...and have they used such for DGS? I noticed that DD and PLvPWAA had a scenario writer (Takumi or Yamazaki) and a bunch of hired guns (scriptwriters) and that I believe AJAA also had several other writers for the planning department other than Takumi, whereas the first 2 (maybe T&T too) were solely written by Takumi.

Usually I can tell when the actual script was done by Yamazaki in DD, with the amount of ellipses in DD or odd reactions to interjections in the final 2 cases (like "NOOOOOOO") as opposed to the more snappy writing in the middle episodes or the very sappy writing of case 3 which I always suspected was mostly a case directed by one of the senior writers.

How long have Capcom been using scriptwriters to pen out these games, and what do you think of using scriptwriters who are essentially writers hired outside to write the script for stories they didn't come up with? In other games I know Batman Arkham Knight used scriptwriters and the latest Fire Emblem titles used as well.

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I dug a bit through the various credits of the series and this is what I found:



Ace Attorney Investigations was the first time extra scenario writers appeared in the credits. AA4 may have different planners, but game planning is a very broad process that goes into a lot of fields (also budgeting for example), and considering only Takumi is credited for the scenario, I think we should assume that he was the sole writer like with the previous three games (or at least not automatically assume that planners also contributed to the scenario/script unless explicitly stated).

And I don't know if you've read this interview with Takumi and a fellow game scenario writer, but Takumi is simply someone who wants to do everything himself and isn't good at delegating work. In the interview, Ishii says he's the opposite and actually enjoys working together with other people on scripts and I think it might be the same for Yamazaki, seeing as all his games use several writers, both in-house Capcom writers and from outside (the in-house writers often have planning experience though). Kitajima is probably the biggest external name, as he (and his agency Synthese) works on a lot of adventures/RPGs based on concepts by others (for example, Fire Emblem). I think the only game Synthese wrote from scratch is Senran Kagura.

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Last edited by Ash on Fri Aug 12, 2016 7:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Well, it certainly explains why I felt the last trial of PLvPWAA felt so distincly more boring than the rest in terms of pacing and dialogue writing if there was some script-writer who had to help with that.

I always found Shu Takumi's own style of characterization and humor to really stand out in his writing moreso than his plot. On the other hand Mr. Yamazaki has a very drab prose but his scenarios are usually tied well-together. It's pretty much what I expected then, and it also explains why I find the enjoyment of the writing between AAI, AAI2 and DD to be fairly different. I felt AAI and DD have very lively characterization in their middle cases, whereas the main-plot-arcs of mostly the first and final case begins to falter.

I was just replaying parts of DD last week, starting from case 3 and I actually found myself enjoying it more than i used to, but as soon as I made it to case 4 I started feeling like the writing started to bug me, with lots of awkward attempts at humorous banter and like I keep saying, too many ellipses for almost every dialogue box.

The humor in DD was never too lolfunny IMO but in general for case 1, 2 and 3 and the DLC case I found it to be much more colorful than in most of AAI or AAI2 for that matter. Fantranslation might have an impact too.

Localization may be part of the prose too, because I always felt T&T's writing felt somehow different to that of PWAA and JFA in a subtle way. I felt like the back-and-forth's between Phoenix and Maya weren't as playful but more blunt.

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You definitely shouldn't discount the role of localizations in the scenario. The translation style for AA1 and 2-3 is already quite apparently different (you get added-in, in-your-face jokes like "Mr. Did It", among others) - note that Janet Hsu, most known for directing AA2 and 5's, wasn't on the localization for the first - and in the case of AAI2 fan translations generally try not to be too interpretive else they get accused of changing the content to their own whims. And of course there's Layton vs., which had its localization done by Level-5 instead of Capcom. And it's not just directors; certain teams just have different ways of doing things.

For the record, lots of ellipses are common in many Japanese games (and throughout many of the AA games as well), so a lot of the time how much of that gets retained depends largely on the localization team. I can't recall if there was a huge disparity between them in the core writing for AA1-4 and 5, so I'll have to look into them again.

I all-around enjoy Takumi's work vastly more than Yamazaki's, but I can kind of understand what you mean. Yamazaki's stuff is a bit more in-your-face, whereas Takumi tends to be a bit more subtle in what he writes.

And I think that's why I like Takumi better-- I adored the subdued nature of the first game, that's what got me hooked. It didn't try too hard; it didn't try to be zany and wacky. It simply had a lot of raw emotion bubbling under the surface, and I really felt it.

But I don't mind the wackiness in the filler cases. It's fun and hilarious! I even liked Turnabout Big Top. But once the main plot kicks in, I don't really care for the wild antics. I agree with how you feel on that, too. To me, the Ace Attorney series is about the characters. Yamazaki I think sees the characters a little bit cheaper, a little bit more expendable than Takumi did. He didn't treat them with as much...I don't want to say respect, but something akin to that.

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Precisely how I feel to. I feel like you have the joke-characters or the one-dimensional ones and then the real characters in every Ace Attorney game regardless of writer, but it's as if the real characters in a Takumi game are written with a much more human touch to them than in Yamazaki's stuff, where their thoughts and expressions just don't really come across in the same natural way.

It's like, I feel like I'm there with the characters in almost every game by Takumi, but in AAI and DD, even the main characters appear a bit more theatrical or on the nose in how they interact with each other. It's kind of hard to explain, but I just connect so much better with Takumi's main characters usually.

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Looking at the list Ash dug up again, is kind of fascinating. It also makes more sense to me now, why people's reactions to AAI, DD and AAI2 have been so different, because one or two writers seemed to have come and gone between those games.

...and I wonder what "Scenario Integration" implies?

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