Last week, I reminisced how GENBA no Kizuna was conceived, even sharing some notes from my very first brainstorming sessions.
Today, I’d like to continue from there and delve into GENBA‘s various iterations and how drastically some things ended up changing.
As mentioned before, when I originally came up with the idea, it was primarily out of a desire to make an investigation-heavy game.
I started off by thinking about the general setup: a rookie investigator tackling his first case while being supervised by an experienced detective. A whole team with each member specializing in a different field of crime scene investigation.
But, of course, one of the most important aspects about the whole thing was to even have a case to investigate!
And good gracious Cretaceous did that change over the course of development…
- Initial Case Idea
Since I wanted this to be a very short and simple project, I originally came up with a very simple premise. Our detective MC would arrive at the scene and immediately lay eyes on the aftermath of a puzzling crime: two dead bodies lying in close proximity to one another in a dark back alley. Did they kill each other? Did one of them kill the other and then commit suicide? Did a third party kill one or even both of them? I wanted the case to revolve around these questions.
I never really moved much further into this direction, though. I ultimately didn’t find it all that interesting and unique enough. I figured that, if I wanna do a VN that portrays an actual police investigation, I’d like the case itself to really stick out and be memorable.
Dead bodies in a back alley just lacked a certain… pizazz.
Now, SHINRAI is Halloween-themed, which helped it stand out a bit. And its sequel is partially Christmas- and partially movie-themed. So, in order to make things more interesting, it only made sense to have a theme for this new case, too, right?
- Murder In A Museum
I sadly really can’t remember when and how this idea got sparked exactly, but at some point, I suddenly found myself pondering: “What if the case is dinosaur-themed? What if the victim was even killed by a dinosaur?”
Of course, it’s kinda hard to have a dinosaur kill people in modern times, unless I was gonna go the science fiction route à la Michael Chrichton. However, maybe I didn’t need to actually bring back dinosaurs. Maybe their remains could do the trick!
During the finale of Jurassic Park, there is a scene in which the survivors try to escape from a raptor by crawling through the air vents. These lead them back into the main hall of the visitor center, where they try to climb down the skeletal remains of the T-Rex that is displayed there. And, at one point, one of the kids falls to the ground before part of the skeleton detaches and almost smushes him.
Inspired by this scene, my idea was: what if that had actually happened? What if, in a museum, someone is killed by a dinosaur skeleton collapsing on them? Maybe it could be a story about people working at the museum and one of them messed with the nuts and bolts and purposely caused the extinction of one of their colleagues! Something like that…
I was still unsure about it, but felt like I was on the right track. Things definitely got more interesting and a whole lot more fun for me!
- Animatronics
Eventually, I decided to go another step further. While real living dinos were still out of the question, there was one way to still get closer to that than just fossil remains. What’s always fascinated me about Jurassic Park was not just the dinos in it, but also the moviemaking behind it. I’ve watched and read about all the behind-the-scenes stuff countless times and knew how lifelike and dangerous the animatronic reincarnations of those prehistoric beings could be. And then I recalled another scene from the movie.
The one in which the lawyer gets snatched off the toilet by good old Rexy. Could I maybe do something like that?
Would that be going too far? But it’s kinda cool and certainly a unique idea… an animatronic T-Rex eating the victim…
Once I had gotten that into my head, there was no going back and I needed the entire case to revolve around it!
- The Settings & Suspects
With the animatronic brought into the mix, I also felt the need to change the setting. Sure, I could’ve still used a museum.
Museums do often utilize animatronics after all. However, they are not nearly as sophisticated, resilient and lifelike as the ones used in a movie production akin to Jurassic Park. And for this to work, I needed an animatronic like the one used in the film. One with an enormous bite force that could actually smash human bones!
I also really liked the filmmaking thematic. Not only did it play into the theme of SHINRAI‘s actual sequel, it also allowed me to get a bit more personal and use it as a way to sort of incorporate our indiedev struggles into the story. Sure, making an indie movie or an indie VN are two very different things, but there are also many similarities and I felt that these could make for an interesting conflict that could lie at the very core of the whole ordeal.
That was the moment Raptor Pack Productions was born! But how their role changed in all this… well, that’ll be the topic next time!
For now, I unfortunately have to come to a close again, but not without sharing one last thing with you:
This insanely cute animation was done by “Ryuu-chan” as a “gift to all RyuuHaku shippers” w I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Now then, as always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
