Morishima. To find out more about The 25th Ward: The Silver Case, we chatted with writer Suda and director Nobutaka Ichiki.

When you set out to remake The Silver Case, how likely were the prospects of The 25th Ward also making it stateside? Was The 25th Ward remaster contingent on The Silver Case doing well?

Suda: Basically, it was like you said, it has to succeed in order to move on to the next one. However, one of the really good characteristics of this project was that right when the team working on the development of The Silver Case finished, they were all still together. Usually, in development situations, the team will break up after the project is completed. NIS America had contacted them and said, "Come on, let's do The 25th Ward, too." So the timing worked out really well for that; the team didn't have to disband, they could stay where they are and just start working on The 25th Ward. Another thing that makes The 25th Ward a little different from Silver Case is that this time, Grasshopper has actually sent over three people, including Mr. Nobutaka Ichiki to work directly with the development team and really make sure it turns out the way we want it to.

Had you considered bundling in the first game for people who haven't played it?

Suda: Well, partially. One thing we always have to be cognizant of is the publishers and thinking about how they want to do things, too. But I thought that it would be good to do [release them] separately. And for those players who maybe have not had a chance to play The Silver Case, we actually added a little bit of scenario at the beginning of The 25th Ward [for them] to be able to understand what happened in that game. Both ideas are really valid ideas for how to release the game, but in this case, I thought that this would work out a little bit better.

[Editor's Note: you can purchase a limited-edition bundle, which has both games, from NISA's store]

This was originally a mobile game that came out over a decade ago. How much of it did you have to change in order to update it for modern screens and the modern generation?

Suda: The story hasn't changed – we haven't changed a thing. But the approach to actually making the game is the same as making a new game; starting from scratch and just going from there and completely doing it.

Are there any enhancements for this?

Ichiki: One thing that we carried over from The Silver Case is that there's something called The Film Window Engine, which is how the game is displayed when you're playing it. So you've got that window and then you've got other windows [like the command window], and they kind of overlap and interact with one another. Because we were able to work on The 25th Ward, we wanted to use that system as well. That's part of how the gameplay has changed from the original. The one thing that this contributed to was allowing the player to really insert themselves into this world, because that's not something you can really do on a tiny cellphone screen. I feel that we really accomplished that. And again, because we have the engine from The Silver Case, we're able to use that as a base and then just kind of put things on top of it to keep that going.

What can we expect from the new chapters in The 25th Ward? The Silver Case had ties to The 25th Ward and elsewhere. Will these tie into something larger?

Suda: Like you said, the parts that were added before kind of led into this, and then the new stuff is kind of opening up to other stuff as well. But I don't know about the size yet; I'm actually still working on it, so I don't know how big it's going to be. However, whether the new stuff will lead into something bigger, that's what I'm still thinking about. What we're working on right now is just kind of getting that link between the two games really well, so obviously I'm working on a part. The other side of the story, the Placebo side, that's a different writer, and it's always been a different writer, Mr. Oka. He's working on that, so what we're working on now is really making that transition between the two very seamless.

How is it to revisit games you made years ago in order to try and remake them, while also adding new content at the same time?

It is difficult. It's like rehabilitation to get back into, "What is The Silver Case? What is this world? What's going on here?" I definitely had to take the time to do that for myself, to get back in that mode. However, the process of that rehabilitation put me in the mode to be able to write something new, and the cool thing is that now I do get to write something new and it's going to be matched up with this current time that we're living in. I haven't written it yet but I, myself, am excited to see what I'm going to write and what's going to come out of this.

How well did The Silver Case do sales-wise? Does it make you hopeful for The 25th Ward, or was this more a matter of preserving history?

Suda: It's a little bit of both. Obviously, you know, the sales of one kind of impact my outlook for the sales of the other. But there's also definitely that feeling of preservation and wanting to keep something that I created and [make sure it's] able to be played afterwards. It probably leans a little bit more to that latter; however, it is important that I preserve this work. There's also the other feeling of expectancy for the future of The Silver Case overall. I don't necessarily assume it's becoming a yearly, episodic series or something like that, but maybe in a few years, I'll have a really cool announcement to make about this world and the future of what's going to happen.

Click to the next page to see why Suda compares The 25th Ward to a bowel movement coming out of his mouth...



from www.GameInformer.com - The Feed http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/10/09/suda51-discusses-his-strange-approach-to-game-development-and-the-25th-ward-the-silver-case-remake.aspx

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