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Kazutaka Kodaka Talks About His New Game, His Writing Process, and Danganronpa

I like the idea of a “natural born villain”—someone who has no reason to be evil but just is. Kind of like The Dark Knight version of the Joker. Why they became bad—why they became the way they are… they give reasons but they change every time. That's what I think of as a genuine villain.

By the time V3 was released, Danganronpa had a huge fanbase. I wanted the climax to have a huge twist—a big impact—even for diehard fans. You see, while Danganronpa 1 and 2 had big climaxes, they were only impactful for the characters themselves—there was despair but that despair was for the characters and not the players. With V3, I wanted to bring despair not just to the characters but the players as well.

I wanted to do the whole game in 3D so a wider, modern audience could enjoy it.

About Dangonronpa V3, more than a few fans disliked the ending... So why did you choose such a divisive twist?

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I like the idea of a “natural born villain”—someone who has no reason to be evil but just is. Kind of like The Dark Knight version of the Joker. Why they became bad—why they became the way they are… they give reasons but they change every time. That's what I think of as a genuine villain.

You know, it's not a new insight to compare spoiler[Junko] to the Joker, but I've half-seriously theorized for a while that the plot of DR1 took inspiration from The Dark Knight specifically, with the other characters collectively in the role of Harvey Dent.

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By the time V3 was released, Danganronpa had a huge fanbase. I wanted the climax to have a huge twist—a big impact—even for diehard fans. You see, while Danganronpa 1 and 2 had big climaxes, they were only impactful for the characters themselves—there was despair but that despair was for the characters and not the players. With V3, I wanted to bring despair not just to the characters but the players as well.

It's also occurred to me that a lot of the most impactful parts of DR are when the characters have to sign the death warrant of someone they've grown to love. And that does affect the player, because we empathize with the protagonists and their friends. But with the end of V3? spoiler[Different players will have different likes and dislikes among the characters, but anyone willing to complete three long visual novels, plus potentially UDG and DR3, loves Danganronpa itself more than any one character. And that's a love all their own, not shared by the characters. Which also means you end up rooting for Shuichi to destroy what you love even though you recognize that there's a separation from him that wasn't there before. (This is also complicated by the way the player can feel by this point that DR needs to end, because it's become so derivative -- there's a reason every LPer reacts to "It's Junko Enoshima!" with "oh, fudge off".)]