Ghost in the Shell – 1997 Developer Interview

Tetsuji Yamamoto - Producer
Kenji Sawaguchi - Director
Hiroyuki Saegusa - Designer
Hiroshi Yamamoto - Programmer
Toshimitsu Odaira - Designer
Kazuki Toyota - Programmer
Hiroyuki Kitakubo - Animator

—How did the Ghost in the Shell development get started?

T. Yamamoto: The idea for this game came from Shirow himself. He was a big fan of the Jumping Flash series we created, and he brought the plans for a Ghost in the Shell game directly to SCE. At the time, I just so happened to be working on Jumping Flash. Exact was making Jumping Flash 2, and they had other game plans in the works, but everyone at Exact is a big fan of Shirow, so when he brought those plans everyone dropped what they were doing and switched over to it. If Shirow hadn't brought the plans himself the way he did, though, I doubt we would have made this game.

—What kind of plans were they?

T. Yamamoto: The title was "Shooting Flash!" (laughs) Under that he wrote "Ghost in the Shell". It was basically Jumping Flash's gameplay with Shirow's characters.

—Did you also pilot a fuchikoma in his initial plans?

Saegusa: Shirow came to us right when the movie came out. I had always been a fan of Ghost in the Shell, and had read all the manga, but when I saw the movie I remember being disappointed that fuchikoma weren't in them. It was all about Motoko Kusanagi. It's only natural that a fan of the original manga would want to pilot a fuchikoma. So when Shirow came to us with his Shooting Flash game idea, I suggested we put the fuchikoma front and center.

—Where did the idea for a "wall-clinging" action gameplay come from?

Saegusa: We wanted to stick to the original manga source, not the movie, as much as possible. However, in the manga, the fuchikomas use silk-like wires; they don't really cling to the wall so much as they suspend themselves vertically with their wires. They also release these wires from their rear. We realized that there was simply no controller scheme that could keep up with that level of dexterity. Instead, we tried to come up with a system that would mimic the same kind of feel, and clinging to the walls and ceilings—having every surface be scalable—was what we came up with.

—Letting the player control a fuchikoma means the enemy characters also have to be similarly dexterous and nimble, or the action gameplay would suffer.

H. Yamamoto: Shirow gave us rough sketches and ideas for a number of enemies, and we based their movement off those materials. It also went the other way sometimes, where we told Shirow we wanted such-and-such a character and asked him to design it.

—When I played Ghost in the Shell, I felt like the first stage was designed to introduce you to the controls.

Saegusa: That's right. The gameplay in Ghost in the Shell is entirely new, so if we made it difficult right off the bat no one would be able to keep up. We tried to make that beginning easy on purpose. Overall, I'd say the entire game is designed that way, to gradually teach you how to play it as you go.

Toyota: Next-gen consoles like the Playstation have introduced players to 3D gameplay, but I think those early games may not have really felt all that "3D" to players. There have been a lot of advancements since then, in making 3D spaces feel fun. In the Jumping Flash games you are playing in a 3D environment, but Ghost in the Shell pushes this a bit further.

Sawaguchi: Using headphones can help you get through the game more smoothly, too. The radar does show which enemies are behind you, but it's small, and the sounds offer a more sensory warning: "look out!" From the sound of a helicopter's rotary blades, for instance, you can easily hear which direction they're approaching from.

—Did Shirow also write the story?

T. Yamamoto: That was definitely a group effort. (laughs) We talked it over with each other, and came up with an original story for the game that worked within the difficulty and balance we wanted to have. Then we showed that to director Kitakubo and Shirow, and had more meetings where they helped develop it, and that's how it all got hammered out. It's a completely original story.

—What were some of the problems you faced in the development?

H. Yamamoto: When I first heard the idea of making this a wall-clinging action game, I thought that sounded good. But when we actually tried doing it, a lot of problems cropped up. In Jumping Flash, up is always up and down is always down, but when you cling to a wall up and down get all messed up. So we had to carefully design all the stages so that the fuchikoma wouldn't get stuck in between surfaces. That was a big pain. The character models were also extremely detailed, and finding a way to fit that into memory was another difficult challenge.

Odaira: I was in charge of the level design, enemy placement, and difficulty tuning for several stages. Initially, I prioritized the atmosphere, but once we adopted the wall-clinging gameplay, several stages had to undergo a complete transformation to work within that system. So that left us with a number of maps that had been significantly reworked from their initial conception, and some of them worked, and some didn't, and reconciling those inconsistencies wasn't easy. And of course, we'd spent so much time designing this new wall-clinging action gameplay, but I had to make sure the stages were actually fun to play through with it!

As for difficulty, we made Jumping Flash an easier game, but we were lost on how difficult to make Ghost in the Shell. Long ago I think it would have been fine to just make the game "ultra-difficult", but today we want to attract more regular players. So it was a big challenge to find the right difficulty for those users, a "you'll get better if you keep trying!" level.

