This time around I was mainly in charge of the motions for the cutscenes that play during the game, but what I particularly stressed was, beginning with Miku, the protagonist, in which way we should express the characters' emotions.
In the past, too, I have worked on adding motions to characters in cutscenes that show the story, but Fatal Frame is a horror - how should I go about making the characters look like they're really scared? What should I do to make them look like they're really suffering? These are the things that I was always conscious of. If they didn't then the person watching wouldn't be scared, either. Besides, horror is one of those things where there's a real danger of it becoming humorous. Though you intend to make a scary scene, for some reason it can end up looking like a skit... There are times when I've been checking the completed scene and initially ended up laughing at it.
So, when I was giving directions to the other motion staff, I made quite detailed checks of everything from making sure that the characters behaved in natural, human ways to their eye movements. I was also quite involved with the ghosts' movements. Fatal Frame's cutscenes were also quite highly praised in the company from the start of development, but if there was even a slightly negative opinion then I would discuss is with the director and team who were in charge of cutscene continuity, redoing them over and over.
It would make me happy if those who experience the game would also look out for the movements of the characters and ghosts when they play it.
Yoshikatsu Yoshizawa (designer)