Development
Development of Bullet Witch lasted approximately two years, being handled by the same team who developed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex for the PlayStation 2. It was the first game developed for seventh generation consoles by Cavia. The concept for Bullet Witch originated before the next generation of hardware had been revealed to developers, beginning its concept development for sixth generation hardware. After the developers were shown the Xbox 360, they were impressed with its development tools and additional features such as the Xbox Live functions, deciding to develop Bullet Witch for that platform. While development for the PlayStation 3 was considered, the team had begun work on the Xbox 360, and decided to stay on a single platform to deliver the best possible experience. The game used both internal and external staff, with a team size estimated at being between 100 and 120 people. Between 20 and 30 programmers worked on the game.
The game was produced by Toru Takahashi. The director was Yōichi Take, who co-wrote the scenario with Akira Yasui. According to Take, the scenario had a somber tone to suit its setting, and was quite brief when compared to other video game narratives. The character of Alicia was described as a combination of Japanese and Western character archetypes; while her Gothic witch appearance drew from Western fiction, her melancholy persona and ironic humor were based in Japanese traditions. The character designs and art direction were handled by Satoshi Ueda. The menus and other 2D assets were designed by Satoko Tsushima. Tsushima also designed the game's logo. The in-game cinematics were directed by Yasui, with the higher graphical power of the console enabling more character expression than in Yasui's previous work. The creature designs were handled by Taro Hasegawa. One monster he described in detail was the humanoid Geist, which he needed to redesign several times; his first draft was refused due to being overly complex to render, with later versions being created with input from other staff members. The larger monsters dubbed Megas were designed around the concept of players jumping on them during battle, but due to hardware limitations this aspect of gameplay was cut. The game's monsters, like Alicia, were a fusion of Western and Japanese design elements. Fuji Wahara was in charge of character motion, and worked hard to make character movements realistic while keeping to the exaggerated tone and style of the game. The lead artificial intelligence designer was Tomoyuki Ando.
When creating Bullet Witch, the team were pleased with the shift to high-definition graphics, but this and the game's identity as a new intellectual property meant they were taking financial risks. The move to next-generation hardware meant the team could include more destructible environments. They used 64-bit computing at a few points to speed up data exchange and improve visual effects. The game uses the NovodeX physics engine, which later known as PhysX. Working with the next-generation hardware was both exhilarating and difficult, as the team wanted to create something new rather than rely on existing code resources. The team wanted players to be able to navigate large areas with few or no loading screens, but these ambitions were originally muted by the console's limited power, and it was only during the later stages of development that they started resolving the issues. Due to the console's limitations, some potential effects and touches such as breaking glass, bullet marks in surfaces like building walls, and having Alicia's feet adjust to the slope of terrain had to be left out to increase processing power for the large-scale environments. While the team had wanted to achieve 60 frames per second, the team needed to reduce the framerate to 30 per second so all the effects would run smoothly.
Music
The music for Bullet Witch was composed by Masashi Yano, then part of music studio SuperSweep. Yano had previously written the score for the CGI cutscenes of Drakengard 2. The soundtrack was a collaboration between internal and external staff. As the visuals were designed to appear cinematic, the developers wanted the music to emulate that atmosphere. Cavia staff were responsible for deciding upon the music with the external staff, who then composed the music. The music was supervised by Cavia staff member Nobuyoshi Sano, mixed by Delfi Sound's Toshihiro Hayano, and mastered by Masami Kanda of Memory-Tech Corporation. When brought on board the project, Sano asked for Yano, whose musical style emulated Hollywood orchestral scores.
Yano and Sano were originally going to work on the score together, with Yano handling the orchestral segments and Sano in charge of percussion and bass. Take wanted the soundtrack to stand out, but when Sano added together their two styles of music, he negatively compared the result to a song from Japanese variety show Nanikore Chin Hyakkei. Sano was so distressed that he insisted Yano handle all aspects of the music. The soundtrack and soundscape were created using 5.1 surround sound, which Sano found to be a mixed experience. While this enabled a wider range and depth of sounds, it also made coordination and balance more difficult. Despite the difficulties, he found the resultant effect superior to the two-channel sound of his previous projects. The theme song "The Vanishing Sky" was composed by Yano and arranged by Sano, with lyrics and vocals performed in English by Asako Yoshihiro.
