Dead or Alive 5 to "push the envelope"
Hayashi on innovation, competition, boobs.
The fighting genre has lacked innovation in recent years, according to Team Ninja boss Yosuke Hayashi, but its just-announced scrapper Dead or Alive 5 will be the game to push things forward.
Speaking to Eurogamer backstage at Tokyo Game Show today, Hayashi argued that though the likes of Street Fighter 4 and Tekken 6 looked spectacular, they hadn't offered fight fans anything new in terms of gameplay.
"Of course there have been some great fighting games that have come out and the genre has really exploded in the years since Dead or Alive 4," he said.
"But when we were looking at those games we felt that there was something missing. They definitely looked great and they played well, but they were still the same sort of fighting game from 10 years ago.
"When we were looking at what to do with Dead or Alive, we want to make sure it provides something else, something different and moves the genre forward. It's not going backwards, it's trying to push the envelope for fighting games."
Hayashi didn't offer much in the way of concrete details on how the game, which is due out some time next year, intends to reinvent the wheel, but suggested we can expect a greater focus on the series' trademark destructive environmental events.
"We wanted to bring that into the modern gameplay and update that into modern action elements. Now you're able to focus on different ares of where you want to launch your opponent and we have several different sorts of dynamic attractions in the stage so that players can enjoy that sort of aspect even more."
Team Ninja revealed a relatively classy piece of concept art during the announcement event earlier this week, which you can see below. Could this be a hint that it's dialing back the series' notorious boob fixation?
"That image encapsulates the kind of sensuality and the kind of beauty we're looking to incorporate into Dead or Alive 5," he explained.
"So, guys who just look at chick's boobs... c'mon, there's more to women and more to beauty than just boobs, so we want to take a little more adult approach to how to make women beautiful."
