Itagaki returns!..

To make a blockchain inspired MMO called "Warrior". He made a twitter account yesterday to get started but quite fast a one-pager on the game 'warrior' was released to the public which noted things like NFT, Blockchain and markets etc. Apparently its an MMO where you "play to earn".

I haven't been this hurt in years

Feels like he's being used for his name, or worse, that his name doesn't hold much value anymore and this is the best job he can get...

Thoughts?

>thoughts?
You don't want to know.

>play to earn
What the hell does that even mean?

>Feels like he's being used for his name, or worse, that his name doesn't hold much value anymore and this is the best job he can get...
There's no way he doesn't know what he's doing. What if he's simply turned to the dark side?

I mean, a man needs to put food on the table. When he sued Tecmo he probably got a nice payday, which all went into Valhalla I'd assume. Wouldn't be surprised he just really needs a job right now. I know he did some trainings etc. in Italy for a while.

>sued Tecmo
What was that about?

I guess this is just the way gaming is going. It's over.
Oh well, I've got enough to keep me going until I'm old.

Well, this is disappointing. Is it definitely a real account? It looks...weird. But, I guess Itagaki does need a job.

> I've got enough to keep me going until I'm old
I've been thinking the same for a while now. It's sad, but I'm also kind of okay with it. If gaming generally is going to keep moving in this direction then I'd rather play/replay "old" stuff than force myself to pay for stuff I really don't care for.

>it's sad
Wouldn't call it that. Not for me anyway.

On top of my backlog, each game has years of mechanical info to sift through.
And there's still a ton of stuff old and somewhat recent to go through. Just picked up both Hyrule Warriors and my brain is overloaded by stuff to test.

I'll need another 100 years for what I currently have so I'm good.

As for Itagaki, we can only hope that whatever project he's working on no matter what horrible the practices, he plans to make a new NG or something as well.

Gregorinho has a point. Are we sure this is a legit account? Recently, there were some news floating about which claimed Keiji Inafune (Mega Man artist) was doing an NFT project, but apparently that was proven to be false (apparently somebody who wanted to use someone else's name to earn easy money).

>fake account
Hope so.

But we also have Platinum and Babylon's Fall.

Well it's very easy, he said so on his Facebook which he's been using for 10+ years to talk to fans with:
https://www.facebook.com/tomonobu.itagaki

So it's him.

Oh. That's a shame. And here I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

EDIT: Nevermind what I said about Inafune. An insider's source was wrong.

Lame, but not surprising. I think it’s time we accept that a lot of the legends are moving on. I realized this hard recently with Ghostwire being as mediocre as it was, and a lot of the other best designers in the world no longer doing much of anything.

The industry has completely changed its priorities and now there’s nothing to care about. I have enough games to last me the rest of my life, it is what it is.

It's not all bad. Halo: Infinite was absolutely fantastic and had a lot of singleplayer potential and Kingdom Hearts 3 is

Well folks... It was nice having hope while it lasted.

Who hurt this man?

There's also a video of the game that shows off some gameplay!

https://twitter.com/warriorgame_io/status/1542167706094280705

It does not look good.

No way this isn't trolling.

One reason why I'm not surprised about this, is that at his heart Itagaki is still an engineer. It is what pulled him to the side of game-development and why NG was on Xbox. I can fully imagine him being super interested in NFT's from a technical standpoint and wanting to dive into that (even though it is dead in the water).

I hope this will teach people (myself included) that a single director does not make a game, these games were a product of a giant team-effort.

I wish him the best though.

Are these NFT things actually popular and it's just people like us that don't want them?

It's disappointing to see, but understandable, gaming is a business after all and a lot of time has passed since his Team Ninja days and even Devil's Third.

The topic of a single director doesn't make a game can be very interesting. It's of course true, but I personally think what makes the more well regarded directors is their eye for detail, and a better understanding of what works and what doesn't from a mechanical standpoint.

When I tried NGS2 after playing NG2, within 5 minutes I noticed how the AI of all clawed ninjas was butchered in exchange for their reduced count. I just feel it doesn't fit NG2's combat design.

If I look at Kamiya - I still haven't played Viewtiful Joe 2, but from the info I gathered it seems like it's just not as well designed as the first one, despite sharing the same gameplay loop.

I still haven't played any Bayonetta beyond the second chapter, but while I know Bayo 1 (and W101) suffer from an abundance of mini games, the hardcore fans prefer it to Bayo 2 due to it having deeper and more well thought out combat design. From a casual PoV they seem to play the same, but it's the details that separate them.

Even in those first 2 chapters of Bayo 2 I noticed that enemies have a tendency to parry me when I tried to get close, which made me play in a safer and less risky way by just doing wicked weaves from a distance, on top of using Umbran Climax, which if I had to guess, are the things that make it less interesting for the high level players.

If I look at Resident Evil, REmake1 and RE4 by Mikami are the most well regarded entries, and for similar reasons - More attention to detail when it comes to enemy, level and encounter design.

I think I didn't word it good, since that's not fully what I mean. I more mean that, without a good leader, a good team is worthless. And without a good team, a good leader is worthless. One can't do without the other, while the general online consencous is that the director is the linchpin.

Mikami is solid gold, but he also made nearly all his masterpiece titles with the same team that he trusted and had worked with for nearly two decades near the end. Compare that to Ghostwire, which was made with mostly a new team, and you can sort of see what I mean.

