Devil’s Third – Itagaki fought with Nintendo, how the Big N shaped the game, interest in making a trilogy and other media
Polygon has put up a massive feature about Devil’s Third, featuring commentary from creator Tomonobu Itagaki and Danny Bilson, who is also working on the game. There are quite a few interesting quotes here concerning fights with Nintendo and how the company shaped Devil’s Third, hopes of making a trilogy and branching out into other media, and more.
We’ve picked out some comments from Polygon’s feature below. You can find it in full here.
Itagaki on arguments with Nintendo…
“There are also cultural differences between the way that I’ve worked and the way Nintendo works, which is when it comes down to the basic grammar of games, the method of game creation. And so we certainly fought some, but I think that I saw the value in a lot of the ways that they do things and learned a great amount.
“Now this is close to a trade secret so I can’t say too much, but I feel like I learned the most fundamental meaning of what it means to push a button. When you tell someone, ‘Push the A button,’ there’s a wealth of information there. And I feel like all of us who have worked on this project, as a result, have grown a bit.”
On how Itagaki isn’t concerned about bringing his game to a console not known for its violent content…
“Personally, I feel like the future is going to be made by the gamers themselves. I think a lot of people might have been surprised that such a violent game was going to be released on a Nintendo platform. But I think that you can say, from a certain perspective, things are getting interesting for Nintendo as well, making these kinds of choices.”
– Nintendo gave strong support to the game and his team
– Game is mostly unchanged from jumping to the PS3/360 to Wii U
– 90% of the concept hasn’t been altered
– The remaining 10% was shaped by Nintendo
– Nintendo’s Hitoshi Yamagami and Yusuke Nakano loved his project like their own and both helped and taught him
“That other 10 percent I think really has been flavored by this cooperation with Nintendo. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, Japan is a small country in terms of landmass, but it still has an amazing concentration of lots of different cultures within it, and I think that Nintendo culture is one of those, and I had this opportunity to learn about Nintendo culture through the years working with them.”
– Bilson said, is “absolutely a slice of a bigger world that Valhalla created.”
– Bilson sees a lot of potential in the game’s characters
“One of the things I always loved about the game was these wild, unique characters. And I think wild is probably the word I find most appropriate to everything about Devil’s Third because it’s beyond heightened reality, it’s almost insane reality. it’s what one of my old bosses used to call ‘heavy on the fun factor’ in all aspects of the game.”
Bilson on whether Devil’s Third could make the leap from games to something else, like film…
“Yes. We’ve discussed other narrative tracks for this … that’s very important to Itagaki-san and myself, that people really engage in this world, and it is a wild one. It’s not quite like any tone we’ve seen. If fans like it, we have more ideas that the fans can engage with in Devil’s Third, including an epic trilogy that he’s planned.”
– Bilson said when they were working on the game’s ending, anything that could have made it hard to continue the story was a “no-no”
– Itagaki said he likes developing things as trilogies
Bilson on how the team has a lot of plans for the world of Devil’s Third…
“For instance, exploring other characters and their origins, things like that. So the game can, in success, it can branch into other media, as [Itagaki] said, manga, some linear narrative stuff, but not of this story, of other elements of characters in this wild world they’ve created.”
Itagaki on how Devil’s Third will set itself apart from other shooters…
“Well, for one, I would certainly never force people to run straight up to an opponent’s face and shoot them from that distance. I think that’s nonsense.”
“Once you’re that close, you should be throwing someone up against the wall,” he said through the pinned translator, “pinning them by their throat, grabbing their sword and gutting them with it.”
“Also, lots of shooters, I feel, are basically games where you have to do a lot of memorization because the map is static. But in this game, in the multiplayer mode, everyone can customize their own fortress, and these are the maps you play on, which are dynamic. So in this game, with that dynamic map, recon becomes very important. You need to figure out what the layout of your enemy fortress is, figure out what the chokepoints are and the areas you can use as kill zones.”
