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Kazutaka Kodaka Talks About His New Game, His Writing Process, and Danganronpa




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tintor2



Joined: 11 Aug 2010
Posts: 1804
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2022 9:40 am Reply with quote
He sure is honest about V3. The ending blew my mind like if I was playing Sons of Liberty.

I never got the whole luck vs talent in the first game while in Goodbye Despair luck felt Nagito's talent. Then again, Nagito must be the weirdest character ever created by Kodaka.
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danpmss



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 762
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2022 1:09 pm Reply with quote
V3 was definitely the very best precisely for that reason he mentioned, in my eyes.
It truly is a player punch instead of just a character one, some next level meta-despair for all readers for sure haha

Very remniscent from Umineko's ending with EP8 back then, its own finale, and luckily, just like it, it has been seen with much better eyes over the years as people revisited it from the start.

V3's beginning alone basically tells you everything you need to reconsider if you reacted badly to that finale, much like Kodaka just said here (there was a lot of foreshadowing in your face leading to that reveal, and thematically, even in terms of escalation from previous entries, it's just brilliant).
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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2091
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:18 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I like the idea of a “natural born villain”—someone who has no reason to be evil but just is. Kind of like The Dark Knight version of the Joker. Why they became bad—why they became the way they are… they give reasons but they change every time. That's what I think of as a genuine villain.


You know, it's not a new insight to compare spoiler[Junko] to the Joker, but I've half-seriously theorized for a while that the plot of DR1 took inspiration from The Dark Knight specifically, with the other characters collectively in the role of Harvey Dent.

Quote:
By the time V3 was released, Danganronpa had a huge fanbase. I wanted the climax to have a huge twist—a big impact—even for diehard fans. You see, while Danganronpa 1 and 2 had big climaxes, they were only impactful for the characters themselves—there was despair but that despair was for the characters and not the players. With V3, I wanted to bring despair not just to the characters but the players as well.


It's also occurred to me that a lot of the most impactful parts of DR are when the characters have to sign the death warrant of someone they've grown to love. And that does affect the player, because we empathize with the protagonists and their friends. But with the end of V3? spoiler[Different players will have different likes and dislikes among the characters, but anyone willing to complete three long visual novels, plus potentially UDG and DR3, loves Danganronpa itself more than any one character. And that's a love all their own, not shared by the characters. Which also means you end up rooting for Shuichi to destroy what you love even though you recognize that there's a separation from him that wasn't there before. (This is also complicated by the way the player can feel by this point that DR needs to end, because it's become so derivative -- there's a reason every LPer reacts to "It's Junko Enoshima!" with "oh, fudge off".)]
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3627
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2022 4:51 pm Reply with quote
Great interview. Looking forward to see how this game turns out.
I enjoyed the first Danganronpa game.. I really should start the next one, especially since I already have it Laughing
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TheSleepyMonkey



Joined: 11 Jul 2022
Posts: 887
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2022 2:29 pm Reply with quote
Still wondering when the hell is Tribe Nine coming out.
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Rob19ny



Joined: 13 Jun 2020
Posts: 1655
PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:53 am Reply with quote
I appreciate you keeping the Super Detective title for the characters and not altering Kodaka's words. It is understandable why you had to use the localization title.

A Zero movie would have been nice and I can see more likely to happen, but I feel the timing has passed.

Quote:
I wanted to do the whole game in 3D so a wider, modern audience could enjoy it.


Kodaka talking about wider audience reminds me of Spike making SDR2 get a lower Cero rating (C) so that they can appeal to a wider and younger audience even though DR is the kind of game that is meant for Cero D. SDR2 got a Cero D rating in a later release. But what Kodaka said is not surprising because in the 2020's publishers want to focus on a wider/global audience.

Quote:
About Dangonronpa V3, more than a few fans disliked the ending... So why did you choose such a divisive twist?


Richard, it would have been great if you did research on past Kodaka interviews to deem whether asking this 2 months shy of 6 years question was worth it. Asking him a question that's already been asked multiple times isn't going to make him say something new. The fact that I expected you to ask him that even after 6 years speaks volumes. I'm sure Kodaka is tired of being asked this 6 years later. Would have much preferred a educational question that your non-Japanese readers are not likely to know like "Why does Kodaka like using Super for his game and character titles?" Super High School Level, Super Dangan Ronpa 2, and now Super Detective Case Files Rain Code. Clearly he likes using Super.
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Luctaps



Joined: 30 Dec 2022
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Fri Dec 30, 2022 10:27 am Reply with quote
Shay Guy wrote:
Quote:
I like the idea of a “natural born villain”—someone who has no reason to be evil but just is. Kind of like The Dark Knight version of the Joker. Why they became bad—why they became the way they are… they give reasons but they change every time. That's what I think of as a genuine villain.


You know, it's not a new insight to compare spoiler[Junko] to the Joker, but I've half-seriously theorized for a while that the plot of DR1 took inspiration from The Dark Knight specifically, with the other characters collectively in the role of Harvey Dent.

Quote:
By the time V3 was released, Danganronpa had a huge fanbase. I wanted the climax to have a huge twist—a big impact—even for diehard fans. You see, while Danganronpa 1 and 2 had big climaxes, they were only impactful for the characters themselves—there was despair but that despair was for the characters and not the players. With V3, I wanted to bring despair not just to the characters but the players as well.


It's also occurred to me that a lot of the most impactful parts of DR are when the characters have to sign the death warrant of someone they've grown to love. And that does affect the player, because we empathize with the protagonists and their friends. But with the end of V3? spoiler[Different players will have different likes and dislikes among the characters, but anyone willing to complete three long visual novels, plus potentially UDG and DR3, loves Danganronpa itself more than any one character. And that's a love all their own, not shared by the characters. Which also means you end up rooting for Shuichi to destroy what you love even though you recognize that there's a separation from him that wasn't there before. (This is also complicated by the way the player can feel by this point that DR needs to end, because it's become so derivative -- there's a reason every LPer reacts to "It's Junko Enoshima!" with "oh, fudge off".)]


I think that being inspired by villains like the Joker and his portrayal in The Dark Knight is kind of a cliché that everybody uses. But for that to work, there are a number of rules and the most important thing is that the hero and the villain don't differ too much in terms of their actions. The viewer himself must decide whose side he is closer to, rather than pushing the idea that good will always defeat evil.
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