cspacefan
New member
Interesting technical reason why Okamiden has a puppy
I figured Okamiden went cutesy because it's for the DS and the DS audience is very kid-friendly. Part of me was disappointed because I loved the idea of a portable Okami game but I don't want people sitting next to me on the bus wondering why a grown man is playing a puppy game.
However, I was reading this good interview with one of the developers and he says very technical reasons are behind why they created a puppy character and didn't go with the original adult wolf Amaterasu.
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/okamide...oducer-motohide-eshiro/a-20110215141857599087
"In the very very early development stages, when we first ran tests to see if the game would be even feasible to do on the DS, we used Amaterasu as the player character model. What we found out was when the camera zoomed out too much, she was really hard to see due to her ornate design. If we zoomed in too close, Amaterasu would cover too much of the background. We decided to keep the level of zoom but just tone the character model down. As we worked at it, we hit upon the idea of making the character look more childlike."
Very interesting to see how designers find ways around the limitations of the tech. It kind of reminds me of this other posting I made about why Nintendo went with Mario and not Donkey Kong Jr as their main mascot back in the day.
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showpost.php?p=1403787&postcount=14
"Well, the first reason is that Donkey Kong is just too darn big. And because he's so big, we actually created Donkey Kong Junior to try to come up with the same sort of character, but in a smaller, more manageable size. And as we were looking at an 8-bit size, Mario became a much easier character to use"
I figured Okamiden went cutesy because it's for the DS and the DS audience is very kid-friendly. Part of me was disappointed because I loved the idea of a portable Okami game but I don't want people sitting next to me on the bus wondering why a grown man is playing a puppy game.
However, I was reading this good interview with one of the developers and he says very technical reasons are behind why they created a puppy character and didn't go with the original adult wolf Amaterasu.
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/okamide...oducer-motohide-eshiro/a-20110215141857599087
"In the very very early development stages, when we first ran tests to see if the game would be even feasible to do on the DS, we used Amaterasu as the player character model. What we found out was when the camera zoomed out too much, she was really hard to see due to her ornate design. If we zoomed in too close, Amaterasu would cover too much of the background. We decided to keep the level of zoom but just tone the character model down. As we worked at it, we hit upon the idea of making the character look more childlike."
Very interesting to see how designers find ways around the limitations of the tech. It kind of reminds me of this other posting I made about why Nintendo went with Mario and not Donkey Kong Jr as their main mascot back in the day.
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showpost.php?p=1403787&postcount=14
"Well, the first reason is that Donkey Kong is just too darn big. And because he's so big, we actually created Donkey Kong Junior to try to come up with the same sort of character, but in a smaller, more manageable size. And as we were looking at an 8-bit size, Mario became a much easier character to use"