Okami's Creators Explain How It Could Have Been Even Better and How It Could Have Saved Clover Studio

ign.com:

Capcom and Tango Gameworks veteran Ikumi Nakamura hasn't been shy about her love and nostalgia for the project that initiated her into AAA development: Ōkami. And now in a new video conversation with Hideki Kamiya, the pair have opened up about Ōkami's development, including Kamiya's belief that its development team as a whole...could have been better.

This comes from a new entry in a video series presented by Nakamura's new studio, Unseen, called Ask Ikumi. In it, she's been sharing all sorts of behind the scenes game development insights both on Unseen's project, Kemuri, and her own development experience. In this latest video, she sits down to chat with longtime colleague Hideki Kamiya, with whom she worked on Ōkami, Bayonetta, and briefly on Scalebound. Their conversation largely focuses on Ōkami's development, and the pair has a lot to say!

The video opens with Kamiya explaining his notorious philosophy of blocking anyone who annoys him on Twitter by asking questions he's answered before, or not addressing him in Japanese. They then launch into a discussion of Ōkami's development. First, they discuss its original conception in a photo-realistic style. Ōkami was apparently first conceived while Kamiya was working on Viewtiful Joe, and saw work on the Resident Evil remake for GameCube being done next to him. He was impressed by the realism, and wanted to use that style for something more "light-hearted" than the horror genre. So Ōkami was conceived as a game about "healing."

But, he says, the photorealistic style they were aiming for was a struggle to get working on PS2. With Ōkami in trouble, the team was looking for new ideas, when character designer Kenichiro Yoshimura drew main character Amaterasu with a brush. This design sparked a new visual style for the entire game. Not long after, the studio leads convened a three-day summit over a weekend to revamp the game, during which time the Celestial Brush was pitched, and Ōkami changed directions for the better.

But