NEWS - Thursday, August 16, 2001
Tecmo Talks DOA3
Coremagazine has gotten the scoop from Tecmo director Tomonobu Itagaki regarding upcoming info on Dead or Alive 3. Itagaki spoke with Japanese publication Dorimaga regarding his upcoming fighter shortly before flying to Seattle to meet with Microsoft executives and debut the first playable version of Dead or Alive 3. To begin, Itagaki-san was asked about the current state of development. He responded, ’We’ve been very busy since the formal unveiling. DOA3 will include nearly three times as many new elements as previous installments, so everyone has been working hard. Our main development themes are fighting within large scale environments, and interaction with nature. Overall, I’d say we’re about 30-40% complete.’Next, he was asked about the graphical changes players can expect in DOA3. He revealed, ’One of the things we’ve been working on is realistic character movement. Eye movement for example, which we’ve tried to incorporate previously, has looked somewhat deceptive and unrealistic. This time we’re trying to incorporate realtime eye movement. People might say it’s futile to focus on something so small, but it truly adds to the overall production. The attention to detail and animation has been drastically improved overall. Movement for clothing, character items such as belts and jewelry, and even hair is being calculated. The next step is realistic character interaction during battle such as face swelling after being punched or knocked on the floor. Based solely on the video we created for E3, a martial arts expert told us DOA3 is one of the most realistic looking fighting games ever.’
Speaking of characters, so far three new characters have been confirmed for Dead or Alive 3; Brad Wong, Christie, and Hitomi. How will they factor into the storyline? Itagaki-san continued, ’We were criticized for the plot in DOA2, and how loosely the characters were related. [smiles..] While I can’t go into specifics yet, we’ve taken our time in writing a concise story for DOA3 including backgrounds for the new characters.’
Source: http://www.coremagazine.com/
