Ninja Gaiden: The Essential Interview

We visit Team Ninja to meet once again with one of our fave game creators, Tomonobu Itagaki, and members of his team Yoshifuru Okamoto and Yutaka Saito, to discuss Ninja Gaiden 2 AND Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword for DS.

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Part 2: Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360)

Kikizo: How much of the original Ninja Gaiden team is working on the sequel?

Yoshifuru Okamoto: It's almost everybody - almost the whole team from the original.

Kikizo: You seem to have show Ninja Gaiden 2 quite early in development compared to your previous games, would you agree with this and if so why is it the case?

Okamoto: Actually that is not really the case. We started development on Ninja Gaiden 2 after we finished DOA4, so this would have been in January 2006, so we've been working on it for about a year and nine months. And that's why we're able to show you such a polished build right after announcement. We're really happy, I don't feel there many games out there that have as much to show at the beginning. There were a lot of factors involved in why we announced it around this timing - as you can imagine, everyone in the team was really excited to be able to show the game finally - we've been having to keep it a secret all this time.

Kikizo: Mr Itagaki has suggested that the team doesn't view the original Ninja Gaiden as a masterpiece. Do you think you're being too critical on yourselves? We think Ninja Gaiden 1 was one of the best games of last generation.

Okamoto: I would agree with what Itagaki said. We're not creating Ninja Gaiden 2 as an extension of the first game; we're not taking Ninja Gaiden 1 and adding things onto it. What we've done is totally broken down what Ninja Gaiden is - cut off the fat, and gotten rid of the stuff that we didn't think was necessary or weren't happy with, and really extended all the elements that we liked and built upon those, and kind of remade the game, in the way that we thought would be best for the sequel. So this is kind of the big challenge for out team. This is probably the most ambitious challenge we've ever done. We also feel that our Dead or Alive franchise is the number one fighting game in the world, and now we believe it is our duty to make Ninja Gaiden the number one action game franchise in the world, and that is the goal with this game, to make the best action game on the planet.

Kikizo: Are you aiming to achieving this through new weapons, or somehow just adding 'more' action? Please can you explain some more about this challenge?

Okamoto: I think the key consideration for the weapons is, what would look cool, when Hayabusa is using it? This is our super ninja, and we love our character, and we want to have a little bit of bad-ass. What is he going to look like a bad-ass wielding? And instead of doing what a lot of other say, we have x number of new weapons, you know, and some of them may be crap. We would rather say it's not about total amount, how many new weapons, it's about how awesome does he look when he's cutting people up with it. Our philosophy at Team Ninja is not really to try and push our games by saying that we have x number of this and that. You know, you can go out there and say we have 150 weapons but none of them are fun! But then really what's the point of that? That's not to say there won't be a lot of cool ones, it's just that we're not going to limit ourselves; we still have quite a ways to go, we're not shipping until next year. So I think that how it's going to go is to see what other kinds of things we would like Hayabusa do, and what else do we need to make Ninja Gaiden 2 the most compelling action experience - I think that's how it's going to go.

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