Capcom insists PS4 action RPG Deep Down is still alive
"The ideas we had before might not have been good enough."
Capcom has insisted Deep Down, its missing in action free-to-play action role-playing game, is still alive despite months of silence.
We haven't seen anything of the game since its 2014 Tokyo Game Show trailer. And some have wondered whether Capcom had decided to cancel its development in order to focus on the recently-revealed Dragon's Dogma Online, which appears to be much closer to release.
But in a new interview with Japanese website 4Gamer (via Siliconera), Capcom's Yoshinori Ono said Deep Down was still in development, but had undergone a change.
"It looks like Deep Down will take just a little longer," Ono said.
"It also looks like some people are starting to ask 'did the development come to a halt?' but it's nothing like that.
"We're thinking about showing something that looks completely different from what previously shown, although it might be a while from now."
It's unclear how, exactly, Deep Down has changed since it was unveiled in 2013 as part of a stunning tech demo for Capcom's new Panta Rhei engine. But, what is clear, going by Ono's comments, is that what had been made wasn't up to scratch.
"The ideas we have for the game are much larger now compared to when we first announced it," he revealed. "Rather, the ideas we had before might not have been good enough.
"When it comes to the service of online games, it's a long-term challenge, so we must make sure to do the necessary parts correctly at the launch of the service, otherwise it'd be a shame to have an amusing game and not have any players stick around.
"When looking back at the previous ideas we had for Deep Down, we felt concerns about it not being able to capture an audience as we would've liked, so it was decided to give it more time so that we can further enhance it."
Deep Down was once scheduled for release on PlayStation 4 at some point in 2015, with a beta set for Japan. But the beta was delayed and Capcom's energy appears to have shifted to Dragon's Dogma Online. Neither games have confirmed western launches.
As of last year, Deep Down was set in both 1494, when you delve deep down into dungeons to fight horrible great monsters as a knight in shining armour, and futuristic New York circa 2094.
In the video, below, we get to see both portions of the game. The medieval dungeon crawling is in third-person, while the New York section appears to be in first-person.
Cooperative gameplay for two and four players is also showcased, with small groups of heavily-armed fighters teaming up to slash away at the game's enemies.
