IncarnatedDemon
Well-known Member
This is an old interview, but for sake of enlightement i wanted to share it
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=4&cId=3152880
Shocking how Kamiya found out about DMC 2 being made...
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=4&cId=3152880
1UP: So you say that you've never had a chance to work on one of your own sequels. Was this a result of you wanting new challenges and deciding not to work on your own sequels, or was it an order issued from managerial types at Capcom for you to work on something else while someone else worked on a sequel?
HK: It's never been my decision where I said, "I don't want to make a sequel," and move on to something new. In my heart, I wish that either I could make the sequel, or that no sequel would be made at all. I don't want anybody else to touch it, it's like my baby. Devil May Cry 2 as an example, it didn't do so well. It's not that people can't live up to my expectations or anything like that.
1UP: I hated it. [Laughs]
HK: It's just that I'm the one that created it, so I want to be able to follow-up with it. It's like if you have a girlfriend, you either want to be dating her, or you don't want to see her with another guy. Whether she's happier or sadder like that, you just don't want to see her with another guy. You have this game, you created it, and of course you want to nurture it yourself.
1UP: If you could turn the clock back, knowing what you know now, what game -- if you could -- with the technology that you have now, the know-how you have now, which game would you do a sequel to now?
HK: Difficult question. Even if I'd turned back the clock, I know that these sequels have already existed at some point, so it kind of made me lose my interest in it, so it's kind of hard to decide. But personally, the shock of Devil May Cry 2 not being made by me was the biggest surprise. By the time Viewtiful Joe 2 was being made, I was already used to the shock of having a sequel done by someone else, but with DMC2 it was a big deal.
1UP: Were you hurt by that, or were you working on another project when Capcom came to you and said, "Hey, we're doing a sequel to DMC?"
HK: It was a pretty big shock, so what was happening at the time was we were finishing up the localization on Devil May Cry for other territories, like North America and other last minute details, when a planner from another group came down to talk to me and said, "Can you show me the scenario and design doc for the first game?" And I asked why, and he said, "Because I'm making the second one." I was thinking, "I can't make the second game? What's going on here?" I was almost afraid of getting fired. Devil May Cry originally started out as Resident Evil 3, but it turned into DMC because it was so different, and we lost a year of development time. So I thought maybe I was screwing things up and that Capcom wanted to fire me, which would explain why I couldn't do DMC2, because the news came as such a surprise to me.
1UP: I'm amazed that Capcom wouldn't know to keep you on the series. I remember getting my hands on the first Devil May Cry at Capcom's Sunnyvale offices in California, and I was just blown away by it. It's still one of the best games on the PlayStation 2. It's surprising that they would fail to recognize where the talent was when green-lighting the sequel.
HK: From a company perspective, I can imagine how they would think about it. From their perspective, they don't just want to have an intellectual property that relies on one person forever, they want to be able to balance it out and probably have multiple people who can make the game. They probably envision that when they're selling the product, and it doesn't matter who makes it. They might have had that in mind. They didn't realize though that DMC1 was DMC1 because of the people who worked on it. Rather, it's just a product to whomever can make the second one. It was probably a bit of a mistake there. If you think about movies and things, and you have a movie with a famous director, and the second one changes to a different director, people start wondering, "Uh oh, what's happening here? Will the second one be as good?" But with videogames, when the director doesn't return for the follow-up, those same switches turn off. As long as people see a "2" on the game, they think it'll be the same as "1." I'd love for gamers to look at the games more carefully and realize who's making them. That would help a lot.
Shocking how Kamiya found out about DMC 2 being made...
