Itagaki has shared a translation of Famitsu’s interview of him for Devil’s Third.
Itagaki is as orthodox as ever, as he asked his interviewer to play the game before they actually commenced. Once they got into it, however, he shared a lot of insight into its development.
With Devil’s Third, Itagaki took what he learned from making action games and fighting games for years and combine them with his newest game, a shooter. Itagaki studied other shooters in the market extensively, and put them all together with the idea of Gekken, using all techniques available to kill your opponent. Itagaki did feel close range battles were a common weakness with most shooters.
Valhalla did not stop working on the game for the last seven years, but it was only in the last six months that they sought to polish up the gameplay and graphics. Because development never really stopped, Nintendo couldn’t make fundamental changes, but they did have a huge impact in development. Itagaki calls out Nintendo’s in house testers Mario Club for their enthusiasm and feedback.
Nintendo’s involvement came about in an interesting way as well; Itagaki bluntly approached Nintendo with all the work they already did. Former president Iwata, in possibly one of his last major decisions, chose to pick up the project for the Wii U. Itagaki believes this is partly because a game like his is uncommon on Nintendo’s systems, but also because Nintendo Co Ltd wants to change themselves radically from within. Thanks to Iwata’s generosity, Valhalla was able to continue and finish the project while keeping their internal structure intact.
Itagaki had user friendliness in mind for the game’s design, so the single player is littered with easily recognizable save points. Gamers who aren’t good at shooters can compensate with action gameplay and vice versa. Itagaki also feels the story and multiplayer modes can stand on their own, a point proven recently since Valhalla is publishing the multiplayer to PC.
Itagaki also talks extensively about the game scenario and premise. You can read it all in detail here.Devil’s Third is releasing in Wii U in the US on Q4 and Europe on August 29. There will also be a PC multiplayer only free-to-play version releasing in September.
