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FunTranscript
00:00The language that we really speak in the studio is emotions.
00:04We have emotional goals, and then we look to use environment arts, animation, music, particle effects.
00:13They all come together to highlight these feelings that we're going after.
00:17And it is, you know, design plus the technology that's supported, narrative, having to work in concert.
00:26You never asked why I was after the Kitsune.
00:29Because you were there.
00:34I tried to save you.
00:37And my mother? What did you do for her?
00:42Nothing.
00:44You watched as he...
00:47I am not your enemy, Atsu.
00:57Regain your strength.
00:59And meet me here.
01:03I'll prove it.
01:04This was an incredibly important scene for Atsu.
01:08She spent so many years seeking revenge against the Yotei Six.
01:12And finally, she discovers that one of these people is one of the people she's actually been working with, who's been lying to her and betrayed her trust.
01:20And was there the night her mother was killed.
01:22And so she's really just reacting in the moment to this.
01:25She's heavily drugged from a poisonous toxin that is forcing her to just sit there and take it in.
01:33And she can't confront Yuki viscerally quite yet.
01:37But she wants to.
01:38So she's just grappling with it.
01:39It hit her like a wave.
01:41And she's processing it and figuring out what she's going to do next.
01:43We set up in this nighttime.
01:45You feel the darkness, the cold is all surrounding you.
01:48And the campfire in this here, it's giving you a little bit warmth, kind of a hint of something is changing, something new.
01:56But it's not overly warm.
01:57You see there's a muted tone of yellow is around them and give enough of light to tell the story.
02:04But the most biggest thing is the endless darkness surround them, feel the unknown around them.
02:11This is about two people talking about who they are to each other.
02:15And you want to keep it simple so that the enormity of the revelation can take center stage.
02:21I thought you didn't want to fight.
02:23And I thought you did.
02:27You said if I killed you, I'd be doing Saito a favor.
02:32Only if you didn't learn what I had to teach you.
02:36You have.
02:37It's time to take your revenge.
02:39Atsu has a strong connection with her mother and lost her when she was young in this traumatic fashion.
02:45And then when she finally meets Yuki, there's just a lot of shades of her mother that she sees in this woman who also conducts herself in a proper manner,
02:54who plays the shamisen, this musical instrument that her mother also played, that her mother taught her to play.
03:00And so much of what her mother also taught her about playing music was that it speaks to people we've lost.
03:06And so we really relied on that musical connection with Yuki, with Atsu's mother, to connect all these characters and to invite Atsu essentially to think about her past and the people she loved and lost while talking with the person, Yuki,
03:24who actually was there and was partially responsible for her mother's death.
03:28So it's a really complex moment.
03:30But it was really important to us to portray Yuki in a way that would evoke memories of Atsu's mother.
03:37One of the things I'm really proud of in that sequence, and I think this is Sucker Punch really at our best,
03:46is that there is a strong narrative connection to what's going on.
03:53Player has feelings about Yuki and what she's done to Atsu.
03:58And of course, as a player, you think of yourself as Atsu.
04:01But then you start to fight with Yuki and the combat flashes and Yuki becomes the Kitsune.
04:10And you're thinking about how Atsu would feel against the Kitsune, but then it's Yuki again.
04:17So through interactivity, you get to experience these quick changes in perspective and feeling that reflect what's going on in Atsu's heart.
04:26Sprinkle in a few quick flashbacks to a traumatic moment, the moment that really set her off in her hatred of the Kitsune with her mom's death.
04:40And then through interactivity, see your mother again as a child and be able to approach her.
04:48These things are all mixed together through interactivity that the player gets to participate in.
04:54And I believe this is what makes for a great video game.
04:59We're here to make an interactive experience.
05:02And this is interactivity married with narrative.
05:05So for the Atsu's always have this color theme, carry her through this whole game, which is yellow.
05:14And then the biggest thing is because, you know, her home have that big yellow Gingo tree,
05:20like a big umbrella covering her home.
05:22It's kind of almost like showing the safety of her house.
05:25And then during that night and, you know, she's lost everything.
05:30And then in cool, the tree was burned to the ash.
05:34So yellow leaves falling down become to the ash, become to the ember and then fly that away.
05:39And then she was got a painted on that tree.
05:41And so the yellow color is always something we want to carry through this whole game.
05:46Give you that little dots.
05:47You can connect things together.
05:49When we come to this scene with Oyuki and, you know, she was living in this area, the cold, so snowy and then the white.
05:57And we also build another tree around here is the yellow leaves and have all the yellow leaves falling down.
06:03And then the fire is another red, orange color and the ash was burning.
06:09That's another element is we want to go into show around here because that's what she remembers.
06:14She struggled.
06:15She didn't have a nightmare off of this.
06:17And so those are all the elements is give us a really good of a playground we can start with.
06:23So we know our right off the bat, we want to have a yellow leaves flying.
06:28And then the snow and ash have some common can share together.
06:31When she got this toxin in her mind and you literally see the snow was floating in the air.
06:38So I'm kind of blending with ash, that kind of feeling.
06:43And so player will be on the stand.
06:44She's in that toxin mode.
06:46And fire is an intense moment into showing her emotion and showing her fear and also another memory part that she really wants to go into facing.
