Capcom has posted a deep-dive blog post with the art director of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, Hiromichi Iwasaki.
They discussed the sheer difficulty of this compiled release, as the team had to illustrate over 1,200 animations across over 100 characters from scratch.
Initially, the team aimed to base the updated sprites on the games’ smartphone releases, which were enhanced versions of the original DS pixelations. However, this meshed too jarringly with HD-resolution backgrounds, meaning everything had to be almost six times bigger than the original size.
Furthermore, each animation in this case was made up of a series of individually hand-drawn pixel art sprites that are shown in quick succession to create the movements we see onscreen. Take Edgeworth’s walking animation, for example.
One loop consists of 6 individual sprites, and we needed to create 1 set of these for each of the 8 directions (up, down, left, right, and the diagonals) he can move in. And that’s just for his walking animation.
There’s still his running, surprised, objection, and many, many other animations to account for. On top of that, we had to create animations for Gumshoe, Kay, and all the other characters in the same way. “Just how much work are we talking about here???” I wondered. I felt faint just thinking about it…
Character designer Tatsuro Iwamoto directed these designs to maintain the look and feel of the original pixel art sprites with the new presentation. It was a rather arduous process, but it all worked out. The team also added lighting effects with the HD art style to help better define the chibi characters.
The blog post discusses countless other intricacies, such as model updates, enhanced backgrounds, and even localized writing for each in-game asset across each implemented language.
You can view the full blog post for additional details and comments.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection occurs after the events of Trials and Tribulations, focusing on adventures with Miles Edgeworth that make him confront the reality of his career as a prosecutor. Past demons and new characters bring repressed truths to light.
New swappable HD illustrations by the original character designer are featured alongside a music player with orchestral arrangements. The second game, which was never before localized, is titled Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit.
A detailed look at the new features includes a conversation log, a Story Mode that autoplays the narrative like the other Ace Attorney re-releases, a Gallery mode with illustrations, character animations, accolades, soundtrack, sketches, promotional art, and all 106-in-game background tracks. 23 orchestral tracks are also included, alongside one completely new track and five arranged tracks.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and Windows.