Toyota: For Ghost in Shell, realism is required. That's true for both the enemies and the map design. In another game you could have an island floating in midair, which would make for an interesting stage element, but that kind of thing wouldn't work in this game.

Sawaguchi: This production was quite big, with 130-150 people in total, so there were a lot of opinions from a lot of people to consider. I don't know whether we were able to reconcile and incorporate all that, but I think we did a pretty good job. One challenge was that Exact, SCE, and Production IG's offices were all quite distant from each other. That made communication very tough, so Exact went and created a special dedicated network for us all to use. I don't know if it completely solved those communication problems (laughs), but we did manage to bring everything across the finish line.

—For those who have enjoyed the manga and movie, what would you say the appeal of the game version of Ghost in the Shell is?

Odaira: You get to take to part in the world of Ghost in the Shell yourself.

T. Yamamoto: Yeah, your character is a new recruit of Public Security Section 9.

Toyota: Getting to pilot a fuchikoma is the biggest draw, I think. And also having Motoko Kusanagi get mad at you (laughs), and conversely come to depend on you.

—As a fan, I would be happy to be scolded by her. (laughs) Where did the idea come from to have the player be a new, nameless recruit of Section 9?

T. Yamamoto: Our development group doesn't really do character games. This is our first. Up to now we've done nothing but relatively original, unique games. With Ghost in the Shell, it was Shirow himself who came to us about making a game, so it was only natural to use a setting like that, I suppose. I think there's definitely a lot of cases with other developers where they would make it more like an adventure game, "You get to play as Motoko Kusanagi!"

—For fans of the original, though, it will be a slightly different experience. Having played the finished game, it definitely doesn't feel like a typical character game. Were you worried that players might reject it for that reason?

T. Yamamoto: We never even considered it as a character game. I mean, all of our staff are fans of Shirow's work, but putting that aside, we saw the Ghost in the Shell development as a game first and foremost, if that makes sense. Shiro himself loved the Robitto and MuuMuu Seijin characters from Jumping Flash, which in turn became the starting point for the development. A typical developer would probably take Shirow's fanbase and market into account first. But we can't work that way.

—If the game isn't aimed primarily at Ghost in the Shell fans, what kind of players are you targeting?

T. Yamamoto: We're aware that there are certain markets that are easier to cater and sell to. It's a video game after all. But that way of thinking, of trying to target a certain demographic, it's not really part of our mental process… I mean, it's not like we're creating a song specifically to appeal to middle school girls the way the band Ulfuls did, you know?

—You're doing what you like, first and foremost.

T. Yamamoto: It has to be that way, in the software business.

H. Yamamoto: I've almost never enjoyed games that are based on a pre-existing franchise. So when this work came to us, I said if we're going to do this, it has to be a fun game in its own right.

—On the other hand, I can think of a situation where fans of the original Ghost in the Shell happily buy the game, but find it difficult and can't progress past the first stage. Are you ok with that?

T. Yamamoto: "Get good", is what I'm more inclined to say there. (laughs) I mean, you're buying a game here after all.

—Doesn't that make it difficult to integrate the movie cutscenes, though?

T. Yamamoto: Hmm, I don't know. Shirow recommended Kitakubo to us as director… in fact, he insisted on it. "It has to be Kitakubo."

—In Jumping Flash the movies were used to show little comical moments between Baron Aloha and the MuuMuu aliens. Do they occupy a similar function in Ghost in the Shell?

T. Yamamoto: To be honest, initially that's how we imagined using them. (laughs) We'd planned for the movies to be these light-hearted, humorous cutscenes, but once IG Production and director Kitakubo got involved, he came to us asking about how to integrate the movies into the game. Despite not knowing much about games, he had a lot of opinions. (laughs)

—The music in the game has a totally different feel from the movie...

T. Yamamoto: Takkyu Ishino "casted" the musicians for this soundtrack, as well as contributing music himself. As you can see it's an incredible assemblage of talent. When the musicians heard "Masamune Shirow" they all flocked to contribute, skipping right over the whole contract stage—or rather, they sent in demo tapes without waiting for contracts or anything, and some people sent in tapes without us even asking just because they heard we were making a Ghost in the Shell game. So from our perspective, yeah, as with the story it's an all-original soundtrack that has no relationship to the movie. We weren't thinking about the movie at all.

—The Ghost in the Shell comic is a very informationally dense work. How did you go about conveying and realizing that world?

Kitakubo: Ghost in the Shell is a very long manga, so I don't think a single movie or game can claim to fully represent that world. What we've tried to do is convey its essence in some way. Instead of an opening that shows Section 9 from all these different angles like in the movie, we start with fuchikoma action. That's the aspect of Ghost in the Shell we're trying to portray.

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