With Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club being Nintendo’s big August release for this year, Nintendo has opted to make Emio – The Smiling Man their next covered game, as part of their “Ask the Developer” interview series. Across three chapters, many questions were asked of Producer, Yoshio Sakamoto and Assistant Producer, Kaori Miyachi.
When talking extensively about brainstorming and writing the story for a new Famicom Detective Club game, they offered the following detailed answers:
Emio Devs on Writing a New Famicom Detective Club Story:
Yoshio Sakamoto: First of all, you need to create a story that’s interesting and well-structured, with plenty of ups and downs. It becomes the backbone of the plot, so if it’s not good enough, I’ll rewrite it. On a bad day, I can’t write at all. (Laughs) But when I’m on a roll, all sorts of fragmented ideas start to connect, and everything falls into place.
Kaori Miyachi: I can’t really tell whether he’s having a good day or a bad day just by looking at him.
Yoshio Sakamoto: Right, until I start coming to you with crazy demands! (Laughs)
When my writing isn’t going well, I really struggle to make any progress, so when the plot writing is moving along, I get scared that this momentum might fade. I’m not good at coming up with names of places and characters. So if I wanted to think of details to flesh out the story, I’d need to take a break from working on the plot.
But I didn’t want to stop. I was hoping for someone I could trust to do the job, so I could ask for their help. And then it came to me, “Oh, I know just the person!”. (Laughs)
Kaori Miyachi: (Laughs) At first, he asked me to come up with names for the characters and places. But the information I got was so limited that even thinking of a character’s name was hard. (Laughs) The only thing I had to go on for each character was a line or two about who they were. I was never told their roles in the overall story, how often they appear, or what events they’re involved in.
So I asked Sakamoto-san for more details, but he said, “…I can’t tell you that”. (Laughs)
He also asked me to come up with a key event that would kick off the investigation.
Here’s the brief I got: “An older brother’s well-meaning actions towards his sister incur her anger”. That was it. I had no idea when or why this event would occur, or how the incident would begin, so I was at a complete loss. (Laughs) It was definitely a crazy demand.
So I came up with a few ideas, but Sakamoto-san told me, “This isn’t right, and that’s also not right”. Then, I changed direction and came up with another idea, but he said, “That’s not right either. I want the older brother to be more like such-and-such”. (Laughs)
Yoshio Sakamoto: Okay, but I had a good reason for withholding that information. I needed Miyachi-san to read the finished plot for the first time to judge whether it was interesting or not. It would’ve been pointless if she hadn’t read it with a completely fresh mind. I made sure not to reveal the story’s overall flow, but selfishly kept making requests, such as to come up with ideas for key parts of the story. (Laughs)
As a result, she came up with location names that give a sense of background and meaning, as well as character names that offer a glimpse into the characters’ personalities. In any case, once we’d locked in the event that would determine the course of the story, we had a burst of excitement, saying “Behold, the miracle of crazy demands!” and so on.
Kaori Miyachi: Well, it really did seem like a miracle… Come to think of it, one of the many crazy demands was to draw lots of smiling faces.
I drew several, casting my mind back to my childhood and even drawing some with my non-dominant hand. In the end, he combined the eyes and mouth from two of my drawings, added a nose, and that image was used as the prototype for the smiling-face paper bag that appears in key scenes. (Laughs)
When the lines are written by someone else, I don’t feel like they match up with the characters. Until now, I thought it would be more Famicom Detective Club-like if I wrote them myself. Since the characters’ words came from me, I feel like they were a part of my personality, in a way. Which means that no matter how unique a character was, the words that came out of their mouth could never go beyond what I could think of. This time, I wanted to create a fresh new Famicom Detective Club game, but I couldn’t see that happening if I wrote the story by myself.
Yoshio Sakamoto: Of course, we had to maintain the unique world of the Famicom Detective Club series, but I wanted this game to be enjoyed by a wider audience. I’ve used various works as inspiration for my own games, but people from other generations will have experienced different things, and will therefore have different inspirations from me.
The words that come from them are something you’d never get from me. So, by handing over the things I’d been keeping to myself to someone of a different generation, I thought I could broaden the range of expression seen in this Famicom Detective Club game.
Miyachi-san and I worked together on the remakes of the previous games during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we often communicated via chat. I also had an opportunity to read Miyachi-san’s writing outside of the Famicom Detective Club game remakes. Her word choice and sense of rhythm resonated with me. When writing stories for games, I’ve always valued precise phrasing and how words sound rather than using complicated words like a novelist.
Kaori Miyachi: Sakamoto-san sent me various works that he considers essential in order to illustrate his core values. One day during development, I was surprised to receive several DVDs, some of which were gory or horror-movie-like. Sakamoto-san insisted that I watch them… I pleaded with him, “These really aren’t my cup of tea”, but he insisted, “Please, I need you to watch them”. So I plucked up the courage, and they were…actually quite interesting! I learned so much from them and understood what Sakamoto-san wanted to express.
Yoshio Sakamoto: The pauses, use of sound, cuts, and cut transitions in the games are all influenced by what I’ve seen, so I wanted Miyachi-san to watch all those different works to understand where my inspiration came from. That way, I made sure to communicate how I wanted to direct this game from the very beginning. Oh, and Miyachi-san also shared with me what she likes.
Kaori Miyachi: I recommended some manga, telling him, “You need to read these – there are tons of dramatic twists and turns!”.
Yoshio Sakamoto: They were definitely very dramatic. (Laughs)
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 12, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club – Chapter 2.
Ask the Developer | Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (Participating Developers)
- Yoshio Sakamoto | Producer
- Kaori Miyachi | Assistant Producer
