In the category “The greatest injustices of the video game”, it is difficult not to place one for Okami, one of the very last games from the Clover studio. 15 years later, director Hideki Kamiya still hopes to continue the adventure.
Far from the escapades and untimely blockages to which he has nevertheless accustomed us, the Kamiya guy confided much more delicately than usual in front of the camera of the YouTube channel Cutscenes, which this weekend offered the fourth episode of its series dedicated to one of the founders of PlatinumGames, as you have already discovered above.
Ama devastated, but Ama freed
For more than a quarter of an hour, Hideki Kamiya looks back on the development of this masterpiece that is therefore commonly called Okami, by plunging back into the context of the time, while the continuation of her baby Viewtiful Joe was entrusted to another director:
Okami’s mission was important: we had launched Clover Studio as a subsidiary of Capcom, and I was asked to create the title that would be our flagship. This is how Okami started. I’m from Nagano Prefecture, a beautiful place even for Japan, and wanted to express that calming feeling of being surrounded by nature.
Unfortunately, you know the rest: released in 2006 on PlayStation 2 and two years later on Wii, Okami will not have met enough success for Clover not to stay afloat, and Kamiya’s troupe will finally found the PlatinumGames studio in 2007. , and will ultimately ward off fate.
Kamiya of joy
Despite an HD port which allowed the adventures of the goddess in the form of a wolf to find a wider echo (and an audience) than at the time, a spiritual sequel called Okami Den will have emerged in 2010, story of, but Kamiya’s plans were originally quite different:
At the time, I didn’t think I would stop working for Capcom: Okami was built on a lot of ideas, and I thought I would have the opportunity to rework on the license and integrate what I had not been able to put in the first episode. I could imagine a sequel, in which we would answer some unanswered questions. We thought we could improve the story and mechanics of the Heavenly Brush … We really wanted to do a sequel, but things turned out differently.
The idea still seems in the mind of the director, since he discreetly evoked then verbally the arrival of an Okami 2 in recent years, a wish he rephrased today facing the camera:
The more I think about it, the more I feel like I’m not done. There is always a part of me that would love to come back to it. I really wish that would happen someday.
It is therefore on these beautiful words full of hope that we will let you discuss the relevance and your desire to recross the flowery road of the goddess Amaterasu in the comments above, against a background of Reset, of course !