06:57So that combined together gave us the visual, the switching, the changing, and player can feel about what is happening to her in that moment.
07:08By setting it here is this huge showdown in the cemetery as well.
07:12We really wanted to evoke that sense of, you know, what do we do when we visit graves?
07:17We're remembering and connecting with the people from our past and the people we've lost.
07:21And that's what Atsu was doing through this showdown as she's suffering from this toxin.
07:27It's taking her back to the nightmarish memory of how her mother died.
07:31And she needs to confront that memory and also reconnect with her mother and find closure within it.
07:38So it's really evoking that strong sense of reconnecting with the past and reconnecting with the ghosts from our past.
07:44The tree and the grave, also some of the symbolism to show the somber that the sadness of Atsu is having.
07:52And then with the white snow flooding everywhere and kind of blending everything together.
07:58And this is what we want to go into show.
08:00So when you're fighting, you can see the particle moving.
08:02You can see the snow click up, fly that off, and then leaves fly off.
08:06And that we're all building the world field is all alive.
08:10Because you're surrounded by these memories of dead people, and it's kind of where this is the end, you know, right?
08:17It gets you to think about Oyuki and her acceptance of what could very well be coming down the line for her because of Atsu's burning anger.
08:28And it just highlights this question of what is Atsu going to do to this woman who so thoroughly wronged her in the past.
08:38While working on this scene, Erika Ishii, who plays Atsu, and Jeannie Bolle, who plays Oyuki, were actually in a motion capture stage.
09:05And they got to physically perform the scene while doing the audio as well.
09:12And you can feel the tension between them in this moment because they're playing off each other.
09:19I recall us taking real strides to simplify the scene down so that it just became that much more emotional as Oyuki surrenders herself to Atsu's judgment.
09:34And the moment of Atsu kind of breaking and saying, I can forgive the innkeeper's daughter, that there's a physical kind of change, a sense of relief that is obviously cemented when she gets lifted up with a helping hand.
09:53We rely on these actors to bring these moments into life with their real, you know, immediate emotions.
10:02And you can see it in the game, thanks to, you know, motion capture technology, that these performances can have such nuance.
10:08And we're grateful to the contribution, you know, of actors who are good at their craft, who can make these moments so alive.
10:20And leading up to the scene, Atsu's been spending a lot of time processing those emotions of betrayal and grappling with the idea that she, you know, she wants and needs to get revenge against the people who killed her family.
10:33But she's also spent time getting to know Oyuki as a person and seeing the world from her perspective and also learning that she, like Atsu, is a victim of the Yotei Six in her own way.
10:46So she's been expanding how she knows how to think about Oyuki and who this person is and to connect with her in that way and see their similarities.
10:56And we still wanted to honor Atsu's anger and that feeling of betrayal as she confronts her, even in this final moment.
11:05But through going through that, through reconnecting with this memory of her own mother's death and seeing and recognizing how Oyuki did try to help as much as she could 16 years ago when that happened.
11:20She is able to reach a point where she accepts Oyuki for what she's done.
11:26And even, she says in that scene, she might forgive her.
11:30So even here, it's not, it's an act of mercy, but not fully complete forgiveness yet.
11:36But she's on that journey and she's learned to trust and to work towards forgiveness in a way that just a short time earlier, she didn't know because she was so fixated on revenge.
11:48So the whole, this sequence is start from cloudy time of day.
11:55And then Atsu was walking into this battle and she don't know what she was facing.
12:00You know, she don't know what it ended up she were going to become too.
12:03And then we have this whole fight started with Oyuki.
12:07And then you gather that toxin and you even get into this weird moment.
12:14You don't know, you know, what are you facing?
12:16You have the anger and all the surrounding, all the environment effects, the lighting is building up.
12:22You can feel the heat is going up and up.
12:25And then to this last moment, and Atsu is beating the toxin in her body.
12:33And in the same time, you can see the sun is peeking through the cloud and shining on her face.
12:39She feels she is let go and the color of the scene becomes too much peaceful.
12:46It's bright white with the yellow leaves flowing.
12:49Remember in the earlier scene, we have Atsu play the shamisen with her mother.
12:54It also has that tree in the background.
12:56Have the leaves where it's very peacefully soft flowing down to the ground.
13:00This is another moment that you have the tree in the background.
13:03You have the leaves of the flowing, that soft feeling.
13:06And to give the emotion, everything is supporting for the narrative, for the story, and for the changing moment is coming.
13:14So the weather, the lighting is all changing along the way with the whole sequence, how the story is changing.
13:21You know, while we're working out this moment, it took on a lot of different permutations before we could find the exact right way to do it.
13:31This is an incredible turning point for Atsu, who has spent the last 16 years of her life training her body and her skills to get revenge on the Yotei Six.
13:43To suddenly find herself in a position she would never, ever have guessed she could be in, where she has some sympathy or an understanding for a member of the Yotei Six.
13:56It's monumental.
13:58It's her really altering her worldview.
14:02And we knew that it had to be done with a lot of grace.
14:06And it has to build in a way that the emotions all feel very, very true.
14:12And so different concepts for how to make that happen, we batted around, trying our best to figure out a way to put the player in the middle of it.
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