>>713097974
The director Shu Takumi actually mentioned in a Japanese interview in 2023 for GT HD how this came about! I'll have to find the exact interview, but this is what I remember. The interviewer asked how Sissel's design came about, and Takumi answered that his design was based on a random character from another Capcom game that was in the QA phase at the time. Takumi needed a human protag to put into his design pitch presentation for the game which he was to give to Capcom higher ups, so he took some random character and changed him slightly. That's all the details we know. From another interview, we know that the first version of Ghost Trick started production immediately after Ace Attorney 3, which would have been early 2004. Of all the games that came out in early 2004, which would have been in QA phase at the time, Under the Skin is the only one that fits. UtS was even made in Shinji Mikami's department, Production Group 4, which was also were the Ace Attorney team worked. UtS was directed by the Resident Evil Code Veronica director if Im not mistaken. And Ace Attorney's team spun off from Dino Crisis and Resident Evil. So Shu Takumi was probably just helping to playtest the game UtS to help out a colleague director, and then stole a design from UtS to put into his next game. Question remains who made that original character for UtS, and was Ghost Trick art designer Koki Kinoshita involved at any point at all.
In that same interview Takumi mentioned that Ghost Trick wasn't in development for the DS originally, so back in 2004 it must have been either the GBA or the PSP which they were aiming for. Ghost Trick's development got put on ice until 2007, because Rise From the Ashes Ace Attorney 1 DS and Ace Attorney 4 were being developed, so by the time production resumed in 2007 it seems the project shifted to DS
