Today, July 5th, marks the starting date of Anime Expo 2018. Spike Chunsoft held their panel there, which as of writing this article, finished only minutes ago. The panel was hosted by Ari Advincula, the marketing and PR representative at Spike Chunsoft’s English branch.
The full stream can be viewed below.
Tatsuya Matsubara, director and co-producer of Steins;Gate, appeared as a special guest for the panel. When asked by a fan after the show, Matsubara mentioned that localizations of Chaos;Head Noah and Robotics;Notes Elite are not outside the realm of possibility, but depend on the demand from fans.
I asked the S;G producer and the Spike Chunsoft dude about localizing R;N and C;H, the response was that they don’t know the demand for those titles but if demand is high, they’ll consider it.
— darksoulflame @ AX (@darksoulflame) July 5, 2018
Basically, buy Elite and keep bugging them.
The description of the panel reads: “Spike Chunsoft partnered up with MAGES./5pb. to bring STEINS;GATE ELITE to the West for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam! Sit down with the team as they talk all things STEINS;GATE and Science Adventure.“
While it’s a bit disappointing that only Steins;Gate Elite was showcased at the event, we hope that continued fan support and enthusiasm will allow for more Science Adventure titles to be released in the West in the future.
Highlights of the panel include the announcement that Steins;Gate Elite’s English localization will release in early 2019. It was reaffirmed that Steins;Gate Linear Bounded Phenogram will be included with all PlayStation 4 and Steam purchases for their respective platforms, and that the new 8-bit title will be included with all Nintendo Switch purchases. It was noted that the Elite will stay true to the original game’s heroine endings, and that the game will not reuse footage of the heroine endings from the Steins;Gate pachinko machines.
During the panel, Matsubara had a few interesting comments regarding the creation of Steins;Gate Elite. He noted that an exact remake of the original game wouldn’t be fun for them to create, so the team changed various aspects of Elite. He mentioned some of the difficulties in adapting Steins;Gate into a 23 episode timespan, and the necessity of cutting certain aspects to allow it to fit an anime timeslot. Examples include 4°C and the Viral Attackers, characters that were cut from the adaptation due to time constraints.
Matsubara mentioned that the team also conducted an in-depth analysis of all 80,000 lines in the original Steins;Gate script. A majority of the script remains unchanged for Elite, but certain aspects of it were changed to fix contradictions and allow for better flow. According to Matsubara, this was a time-consuming process that took over half a year alone, the same amount of time it took to write the original game’s scenario.
A comparison between the original visual novel, the anime adaptation, and Steins;Gate Elite was shown. A notable example of Elite’s advantage over the anime is the conference scene near the beginning of the story. While the anime adaptation skipped over Kurisu’s explanation of the eleven time travel theories, Steins;Gate Elite retains it. As the scene progresses in Elite, the names of the eleven theories are also added to the whiteboard in the back of the scene.
The show ended with three audience questions, and a reminder of the post-panel Steins;Gate Talent Show and autograph signing session.
The three questions asked have been transcribed, and can be read below.
Question 1: Who’s your favourite character, Matsubara? Both male and female.
Answer 1: Okabe and Kurisu.
Question 2: Thank you for creating Steins;Gate. I’m a huge fan and I’ve both watched and played Steins;Gate as well as read 0. Are you worried that Elite might introduce pacing issues due to the nature of combining the anime and the visual novel?
Answer 2: We don’t foresee many issues. It might have been hard to tell from the previous scenes previewed here, but the animated parts will continue playing. For example, in a scene where Daru is typing on the computer, Daru will keep on typing on his keyboard, even after the voice line ends. Since the user has control of the pacing themselves, we don’t see it as a problem.
Question 3: I’m a huge fan, once again, thanks for creating Steins;Gate. Since the game has additional endings compared to the anime, and there was that one Steins;Gate Pachinko game that got released in Japan, will you be reusing the animated scenes from the Pachinko game in Elite?
Answer 3: No, Elite will be staying true to the game’s endings. We won’t include stuff from the pachinko games.
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