We were more than a little surprised when Hideki Kamiya and Capcom popped up at The Game Awards to announce an Okami sequel. Surprised, but excited. The title is still in early development and we know very little about it, but in a recent interview with IGN, some of its creatives began to explain what we can expect from the sequel and how it’ll fit with the series’ previous entries.
Throughout the interview with Kamiya, Capcom producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, and Machine Head Works producer Kiyohiko Sakata, the trio refer to the upcoming sequel as “a continuation of the story that we saw in the original game”. But, as any Okami fan will be able to tell you, we’ve already seen a follow-up (of sorts) in the 2011 DS follow-up, Okamiden.
If this new sequel is continuing the story of the original game, where does the portable entry factor into the equation? The short answer, it seems, is that it doesn’t.
After clarifying that it was Amaterasu we see in the sequel’s brief teaser trailer, IGN’s Rebekah Valentine asked whether the team is going to “acknowledge” Okamiden in the upcoming title. Hirabayashi-san responded, noting that the series’ DS entry has both its fans and its detractors — for whom the follow-up perhaps didn’t meet expectations — so the team is looking to the next title as a continuation of the proper “original base Ōkami,” rather than one to its more divisive follow-up:
We know that there are fans out there that like the game, of course. And we also know the feedback on the game out there, of how the story was taken and how perhaps parts of the story weren’t aligning with what people were expecting. With that, we also have the sequel now that, as we explained before, is a continuation from the story of the original base Ōkami. That’s how we’re going to phrase it.
Despite following a different protagonist for most of the game, Okamiden was set directly after the first title and kept many of its predecessor’s hallmarks (the visuals, the ‘celestial brush’, the… wolf). Calling it a proper “sequel” never really rang true, but it’s interesting to see that Capcom is seemingly sidestepping the entire storyline for the upcoming entry. Give the people what they want and all, eh?
Although we imagine that we’re going to have to wait a good while until we get to see the upcoming Okami sequel, we’re already crossing our fingers that Switch 2 is a part of the launch plans. Mmm, mouse-controlled paint brush…
