Okami

[Hellfire]

Rumour has it the Euro version was delayed till August. I read this on the Gamespot forums, but can't confirm.

 

It wasn't delayed because we never had a date :P

[pedrocasilva]

Sven interview with IGN: (regarding Okami, "cut the crap" edited version)

 

Regarding Okami having sold 270.000 units on PS2:

 

Sven: That 270,000 figure is a very organic figure. Okami's day-one figure was nowhere near that.

 

It really speaks to the quality and the word of mouth and the effort of places to get the word out there. We are still selling PS2 copies of Okami. It's not huge. We're not shipping 10,000 a month of everything, but from distribution channels, we still get orders of a thousand here, a thousand there, and we're still selling it from the Capcom store. So it still has legs even now.

 

Why didn't Okami for PS2 sell better?

 

Sven: New IP is always hard, I think that the mainstream doesn't see cel-shaded titles as super appealing. If you look across the slew of all cel-shaded games, developers sort of have an inside joke, saying, 'Okay, it's cel-shaded -- it's going to be sent to die.' Believe it or not, unfortunately the mainstream doesn't react well to the 'games as art' pitch and to do big numbers sometimes you have to tap the mainstream.

 

Why didn't Capcom working on a Wii version right away?

 

Sven: The PS2 game was a big labor of love for those guys, and at the time that Okami was started, I don't think anyone at Capcom internally knew much about Wii.

 

The prospect of it ever even existing was never on the board, it was never a possibility, it was never contemplated. And when you ask somebody, 'Well, this thing that you've been working on for two years, how would you like to start over and put it on something else?', it probably just sets people off thinking the wrong way.

 

Why now?

 

Sven: You referenced earlier all the petitions of people screaming for us to do Okami Wii, and we had so many posts on our message boards about it, I think we had to seriously consider what could be done. Being honest, revisiting Okami for Wii was kind of a sensitive thing internally with Clover's past. But I looked at it as, the fans want it, the fans deserve it, we've got to figure out a way to do this.

 

And I thought there was a commercial value to the company in doing this and frankly that's how we got it sold through. The company will do well to do this -- to address the needs of what the fans want.

 

Clover Studio no longer exists and the assets needed to make the game for Wii, code and art included, were back in Japan, how were the assets?

 

Sven: The first drop of assets we got from Japan were incomplete. Very incomplete. So we had to ping the powers that be to go prodding through old hard drives and old computers to see if the assets could be located anywhere. We got a second asset drop, which got us most of the missing stuff back, but there were still a few bits missing. The Ready at Dawn team really kept trudging ahead even when stuff was missing. Even after the second asset drop, they still had to create stuff from scratch.

 

Even as Capcom officially announced to the delight of fans that a Wii version of Okami was underway, some issues persisted behind the scenes, right?

 

Sven: There was some PS2-specific code that had to be rewritten and optimized for the Wii and part of the reason we didn't show it until we started showing it was because, if we showed it in a form that was anything less than near-perfect, people were going to freak out.

 

Earlier in development, because Ready at Dawn had redone a lot of the code as general C code, the game was running in very un-optimized form. As they did more and more optimizations, the framerate got higher and we were able to add 480p and widescreen.

 

Would it have been easier to start with a blank canvas and create an altogether new Okami game for Wii?

 

Sven: Absolutely not, the game is so huge and there are so many assets, and then there's the asset conversion process -- there's just no way this could have been done without the assets we had.

 

What sales does Capcom expect of the title?

 

Sven: If it did the numbers that we did on the PS2, I'd be very happy. This doesn't need to be a mainstream success for this to be a success for the company.

 

Recently you said that Capcom would not support a big budget for advertising, at which point some fans suggested that the publisher was going to bury the release altogether, is that true?

 

Sven: All I said was that we weren't going to do TV. This is one of my pet peeves. Believe it or not, there are very few games that get TV.

 

Just because there's no TV happening, though, doesn't mean there's not going to be a media spend.

 

Obviously, we'll do a fair amount of online marketing. We've got some interesting promotions coming up. Some art contests coming up that actually involve and engage the community. One in particular I'm really excited about. You're going to see a special site launch in a few weeks. And on that site there's going to be all sorts of things for fans to use to make stuff -- I'm going to be vague. And that still hopefully will filter everywhere. It will have value to a lot of different audiences. Not just the Wii audience, but anybody who is a fan of Okami and its look and art, because it is beautiful.

 

What will happen if the Wii iteration actually sells much, much better than anticipated?

 

Sven: I'm going to be careful with what I say here. There are no current plans for a sequel on the books, but -- and this is sort of a 'duh,' -- if it wildly exceeds our expectations, we have to think about what's next. It's a pretty obvious statement to make that if something is successful, we're going to want to do more of that thing that was successful.

 

What does that mean for Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles franchise, which, Capcom recently announced has shipped more than a million copies globally. Might there be a sequel in the cards?

