The name Okami will no doubt be familiar to many gamers. This is because the 2006 Capcom game is considered to be one of the best ever made thanks to its original art style and gameplay. Actually, it’s one of the few video games to make the Guinness Book of Records due to it winning a Game of the Year award, but also being the least selling game to do so.
This is something that Okami’s game director Hideki Kamiya discussed in a recent talk with art designer Ikumi Nakamura, who also worked on the game.
Kamiya paid a visit to her studio Unseen, which is currently working on Kemuri, an upcoming game which has some resemblance to the 2006 classic. Aside from Okami and its development, the pair also got to talk about other games like Bayonetta and Resident Evil, and even discuss some personal anecdotes too.
But the fact that Okami ended up being a failure despite its quality was not something they could avoid touching upon, highlighting the game’s poor sales as mentioned earlier.
“Okami, did it make 150,000 units?”, says Hideki Kamiya at some point in the talk. “The initial shipment was 90,000 [units]. It was a huge failure. If it had been successful, Clover would have probably continued”.
And indeed Capcom-owned studio Clover was dissolved back in 2007 after making a grand total of three games, with Okami being the highlight of these, of course.
After leaving Clover, Kamiya had been working at Platinum Games, but left the studio early last year, telling IGN in an interview that this had to do with his lack of trust in the company.
The man wasn’t also happy overall with the team that made Okami back in the day, calling the team behind the game “weak” as a whole. This had to do with the different levels of enthusiasm and passion amongst the team members according to Kamiya, he simply could not assemble the “dream team” he wanted to make his game.
Despite its quality, Okami flopped back in the day.
Nonetheless, him and Nakamura agree that the game “turned out something we can be proud of”, even if they still “could have done more” according to video game artist Nakamura.
Also, speaking about the game’s visuals, Kamiya said he found the realism of Resident Evil’s Gamecube remake “amazing”, and thought they might do something similar with Okami. “I thought it could be nice if we used that for something more light-hearted instead of horror”, Kamiya said.
They had earlier wanted to “use a photo-realistic style”, but the impossibility of creating “this vast natural environment on PlayStation 2” as Kamiya describes it, made the team settle for the traditional Japanese art style seen in the final game. Kamiya says “the Japanese touch struck a chord”, prompting Okami’s team to “completely change the game”.
And indeed the game’s art style has received no end of praise, so it’s hard to imagine Okami becoming the classic game it currently is had the studio gone for a different graphical style. But still, more realistic (or photorealistic as Kamiya wanted) graphics might have lifted the game’s sales, which despite its quality is one of the most notorious video game flops of all time.
Thankfully, though, the game got an HD remaster back in 2017, and is now available on a variety of platforms, including the Nintendo Switch and PC, for gamers to enjoy.
See below for the full Kamiya and Ikumi Nakamura talk on video (via Eurogamer).