Last week, I started talking about the various reasons behind GENBA no Kizuna‘s long development process. Today, we’re continuing from where we left off, so if you haven’t read the previous blog post, it’s recommended to do that first!
But with that warning out of the way, let’s jump straight into the next major reason!
- Project Size
As mentioned last time, GENBA was originally supposed to be a much shorter side-project. However, while it was never intended to be even half as long as SHINRAI, it somehow ended up being twice the size of our previous VN! And that naturally played a major part in why its completion took so unexpectedly long. But how did that happen? How did things snowball out of control like that…?
Well, one of the reasons why I’m generally incapable of creating shorter stories is because, when I see potential somewhere, I wanna use it and not let it go to waste. I wanna make the most out of an idea and take it as far as I can, because, otherwise, I know I’ll have regrets later on and look back on the project thinking: “Man, I could’ve made so much more out of this.”
So, while I could have done a little murder mystery strictly focused on investigating and solving the case, every step of the way I began having thoughts like: “This is actually pretty interesting… I wanna explore it in more depth!”
I had all these new characters, for instance, and it would have felt “meh” if I hadn’t given them some proper backstories and characterization, especially since one of the big SHINRAI criticisms was that the majority of the cast was pretty one-dimensional and that there wasn’t much character development. Besides, since I did want to do an investigation-focused game, it felt like a cool idea to actually explore topics and themes related to crime scene investigation and general police work through these characters.
Basically, I couldn’t hold myself back. I approach every project as though it’s gonna be my last or like I won’t have the opportunity to do it again and make it better. In fact, I highly doubt I will ever do another VN in which you play as an actual investigation team.
For future murder mysteries, I wanna got back to portraying them through the eyes of an amateur sleuth, just like I did in SHINRAI. There are many reasons for that, most of which will become clear in the further points I’ll discuss here, but ever since I became aware of the fact that there won’t be a “GENBA 2“, I felt all the more compelled to do everything I could with this project and, again, to take everything as far as I possibly could, whether it was in regards to the characters or even the mystery.
And while I understand that it’s not gonna be everybody’s cup of tea and I’m sure that I could have executed things much, much better in many regards, at the very least I can now look back on GENBA thinking that I put everything in there that I wanted!
- Research
One of the biggest problems with writing an actual police procedural is that you have a lot less leeway in getting away with your characters making mistakes. Raiko is an amateur detective. She’s got no training in crime scene investigation or postmortem examinations, no access to forensic tools or the national police database. And on top of that, she’s just an ordinary teenager.
If she makes mistakes, it’s a “duh”. Of course she doesn’t know how to properly handle things! If she makes an egregious error when handling the crime scene or bodies, it can just be brushed off for those reasons.
In GENBA, however, the entire main cast are professionals, so it isn’t quite so simple anymore. Now, I did give myself some leeway in letting them make rather questionable blunders by not only making most of them rookies, but also through the backstory of the Rougetsu police force and the suddenness of the situation they find themselves in. Keiichi is a newbie cop who is thrown into the role of OIC completely out of the blue. He’s inexperienced and a nervous wreck, so he ends up making a whole bunch of mistakes.
That said, he is still supposed to be a police officer. Just like Himatsu. And even if Rei has some issues to deal with, which pose a handicap to her, she still underwent extensive forensic training. Shinketsu even has been a medical examiner for almost a decade!
And then there is Nobuhiko, the superintendent who oversees everything…
In other words, I had to make sure that their professional knowledge shines through. That the mistakes they make are at least acknowledged and addressed. If Keiichi messes up, either the chief, Rei or Shin have to scold him for it and explain why it was wrong and how it should actually have been done. I couldn’t just completely brush past it as I would’ve been able to with Raiko.
For this reason, a lot of research was required. And so I spent hours upon hours of reading through articles, essays, research documents and case studies. I watched countless documentaries and YouTube vids. I listened and talked to professionals whenever possible. And not just in regards to police work, but all the stuff related to Raptor Pack Productions. I looked up budgets of indie movies, costs and mechanical details of animatronics, the history of the bearded vulture, the tradition of falconry, how to gain a permit to keep a bird of prey, how Common Variable Immunodeficiency is treated and so, so much more.
Yes, GENBA is a highly fictionalized anime-style visual novel. In some regards, I had to go down a somewhat unrealistic route for the sake of making things more interesting. A real police investigation can be a very long, dry, drawn-out and mostly boring procedure after all. And I’m primarily still trying to make a game that’s hopefully entertaining.
However, I still wanted to stick to reality as much as I could, because I think, especially for a murder mystery, that’s important and that the details matter a lot. The case needs to make sense and the mysteries need to have logical explanations. What’s done to the victim, for instance, needs to actually be possible, so that players have a fair shot at figuring out the solution.
So yeah, I spent an insane amount of time just researching and double-checking things, which heavily affected the speed at which development could progress and why things took so much longer than they did with SHINRAI. Because, you know what? For our previous project, barely any research was done! I mean, sure, I did look up stuff for it as well, primarily in regards to the tricks utilized by the culprit in order to ensure that they would work in real life. But outside of that, not much research was even necessary.
The story just revolved around some teens trapped in a resort, after all. And that’s part of the reason I’m happy to return to my grumpy little amateur sleuth and don’t really want to do another police procedural. It’s just gonna be a lot easier on me, haha.
(Here’s a look at my GENBA research doc folder where I saved all the stuff I found noteworthy enough to keep)
Now, we’ve covered quite a few points so far, but one of the biggest reasons as to why GENBA‘s development took so long has yet to be discussed. It’s gonna be a lengthy and rather personal one, however, as it is tied directly to my private life in the past few years, so we will get into that next time. I still have to think about how deeply I wanna delve into it…
But until then, please continue to enjoy a super neat Spooky Month and, as always, take care ^w^
(PS: I’ve been pretty fed up with Twitter for a long while now and while I will continue using it for now, I’m currently settling in over where the skies are blue, so if you want to follow dev updates there, you can now do so here! And if you want to follow my personal ramblings and dino/waifu obsessions for whatever reason, you can find my private account here.)