 

Sven: At some point, maybe. Time will have to tell. I have to be careful with this one, too. I think it's fair to say that the brands which are successful on a given platform, you will continue to see more of that.

 

Are brand new works designed to maximize the strengths of the console on the horizon?

 

Sven: We're one of the more successful third-parties on Wii as far as sales go. Some of that is the strength of the Resident Evil brand and some of that is the Wii audience eager for that type of content. We're looking at a number of existing brands coming over. Obviously, Monster Hunter has been announced for Japan, and I think you're going to see that be a much larger factor in western markets as well. I also think you're going to see a lot more support from us than you have in the past in a marketing capacity on Monster Hunter.

 

Our brands are all well and again, but what I think is more exciting, at least to me, is some of the new stuff that you're going to be seeing from us that is entirely new. You'll be hearing more from us on that a little later in the year. For me, the Wii is about new experiences -- not about pushing polygons and textures. I think that some of the things that you're going to see from us announced later in the year will illustrate that strategy a bit more.

Source: http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/861/861215p1.html

[Fandango]

Interesting article Pedro, something to read at work

Really glad they've remade this for the Wii, never got a chance to pick it up for the PS2. I just hope it sell as well as it deserves, I think Capcom have earned that right anyway from their solid support of the Wii!

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

So when is this out? Really could do with it about now.

[Owen]

So when is this out? Really could do with it about now.

 

June for Europe, but it's to be 100% confirmed yet!

 

April 15th for USA (I believe).

[DCK]

Capcom seems to have given a date of 'some time in June' while some sites say it's out August 15th. Wikipedia and other sites suggest it's out April 15th, but that's the same as the US date, so it's probably not coming out then. If you're importing, it's only $30, which is like £10 nowadays.

[K-project]

Whenever they decide to release it - I'm there. I think it looks fantastic, and is perfect for the Wii. I'm sure they'll do the motion sensing justice. I don't think they can go wrong tbh.

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

According to IGN, the filter will feature in the Wii version after all. Check the site.

[pedrocasilva]

Interview with RAD's Didier Malenfant:

 

Hi Didier, and thanks for agreeing to talk Okami with us! First of all, we think there's a question that many Wii owners would like to know the answer to: what would you say to people who have already played the PS2 version to convince them to get this game?

 

I would say that they are part of an exclusive group of people because, as you know, Okami was one of those amazing games that unfortunately got a little bit lost on the PS2 and didn't do as well as everyone expected, despite off-the-charts reviews and multiple game of the year awards. This is a unique chance for people who haven't played the game to discover it and for people who have to experience it the way it was meant to be played, using the Wiimote controls.

 

There are also newcomers to consider, of course -- how would you sell Okami to them?

 

People who haven't played the game before are in for a treat because Okami is one of the greatest games of these past few years. It's got incredible depth, amazing visuals that replicate the looks of Japanese water paintings, and easily over forty hours of gameplay -- not counting replays, which then open up other things in the game. Okami is truly a milestone in videogame history.

 

 

Capcom approached Ready at Dawn about handling the Wii port -- what was so appealing to the team about developing a Wii edition of Okami?

 

It was a bit more complicated than that. What happened was that we met Christian Svensson from Capcom during a party at last year's Game Developer's Conference. He was a huge fan of Daxter, our previous game on the PSP, and we could not stop talking about how much we loved Okami and its art style.

 

A week later, we got a phone call from Christian asking if we wanted to do a Wii version of the game, and we pretty much said yes on the spot. Okami is a work of art, and we felt it was always meant to be played on the Wii because of the brush and mini-game controls. We just felt it was such an honor to take after Clover and finally let a big audience experience Okami for themselves.

 

Visually, there's little difference between the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions (though we really appreciate the game being in widescreen and supporting progressive scan!); what was behind the decision to preserve the visuals of the PS2 version so closely?

 

The visuals are the one thing most people remember when they see Okami, especially in motion. So there was no way we were going to mess with that and pretend we knew better than the original creators of the game.

 

 

Was it difficult maintaining the game's art style on a different hardware platform?

 

The rendering hardware is completely different, so we spent a lot of time trying to match all the filters that Clover had developed in order to achieve the look of the game. There were a couple of areas where we did not match it exactly, one with the 'paper look' of the game which is a little less pronounced on the Wii. But on the other hand, the game's visuals have much more color depth than on the PS2, because of the Wii's hardware. It was a balancing act all the way.

 

So many people have said that Okami is perfect for the Wii, and that it will improve upon the PS2 version. That's something of a backhanded compliment, but we'd like to know how it -- or if it -- affected the porting process.

 

We think the game is perfect for the Wii. It's so hard to go back to the analog stick version once you have played the game using the Wiimote. Everything flows so much better, and the minigames are a lot of fun using the Wii's controls. It's something you have to experience but it makes a huge difference.

 

Okami is revered by both critics and its loyal fan base; did the team feel any added pressure, knowing that they were working on a franchise that is so important to people?

