Steins;Gate Elite

Steins;Gate Elite is a science fiction visual novel and interactive movie video game, part of the Science Adventure series. It was developed by 5pb. for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows and iOS, and was released in September 2018 in Japan and in February 2019 internationally. It is an updated, fully animated remake of the 2009 game Steins;Gate, using footage from the anime adaptation of the original game along with newly produced animation by White Fox.

The game was created from the desire of its planner, Chiyomaru Shikura, to evolve the visual novel genre: he was influenced by the fully animated game series Yarudora, but as high development costs and a long production time would have prevented a full-length animated visual novel, it was decided to create a game that reused already existing animation. The game has received widespread critical acclaim by critics, in particularly for its story, footage of the anime adaptation of the original game, and visuals.

Overview

Steins;Gate Elite is a science fiction visual novel[1]

Production

Development

Steins;Gate Elite was developed by 5pb., and was planned by Chiyomaru Shikura and produced by Tatsuya Matsubara. The new animation was produced by White Fox, the studio that produced the Steins;Gate anime series.[5] Shikura had for a long time thought about how to evolve the visual novel genre, as he felt it had been largely stagnant. He was influenced by the Yarudora series of games, which are fully animated and voice acted, liking how fully animated visual novels would have the advantage of both containing prose describing characters' internal feelings, and showing movements and expressions that are not as easily conveyed through character sprites and prose only.[8] He did however note that making a full-length visual novel in that style would be difficult due to production costs and how long the development would take. Realizing that a project like it would have to reuse old animation to be feasible, it was decided to create a game using material from the anime adaptation of Steins;Gate, as it already contained a large portion of the story from the original game.

There were still difficulties involved in incorporating the anime footage in Steins;Gate Elite: In a typical visual novel, each character only talks and acts when the player pushes a button, while multiple characters can move and talk at the same time in an anime. This resulted in the anime footage having to be deconstructed, with each character's movements in a scene separated into its own individually playable animations. Because the player character uses his cell phone at several points in the game, they also had to add new animations of him taking it out. Other difficulties involved discrepancies between the original game and the anime adaptation, such as characters being in different locations for certain scenes in the anime compared to the original game; taking care of these situations alone took six months.[9] The user interface was also redesigned to be subtle and blend in with the animation.[10]

Release

The game was announced at the Chiyo-ST Live 2017 Genesis event in Tokyo in May 2017,[11] and was showcased at Sega's booth at Tokyo Game Show 2017, with a seven-minute demo available for the public to play.[12] The full game, which is branded as a "Full Animation Adventure",[10] was released on September 20, 2018, in Japan for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch,[13] with no differences between the three platforms.[10] Although it had originally been announced for release on March 15, 2018, it was delayed as further improvements to the quality were deemed necessary.

title	Steins;Gate Elite
alt	The game's cover art consists of a stylized illustration of two young women and one young man, standing among clockwork; in the distance, a satellite-like machine can be seen having crash landed atop the roof of a building.
developer	5pb.
publisher	JP: 5pb. WW: Spike Chunsoft
producer	Tatsuya Matsubara
series	Science Adventure
platforms	PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, iOS
released	PS4, NS JP: September 20, 2018 WW: February 19, 2019 PlayStation Vita JP: September 20, 2018 Microsoft Windows WW: February 19, 2019 iOS JP: October 15, 2019
genre	Visual novel Interactive movie
modes	Single-player

Overview

Production

Development

Release

Reception

Pre-release

Post-release

External links

References

Overview

Production

Development

Release

Reception

Pre-release

Post-release

Related media

External links

References