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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Kikizo: Can we expect any major differences with gameplay, and are you discussing the story aspects just yet?

Okamoto: I think in terms of gameplay, the newest features are probably how we are integrating the violence and the gore into the gameplay. We don't want to do violence just for its own sake; we want to make sure that it's connected with the gameplay, and we feel we've accomplished that pretty well. As far as story goes, we're not really talking about that right now, because we've just announced the game and we want people to focus on how much the gameplay itself has improved, but we'll be talking about the story more as we move along.

Kikizo: OK, but at the end of the trailer you have released, it says, "Vengeance begins 2008". The ending to Ninja Gaiden 1 seemed fairly conclusive! So can you at least say what this vengeance relates to?

Okamoto: Once again, I don't think it's really the time to get involved on details with the story right now; we definitely want to save a lot of juicy stuff for later. And plus I think we have so much going on, on the gameplay front, for you to look at. This is really just to give you a little tease as to what the story is going to be about. Obviously there's a reason why Ryu Hayabusa is out there and killing all these people, and obviously this has to do with him being wronged in some fashion and him taking revenge, so this is all I can say right now.

Kikizo: Can you describe more about how you mentioned the gore and violence aspect is now more linked with the gameplay?

Okamoto: It shows itself in a lot of ways, but one of the ways is in how the enemy AI changes. The enemies aren't just automatons, we have all dismemberment and things, and if you cut off an enemy's arm or leg, he's not going to die instantly, but that's going to affect the way the enemy moves and how he thinks, and the AI routines in technological terms. So from the enemy's point of view, he's there to kill Ryu, but if you take off his leg, this guy's not going home - he's not going back to his wife and kids, right. So he'll pull out a grenade and grab you and do a suicide bomb, because he's like, if I'm going to die, I'll take you with me. So you'll notice I think if you look at the demo closely that all the enemies' attacks are changing. And that's one of the things, we don't want for someone's arm to be chopped off and that's just the arm gone, there have got to be consequences, that are going to affect the battle around you.

Kikizo: Are there specific combos designed to take off an arm and a leg therefore, or is it kind of random?

Okamoto: Yeah that's basically how it is; every time you use a certain move, there's a certain chance that it will dismember a part of the enemy's body. It would be weird if you were hitting from above and it cut off a leg, so if you sweep the guy from below, that will cut off a leg, but if it's more of a body hit then maybe it will cut off an arm. We believe it's quite intuitive, that you can either choose to do it or not, at will.

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