Over the last year or so, a group within the PC-FX Fan Club decided to move forward with continuing work on the unofficial translation for Team Innocent: The Point of No Return. I did some minor testing on it but, unfortunately, had to step away from the project for several reasons. But I was really happy when they reached out to ask me to prepare a trailer for release. So the week before release, I was cramming together these videos.
I grew up watching a lot of game trailers, often multiple times over and over. I’ve never taken trailer-making seriously, so this seemed like an interesting opportunity to try it out. I mostly relied on my experience with video and audio pacing in my featured videos. Basically, what kind of atmosphere and vibe can you make with what the viewer is hearing and seeing on screen.
The intention was to create something akin to a Japanese commercial compilation. However, after talking about it with the team, we opted to do a countdown release approach, using the original work as a foundation for a mini-trailer put out each day before release. Which just so happened to work well with how the game’s tone often drastically shifts.
Trailer #1
Team Innocent is not a big gameplay game, but I wanted what the player interacted with to be the focus of Trailer #1. As upbeat as the game can be, most of the time, you will be exploring a space station with fairly foreboding music. However, since the game is so focused on exploration, I had a hard time making the trailer feel dynamic.
I thought dabbing in some narrative voiceover from the game’s main villain would be fun. Injecting other characters felt a little nonsensical, but I thought it was important to introduce more voice types. Since I didn’t have the original audio files, there were some issues with the voices I extracted. But I think the trade-off was worth it.
Trailer #2
A big part of Team Innocent’s charm is the banter between the three sisters. Even without knowing Japanese, you can feel how expressive they are with the animated sprites and voice acting. The big challenge was picking scenes where two dialog boxes could stand on their own. I did notice afterward when I rendered the final videos at 60fps, some additional dialog boxes got mixed in for a few frames.
Trailer #3
This video was intended to highlight the underlying narrative drama. However, I tried to stick to using as much of the opening video as possible. It’s easy to get too deep into spoilers and every person’s tolerance is different. I didn’t want to ruin it for anyone. However, there’s an art to using the drama of spoiler-filled scenes carefully.
When I make videos, I usually try to think about what context the viewer has. The original NieR opening video is a great example of a video full of spoilers. Still, without context, I think the player’s brain never really connects the dots of what’s going on, allowing them to drip into the visual drama of those moments.
Trailer #4
This was the hardest one and the one most outside of my wheelhouse. We wanted to use the opening theme because it’s so good. But the pace of the music doesn’t fit the gameplay, so kind of cramming a square peg in a circular hole. I think I pulled it off, though. I also tried to strip the narration to the bare essentials. The credits sequence is probably unnecessary, but these patches are basically small game development projects. And while I know people might click away from the video in that time, I think that’s something I’m happy to risk to highlight the work people did.
Wrap Up
Overall, I think the whole process went well, especially given it was a week turn around time on something I had never done before. I think the first three were the most interesting to work on since communicating what a game is without using words is its own weird, unique challenge.
I’m not sure if there will be an opportunity to try something like this again, but I’m thankful for the team asking me to. If you’re interested in the game, check out the patch here.
