Month: August 2019

To coincide with the 20th anniversary of Resident Evil 2, the game’s director Hideki Kamiya took to Twitter to reveal some cool tidbits about the game’s turbulent development.

Resident Evil 2, which came out on 21st January 1998 for the PlayStation, wowed fans with its cinematic storytelling, multiple playable characters and cool graphics. According to Capcom, Resident Evil 2 has sold 4.96m copies. It was a massive hit.

But its development was not plain sailing. Kamiya, who was 25 when Capcom thrust him into the position of Resident Evil 2 game director, spoke about how he and his team scrapped a huge amount of work and, essentially, restarted development. This ditched game became Resident Evil 1.5, which fans have been working to restore ever since.

RE2 was the first game I got to direct, so it holds a special place in my memories. I was only 25 at the time and had very little experience, so I was so preoccupied with being a director I didn't really get to enjoy the job. (2/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

I also made many wrong decisions, and I'm sure you all know we even had to start from scratch at one point (the canned version later became known as Resident Evil 1.5). (3/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Fortunately, Mikami and the scenario writer Noboru Sugimura, as well as many other staff members, came to my rescue, so we were able to wrap up the project safely before unleashing it on the world. (4/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Sugimura was old enough to be my dad, and when he looked at RE 1.5 in the early stages of development, he was the one who advised me to start over, and he gave us all the courage to actually do so. (5/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

After that, he and I were pretty much cooped up in a meeting room for several weeks straight, yelling at each other from time to time (all the time?), and going out for drinks after work (and yelling some more) before finally wrapping up the script. (6/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

I had no sense or knowledge of script writing whatsoever, so I just used my youthful vigor to push through, and Sugimura was never afraid to come at me head-first, which was a huge help. (7/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

I learned a great many things from him, and I would go on to utilize his teachings when writing the scripts for DMC, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami as well. (8/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Unfortunately, Sugimura passed away just as I was working on Okami. To this day, I still wonder what he would've told me if he'd had a chance to play that game. (9/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Kamiya also discussed the English voice over recording for the game, including this juicy anecdote:

I have so many memories about RE2… It also marked the first time at Capcom for recording English VO overseas, so we were figuring stuff out as we went along. It was my first time going abroad for work. (10/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

I vividly remember on the first day we arrived at the studio in Canada, our interpreter suddenly said "I've got a stomachache so I'm going back to the hotel," so I basically had to direct the voice recording session with gestures and broken English… (11/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

During the session, I added Claire's line "Chris, I have to find you" without getting Sugimura's approval, and since he was already writing the story for Code: Veronica, he yelled at me because he had to change the script just because of that line. (12/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Then there’s the revelation that Kamiya forced the game to come on two discs because he introduced the zapping system, which let you play each of the two playable characters in two different scenarios, thus showing events from the other character’s perspective.

Because I was so young, I wasn't afraid to do anything, so I set some big goals for myself, recklessly introducing the "zapping system," which suddenly forced us to put the game on two discs instead of one in the final stage of development. (14/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Resident Evil 2 sounds like it was a particularly brutal development, with a crunch that forced Kamiya to drink and sleep in the office.

To escape from the stress of work, I started drinking brandy on the rocks every night, arriving at the office with a hangover the next day, and sleeping in an empty meeting room during lunch break. Ah, how young I was! (15/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Ultimately, Kamiya sounds proud of the work he and his team did on Resident Evil 2.

All of these memories are irreplaceable treasures to me. There is no greater honor for me than seeing how much all of you still love RE2 to this day. I'll keep working hard so I can bring you many more games of the same caliber! (16/16)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

In a Twitter encore, Kamiya remembered the day he was chosen to direct Resident Evil 2:

I remember the day I was chosen to be the director of RE2 very well. Not too long after development on RE1 finished, Mikami called me into a meeting room and asked me if I was interested in being the director for RE2. (1/6)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Why was Kamiya chosen to direct such a high profile release? He’s not sure, but he does know this:

I still don't know why Mikami chose me of all people, but I do remember that, shortly after I entered the company, he invited me out for some drinks and told me this: (4/6)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

"You're the dark horse of the new recruits. You're either going to fail spectacularly, or you're going to be a huge success." (5/6)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

After that, I worked under Mikami for quite a while, and I must've caused him many a headache with my sassy attitude, but I'd like to think I met his expectations at least a little. (6/6)

— ???? Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 24, 2018

Kamiya would go on to direct Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Ōkami, and co-found Bayonetta maker Platinum, but Resident Evil 2 was where his illustrious career kicked off. Happy birthday!

PlatinumGames’ wonder duo Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya issued a rallying cry in Croatia today to convince Nintendo to get The Wonderful 101, a wonderful game and Wii U exclusive, on Switch.

The rallying cry came during the duo’s Reboot Develop 2018 talk. Kamiya, who’s very fond of The Wonderful 101, asked how many people in the audience had played it and then the translator relayed:

“We’re going to knock the audience participation up a bit. They’re still trying to negotiate with Nintendo whether a possible Wonderful 101 Switch release could happen but it always helps when the people in the audience at Reboot clap if they’d actually buy a Switch version of Wonderful 101. So anybody who would buy that, please clap…”

And the whole room did.

