Okami creator reveals the game’s initial concept and origins

In a recent social media post, Okami creator Hideki Kamiya spoke about the game’s original concept, including how the initial idea was a side-scroller.

According to Kamiya, the very beginning of his idea involved playing as the leader of a pack of wolves, living on a deserted island, and trying to survive in nature. He was inspired by a particular book he saw while in university. 

Kamiya’s full comments about the origins of Okami which we’ve translated are as follows:

Planning for Okami originally began as “a game where you play as the leader of a pack of wolves living on a deserted island and surviving in nature”… From there, it lead to gameplay about “using God’s powers of creation” and the creation of the Celestial Brush, and we gave it the title “Okami”…

To go further back, the origin of the concept for “a game where you play as the leader of a pack of wolves living on a deserted island and surviving in nature” came from a photo book of “White Wolves” that I saw in my university days (a compilation created from ecological reports of forest wolves in Brandenburg), and as an assignment after receiving an informal offer to join Capcom, I first made a written proposal…

At the time (1993 – 1994), partly since the PlayStation had not even come out, my proposal was for a side-scroller, and you would control a white wolf running around a forest and interacting with various animals and plants, and sometimes fight wild beasts, or help humans who got lost…

As some fans know, the primary development of Okami itself went through its own series of changes. One example of this is in the art style – the original plan was for the graphics to be much more realistic, but the team later changed things up and used the now iconic cel-shading effect.

It was announced last month that Okami, which was first released nearly two decades ago, is getting a sequel with Kamiya at the helm through his new studio Clovers. Kamiya recently shared some pretty harsh words regarding those that provided leaks surrounding Nintendo Switch 2, which you can read about here.

Translation provided by SatsumaFS, Philip Proctor, and Simon Griffin on behalf of Nintendo Everything.