N'Gai Croal
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Dec 11, 2007 11:50 AM
Devil May Cry 4
A few weeks ago, we spoke with Hiroyuki Kobayashi--the game producer, not the baseball player--about Devil May Cry 4, shipping next year for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The first and third games were much-lauded, while the second was generally viewed as a disappointment. So with the fourth game in development, it was reasonable to wonder whether there could be a brewing every-other-game-is-mediocre problem (much like the Call of Duty games made by Treyarch rather than Infinity Ward.) But with Kobayashi having such games under his belt as the highly acclaimed Resident Evil 4 and the defiantly offbeat Killer 7--and based on what we saw recently--we think fans of the franchise will find themselves entertained. We asked him why Devil May Cry 4 features a new main character; what he thought of his chief competitors Ninja Gaiden and God of War; and how hard it was to develop for the PS3. Here's what Kobayashi had to say.
The first and the third Devil May Cry games were the best received in the series, and a lot of people particularly like the third one. What did you want to achieve with Devil May Cry 4?
One of the first things that we decided when we were just planning out the game was that we would definitely have a new main character in the game. We definitely wanted to have a new hero. We also wanted to have this kind of like, changing of the baton or passing the torch; that you would be able to switch between between Dante and Nero in the game. So how to be able to do that in the game and how to be able to do that in the story was something that we had to think quite a lot about.
Was the reasoning behind having Nero as a new character primarily story reasons or for gameplay reasons primarily?
Primarily it was for gameplay reasons. I mean, in [Devil May Cry] one, two and three, Dante got more and more moves. It was getting more and more complicated and it became a little bit difficult for people who had never played the series before to be able to control him. So in order to be able to attract both new fans and people who were fans of the series already; so they would both be at the same starting point and both be able to enjoy the game, we felt we had to change and have a new main character.
The relationship between Dante and Nero, seems like that between an older experienced person and a younger impetuous person. In some ways, it reminds me of the relationship between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker or perhaps Solid Snake and Raiden. Was that deliberate? Also, since Devil May Cry 3 was a prequel, Dante was younger than he was in Devil May Cry 1. So in a way, it's almost like Dante and Nero are akin to the older and younger Dantes of the previous games. Is that how you thought about Dante and Nero for Devil May Cry 4?
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