In an interview after the talk I followed the topic up and asked how far The Wonderful 101 conversation with Nintendo had progressed. Atsushi Inaba, co-founder and executive director, replied (again via translator):

“From their perspective obviously there are things they can’t talk about, about dealings they have with Nintendo. Certainly they can say everything they said during the speech, which was, ‘Hey, we should do that.’ But whether that is a ‘we are going to do that’, and what the likelihood is of that happening, is just going to have to be something you wait to find out.”

Platinum and Nintendo’s close relationship – The Wonderful 101 was a Wii U exclusive, and Bayonetta 3 is a Switch exclusive – bodes well.

On Bayonetta 3, Inaba and Kamiya were tight-lipped. But during the talk, Inaba said Bayonetta 3 represents a turning point for the company in how they make games, though he didn’t further explain what he meant. He did say Bayonetta 3 would be a linear core progression action game, which is no surprise, but also Platinum wanted to do something new, add new gimmicks and new ways to play the game.

“Bayonetta 2 was a fantastic title and they need to make sure this is leaps and bounds above that,” the translator relayed. “They know that the fans expect crazier, better, tighter action games. If they’re going to put out Bayonetta 3, it’s going to have to raise the bar.”

But Bayonetta 3 is far from the only game in development at the studio. Martin travelled to PlatinumGames recently to see new mobile game World of Demons, a kind of spiritual successor to Okami, and a more substantial project than it sounds. There are also two other much more secretive projects in the works – games announced earlier this year as self-published new IP. This, however, might have been misconstrued.

Inaba’s reply to me, via translator, was: “The definition of self-owned IP can be looked at from a lot of different angles. When they mentioned those two, what they’re trying to say is maybe one of those is a game only they can create, therefore it’s their IP in that way but it may be funded from somebody else.”

One of those games has a core team of six people getting very excited, apparently. “Right now they’re currently rapidly discussing a very interesting concept,” the translator relayed during the talk. “Whether it’s action or a totally new style of genre that nobody has heard of before or seen, it’s really hard to put their finger on, but the ideas are there. Currently there’s about six of the core staff that every day passionately discuss this idea, and it’s so cool for them. This is something very innovative and has most of the studio very, very excited for what this could be.”

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Incidentally, don’t worry about PlatinumGames making a mobile game. This isn’t a wholesale shift in focus for the studio so much as an experiment.

“We don’t want people to look at that and think all of a sudden there’s a gigantic shift in the sort of games we’re going to make,” Inaba reassured me. “It’s important to be flexible and try a wide variety of genres and business models. At the end of the day, a good game is a good game, so we just wanted to see what it would be like to do a mobile game, but that doesn’t represent the fact that we’re going to just do that from now on. Please let the fans know they don’t need to worry: we’re still going to make the core experience for the core games.”

PlatinumGames is very busy then, though they wouldn’t tell me exactly how many games were in development because “people would probably shit their pants”. Nevertheless it’s a relief after the dejected figure PlatinumGames cut roughly a year ago after the cancellation of Xbox One exclusive Scalebound.

“The reality is this,” Inaba told me. “Any time you make a game for that long, you love it and you put your heart and soul into it. Ultimately not all games pan out, so when it didn’t, we also felt very much like you: very disappointed we couldn’t get it out into the hands of the users.

“A lot of the details were under NDA and we can’t discuss them. I’d love to be able to give you more information about it but at the end of the day you can only say what you can say, and unfortunately those are areas we can’t go into detail about.”

Scalebound being Microsoft’s IP also means PlatinumGames can’t reuse or salvage any of the work it did.

Nevetheless, Inaba refuted rumours the cancellation brought PlatinumGames to its knees and the studio nearly closed. “I’ve heard that rumour too,” he told me, “and it’s totally unsubstantiated. We’re not a one project studio, we’re a balanced studio. If any of the fans heard that rumour and then were worried about us or upset we feel very sorry.

“We’re totally fine,” he added, “and we were totally fine then too.”

Did you know it’s been nearly 20 years since Digimon was first released? Somehow, the series has managed to succeed in the shadow of its more famous rival for two decades, so it seems fitting the latest game should concentrate on the theme of survival.

Following talk in Japan over the last few weeks about a new chapter in the Digimon story, Digimon Survive has finally been confirmed for a western release. In yesterday’s Digimon livestream by Bandai Namco, the company announced the latest incarnation of the series will be a “survival-simulation RPG”.

According to Bandai Namco’s press release, the game will feature a “brand-new group of teenagers” who “get lost on a school camping trip” and are “transported to a world of monsters and danger”. Sounds like my Duke of Edinburgh experience, to be honest.

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From the trailer, the gameplay will be a marriage of visual novel and SRPG. The “drama” sections look like they will be in 3D, while the battles will be in a 2D “classic SRPG style”.

Digimon Survive SRPG gameplay (called 'battle part') pic.twitter.com/KLeuMXsikg

— Nibel (@Nibellion) July 29, 2018

To be fair to Digimon, the game’s art style does look gorgeous, and it will be interesting to see how the hybrid gameplay functions in practice.

Digimon Survive is due for release in 2019, and will be coming to PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC.