'Monster Hunter' was its own series, its own franchise, and it just so happened that we wanted to make a realistic fantasy-based action game, and because we had the staff available to make something like that, we're able to make this game. The ideas for 'Dragon's Dogma' came from a completely different place.
Hideaki Itsuno
You know how we always said 'Devil May Cry 5''s themes were about photorealism and the uncanny valley? That was a lie. The real themes centered around setbacks and awakenings.
If I could, I'd love to make 'Dragon's Dogma 2' - it'd be awesome.
Whenever we start making a 'Devil May Cry' game, one thing we think about is, 'What new weapons are we going to have for Dante?'
The idea you start from is 'What's cool to a kid in their early teens?' So we had the guitar in 'Devil May Cry 3.' Guitars are cool to kids that age, and motorcycles are, too.
Before you go through with an experience, think about what you expect it to feel like. Once you've experienced it, reflect on whether your expectations differed from reality.
First, I take a lot of time to just explain my vision of what the game should be to the team. Then I make all subsequent decisions based on how I want to feel when I buy the game, and what impressions I want to have of it. I then go about implementing the little points that will lead up to that finished product.
Inside the world of 'Devil May Cry,' we're not changing gameplay very much. We're making it more beautiful, more action-packed, and giving you a few more features, but the gameplay itself is the pretty much the same.
Making the AI better in a video game is not like making the AI better in, say, a chess game. Making it better in terms of acting ability - we're basically improving its acting so that the user can have more fun.
There are a lot of games out there these days that you either know how to play it or don't, or if you spend enough time pounding away at it, you're going to beat it eventually.
I came to London constantly, working with Ninja Theory on 'DmC Devil May Cry,' and I kind of fell in love with this amazing architecture, where you have these buildings that have clearly been around a long time, and they have this amazing gothic look, and then on the first floor, it's a McDonald's!
When we decided to make 'DMC5,' one of the things we said off the bat is, 'Let's make a new character.'
There have been a lot of amazing action games that, perhaps, the focus is on cinematics or story or even how the camera works so that they've created this amazing immersive experience.
After 'DmC' came out, we had a fantastic relationship with Ninja Theory, and we loved what they made. We wanted to see a sequel to that.
What's fun about these pure action games hasn't really changed since the 8-bit days. Every time I make a new 'Devil May Cry' game, I always go back and play one of the 'Ghouls & Ghosts' games to remember what it is about those pure action experiences that's fun.
The most important thing about 'Devil May Cry' is that the action itself, there's beauty to it.
Making the visuals photo-realistic lets us do things we were never able to do before. The voice acting, the facial expressions, are all that much deeper.
I've always got maybe around four different titles in mind, maybe about four different ideas that I'd love to make.
It's a tough line, Japanese and western games. We wanted to blur that line.
