Ace Attorney creator on initial prototype and nearly suspending development, Maya and Mia’s origins, more

Takumi: The other one I really had trouble with was the final case in Ace Attorney 3. I wasn’t really sure where to start… so in the end I looked at the trick with the suspension bridge and went from there. Anyway, it was tough. I can always see the conclusion, but to get there is a complicated road that the player must use their logic to solve. At the time of making the second game, my close friend Kamiya (Hideki Kamiya, now with PlatinumGames) told me that I absolutely must not change the music for the main character. When I was making the climax to that third game, I remember what he said and used the original game theme. But that impact was only possible because we were always changing the music before.

It became a very ‘final’ feeling climax and you can really sense the connection between teacher and student.

Takumi: The thing is, for whatever reason I’m always been saved by someone else! (laughs) I was talking about divine intervention earlier and the second piece of divine intervention was when I was doing this ending. The thing that was really worrying me was that in this episode the true perpetrator is someone special and exempt from the law. The story couldn’t end properly without him getting what was coming to him, but I wasn’t sure how I would make that happen. I had to think: “In this case what would Maya do?” and “What is the worst thing that could happen to this criminal…” And then the story just kind of naturally evolved from the actions I thought Maya would take and the road to bringing down the criminal became clear.

I think having a medium in the games really expresses the freedom of creativity in the series, but why did you originally decide to put one in the game?

Takumi: This goes back to the original series planning, but my idea was to have three people in the lawyer’s office. That would be the protagonist, a helper and the mentor. Then my boss saw the plan and told me: “Three is too many. Take one of them out of the picture.”

Take one of them out of the picture? Sounds like a real case.

Takumi: I thought to myself, “Are we in the mafia?” (laughs) At that time I wasn’t the meek little subordinate I should have been and I didn’t want to reduce the cast to two people. I thought that if I had one of the main cast die and then a spirit medium come in to take that place, then I could say: “There are three but it’s only really two.” That was where the idea for the medium came from.

No way! Mia had to die just for that reason of reducing the numbers…?

Takumi: I’m not sure if that’s the only reason. But in planning my idea was that Mia was a spirit who had been dead from the beginning. That was the image I had. I was told by people playing at the time that this was a really impactful development, and that convinced me.

And of course as a second benefit that death guarantees that the medium will carry on working with the protagonist.

Takumi: Exactly. (laughs) Actually we were intending to have the first case be one where the protagonist was taken into custody as a suspect in the murder of his mentor. But when the trial started it became clear that this was no good. In the end we scrapped this and came up with the idea of a lawyer who had been stripped of his right to practice.

But his mentor has since become such an indispensable figure.

Takumi: When the team talked about that original idea, they said that if the master just dies straight away it won’t mean anything, so it was better to first have an episode with the mentor in there.

I see.

Takumi: What they were saying made sense, so I quickly made a prologue that is now considered to be the first trial.

The ‘first’ but added right at the end… (laughs)

Takumi: Thanks to that we had our emotional impact and also introduced the friend character of Larry Butz.

I really didn’t expect to see Mia come back again through a spirit medium either…

Takumi: When I look back now I think that the spirit medium angle added a real spice to the Ace Attorney series. Having said that though, I was going to restrict the use of the medium to only solve the crimes to the first game. But after release there were a portion of users who said that it wasn’t really a true mystery if there was someone there able to speak to the dead. When I saw that, the mystery lover in me raged. (laughs) For me there are accepted rules between the writer and the reader, and if you have those limits to work with then any world can home a true mystery. So even in a world where mediums exist, as long as you have those rules it can be a real mystery. In order to show that, I always had this on my mind when I thought about how I could use the medium in the second game. Then by the third game, the medium has become the main theme… (laughs)

If we’re talking mediums then the main one would of course be Maya. Could you tell us a little more about her?

Takumi: When it was decided that Mia would be a medium, Maya’s fate was also automatically sealed as a medium too. (laughs) Because she is a woman that is always by the protagonist’s side, I wrote her while thinking about the sort of woman I myself would enjoy being around. And then, for them to inevitably meet, she also had to become involved in a crime. In Ace Attorney there is a major theme of trust and sympathy between victim and the players, so I wanted her be to someone who they really wanted to help out.

The dialogue between the two of them is also enjoyable.

Takumi: Writing those nothing conversations between the two of them while they are investigating the scene is a lot of fun. The dialogue between Phoenix Wright and Maya is for me as a writer the one I write most naturally. Because of that I have the feeling they are speaking inside of my head.

By the way, where did Maya’s love of Miso Ramen come from?

Takumi: It’s probably because I am also a big fan of Miso Ramen. But then, just liking Ramen is not enough to be a character trait. I have to say that because Tonkotsu is too strong and salt ramen is too thin, isn’t Miso ramen the perfect choice for Maya? Then I have this logic to back-up my choice for the character. The truth is that if I let my guard down I can end up projecting myself onto those two characters, so I have to be careful.

Translation by provided by Corks on behalf of Nintendo Everything

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