Teamspirit goes a long way, you can also see this with Itagaki. Despite barely doing anything, Soleil still noted him as "supreme director" in Samurai Jack. And when his staff was insulted by upper management, Itagaki sued the fucking company - lots of mutual respect. Also why basically half of Konami left when Kojima started his own studio, guys love working for him (understandable if you see how he treats his staff). Itagaki and Koji also both tend to listen a lot to their staff for minor tips (Volf was the idea of a random ass programmer, coolant spray in MGS2 was also from a low guy).

> NGS2
Not fully on the level with that one, I'd have to really compare the credits, but most of the TN-team left after NGII, and NGS1 was made by the b-team as well. So not just a different director.

Also I really can't fault TN for NGS2 looking back. It's really an example of "don't listen to non-designers", as they really listened to fan and critical-feedback. Outside of perhaps 3 players that actually understood NGII (nxspace, gigue and...that's about it), everyone was heavily critical and hated it. It won "least improved sequel", got bad reviews and low fan reveiws and generally forums weren't that happy with it either. It really wasn't discovered until, honestly, I want to say like 5 years ago when it started to get a second life.
I mean if you look at what NGS2 changed, it made the game more stable, less 'crazy', more costumes (in terms of visual variation), added online, a bit more story, more weapons etc. I mean, the game is fucking boring compared to NGII, but I can't fault them for thinking they were doing the right thing at the time.

> Bayo2
I will die on this hill: Bayo2 is by far the better game. Yes Bayo1 has better combat for the top 1% players, but it also only has like 3 chapters where you can actually really play those fights I feel and is hampered a lot by its limited weapon options. Bayo2 is basically Bayo1 in overdrive. I agree the combo-breaker mechanic can be a bit alien, but its rare for me to see a game fix sooooooooooooo many of the predacessor's issues. In Bayo2 I can replay the entire game and have a blast, in Bayo1 I can replay like a few stages while the rest constantly make me groan.

All that said: no way I'm buying this game haha

>Compare that to Ghostwire, which was made with mostly a new team, and you can sort of see what I mean.
Do you mean it's possible Ghostwire didn't turn out how he wanted due to this new team?

What is it about NFT Itagaki thinks is a good idea? Are they actually popular and we are just the few who hate them? Does he see future potential?

>Bayo 2 is better
Shut up HE will hear you!

I never knew that Mikami always had the same team for his games, but Ghostwire wasn't directed by him anyway.

NGS2 and NG2 - never knew that either as I never looked at the fan reception of their release eras, only started playing a little more than 2 years ago.

Bayonetta - I only played 2 chapters of each game so I can't comment (other than I both excited to play it and worried about all the minigames, same as W101) any further for now. Did Bayonetta 1 and 2 share the same dev team aside from the directors?

Mikami kinda had a lot of luck. Most of his Resident Evil team stayed up until RE4 (only some left during RE0, which was the b-team anyway iirc). A lot afterwards went to Clover (some were already there, like Kamiya etc.) where he joined up for God Hand. Later for Vanquish he worked with basically the same team.

Evil Within was him mostly working with a new team, TEW2 even moreso and Ghostwire even moreso (those two were co-directed iirc? or was it produced?).

> Bayo
From what I recall they had the same team, just that Kamiya took more of a backseat. As a result Bayo2 only has one real minigame and is a lot more focused on gameplay (outch). Bayo2's biggest mistake is Umbran Climax which nuked the meter-management balance from orbit, and making WT more the focus (making bosses pretty dull in their approach). As an overall package I far prefer B2 though.

I'm curious what players who started with B2 would think about B1.

Great info! I'll just say that I think I read somewhere that God Hand was partially outsourced because Clover were busy working on Okami. I don't think Mikami worked on EW2 and Ghostwire, EW1 was his last directed game.

What I said earlier about Bayonetta were my impressions after playing the first 2-3 chapters of each game, I immediately noticed how Bayo 2's enemies (the horseman that kept parrying me) and Umbran Climax encourage safer play right from the get go, which seems to be in line with what I've heard about 2's combat.

I don't like the sound of the mini games at all, but are they really that bad? The only Kamiya game I beat so far is Viewtiful Joe, and I think it had a fun shump section that put a nice twist on the core mechanics.

God Hand wasn't outsourced, but they had a lot of staff that was 'waiting' as Mikami noted in his interview (with Archipel I think). He and a lot of staff were waiting for a project to get greenlit, but that would take a while, so they made God Hand which basically gave him cart-blanche.

> B2
The combat has a lot of details people tend to avoid mentioning (i.e. that you can avoid parries by attack from behind, rewarding positioning). There's a ton of little issues though, like meter-mangement not being rebalanced with Umbran Climax. For example you have a ton of equipment pieces that give you special abilities, most of which cost meter. Now this worked really well in B1, but in B2 the meter-costs weren't edited. So what would you rather use?
1 meter: create after images of yourself for some neat combo tricks
1 meter: umbran climax which allows you to mash one button to clear the entire screen of enemies.

Climax always wins.

> minigames
They were enough for me to drop the game in B1. There came a point where I just wanted to play the game but the game wouldn't let me.

I'll have to play both Bayonetta 1 and 2 before commenting any further but I'm really looking forward to playing both with an open mind. I've heard mixed things about NG2 before trying it but I ended up loving it, so of course I'll reserve my judgment until beating both. Do DMC1 and W101 also have lots of minigames?

Yeah NGS2 vs NG2 is also very heated online, with many different opinions (and not a lot of them wrong), making it really hard.

> DMC1
Barely, if any. There's two and they last like 2 seconds total in the grand scheme of things.

> W101
This is personally where it broke me, that game seems to have one every 5 seconds and I just couldn't stomach it anymore. Only Kamiya title that I only finished twice.