 

What helped the most was the fact that we were all huge fans of the game ourselves to begin with. You don't take a game as beautiful as Okami and think that you can mess with it, try to add content that doesn't belong there or something. We have so much respect for the original game that we decided from the get-go that this was going to be a labor of love. The goal was to reproduce the experience as closely as possible. If it's not broken, don't fix it basically.

 

 

To date, Wii games that would typically be described as cult or "hardcore" haven't fared that well at retail (No More Heroes, Zack & Wiki). Do you expect Okami to buck that trend?

 

I think Capcom would beg to differ after their recent results with Resident Evil. This game is both hardcore and mature, two things people thought didn't associate well with the Wii demographics. I always like to think that great games, in the end, do well, so here's Okami's chance to shine like it deserves to.

 

Do you feel that long, expansive adventure games such as Okami have a bright future on the Wii, considering that a significant portion of the console's audience is relatively new to games? Are games of Okami's size in danger of becoming unfashionable?

 

I think that long games that keep you interested and have new challenges or content all the time are fine. Okami definitely fits in that category while so many other games try to add length by repeating the same things again and again. Again, to me it comes down to judging a game by its quality, not whether it's long or short. The truth is, if you really enjoy it, any game is going to be too short for your taste anyway.

Source: http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2008/04/08/wii-fanboy-interview-ready-at-dawns-didier-malenfant-on-okami/

[Aalborg]

IGN gave it 9.0.. I have it for my ps2, but I think ill buy this anyway because i never use my ps2 anymore and because its awesome.. ill kick you all in the nuts if you don't buy it.. even the girls

[...]

It's a sure buy for me. But when is it out, anyway? It's out tomorrow in the US, but I've seen no real date for us (hehe). The Nintendo of Europe site still says March 28...

[Hellfire]

It's a sure buy for me. But when is it out, anyway? It's out tomorrow in the US, but I've seen no real date for us (hehe). The Nintendo of Europe site still says March 28...

 

OMG IT'S ALREADY OUT! It's the Saturn release all over again!

[...]

Check it out:

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/games/wii/okami_7828.html

 

 

As far as I can tell, the 15 April date for USA is correct.

[Strange Cookie]

Good tidings indeed.

 

Not sure I'll be getting this for Wii (I have the PS2-original, and haven't completed it yet), but this is mandatory stuff for anyone who dares call himself/herself gamer!

 

They could have put a Nintendo-label on it, and I would have believed that without a seconds doubt. But, well, being on PS2... :wink:

[flameboy]

Defo gonna get this probably wont play it till the summer but it looks so awesome... nearly bought a PS2 for it once upon a time.

[Sparko]

I'll definitely buy this, never played the original version so it's an easy choice. Haven't played the Wii in months so between this and Mario Kart I should get back into playing games. Although I can't get Mario Kart till after May 8th, that's when my finals are finished and I can concentrate on free time again!

[DCK]

IGN has their review up. It's worth checking out how breathtaking it all looks in the video review too.

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

Definate purchase. Looks pretty deep and I like how they express it's long longevity.

[Domo Kun]

This is one of my very favourite games of all time. Must buy. I have the PS2 original so I won't bother with this remake.

 

Does anyone know where Clover are? Are they going to regroup under a new publisher?

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

This is one of my very favourite games of all time. Must buy. I have the PS2 original so I won't bother with this remake.

 

Does anyone know where Clover are? Are they going to regroup under a new publisher?

 

How long is this game roughly? Longer than TP?

[nekunando]

I think Okami looks awesome, and I'm sure to pick it up at some stage (if not on release..)

 

I have plenty to be getting on with at the minute, so the game may have to wait a while before I eventually get it.. but I definitely look forward to playing through this.. the graphics and brush look so cool

 

One thing I would say though is that obviously with the PS2 version the analogue stick would be quite slow for drawing all the lines and shapes, hence the need for the 'pausing' of the game to draw them. It's hard to say without having ever played it (because I never owned a PS2) but with the speed and precision of the Wii remote, it looks like it would have been so cool to draw everything on the screen without the 'pause' if it were possible..

[Ike]

I really can't decide if I want this or not. I have the PS2 version unopened for over a year now, so I'm not sure if I should just play that or buy the Wii version.

[Hellfire]

This is one of my very favourite games of all time. Must buy. I have the PS2 original so I won't bother with this remake.

 

Does anyone know where Clover are? Are they going to regroup under a new publisher?

They were called Seeds, but they changed it to Platinum Games

 

How long is this game roughly? Longer than TP?

 

mm I'd say 50 hours maybe... Don't remember very well, might be mistaken, but it's just a tad shorter than TP, at least considering I finished it at 69 hours or something.

[flameboy]

Wow long...always knew it was though...

[Calza]

This is one of the reasons why I want a Wii. I actually want to play this more than Zelda. Just give us a price cut Nintendo...