Devil May Cry and Bayonetta series creator Hideki Kamiya recently held a panel discussion with fellow Capcom veteran Hideaki Itsuno at Game Creators Conference ‘25 (as reported by Game Makers). The developers talked about their attitudes towards creating sequels, sharing some background details about the development of the DMC series and Bayonetta.
During his 30-year run at Capcom, Hideaki Itsuno (who is now president of AAA developer LightSpeed Japan Studio) directed the Dragon’s Dogma series, as well as Devil May Cry’s mainline entries 2 to 5. Itsuno was assigned to Devil May Cry 2 towards the end of its development, and in discussion with Kamiya, he mentions the project leaving him feeling unfulfilled. This led to him voluntarily proposing to Capcom that he take on Devil May Cry 3 from scratch, starting from assembling an in-house team. Looking back, he refers to it as a sequel that honored the spirit of the original Devil May Cry and says he was really fortunate to have been able to communicate with Kamiya during the process.
In turn, Kamiya expresses gratitude to Itsuno for turning around Devil may Cry 2’s troubled development and consulting with him about Devil May Cry 3 despite him no longer being directly involved in development. Kamiya calls Itsuno a “very valuable person” for having continued the DMC series.
Interestingly, Itsuno’s work on Devil May Cry went on to indirectly influence Kamiya. While Kamiya was directing Bayonetta, his first game as a director at PlatinumGames, Itsuno was busy making Devil May Cry 4 at Capcom. According to Kamiya, the quality of Devil May Cry 4 at the time heavily influenced his work on Bayonetta. He recalls going to play the demo together with the Bayonetta dev team, which sparked a competitiveness in them that ultimately drove them to raise the quality of Bayonetta.
As for his own take on sequels, Kamiya outright denies rumors about him “not wanting to direct sequels.” He explains that, although there have been cases where circumstances prevented him from doing so, he’d often discuss possible sequels and what he’d like to do in them with his development teams.
On the other hand, Kamiya also stressed that making sequels to well-known IPs comes with unique obstacles, such as the pressure to exceed fans’ expectations and internal resistance from within a company. According to Kamiya, after you’ve released a work to the public, more than half of it belongs to the players – which is why you can’t afford to ignore them when creating a sequel.
On that note, Kamiya is currently working on a much-anticipated sequel to Okami – the first project by his new independent game studio Clovers. Although, they want you to know that they’re “not just a company for making sequels.”
