Devil’s Third was a surprise announcement for the Wii U at E3 this year. It’s been teased off and on for nearly four years now and with the closure of THQ, many figured Devil’s Third would be vaporware, so when the game showed up during Nintendo’s Digital E3 event as a Wii U exclusive, it shocked plenty of fans both new and old. In a recent interview with Polygon, developer Tomonobu Itagaki discusses why this decision was made.
There are also cultural differences between the way that I’ve worked and the way Nintendo works, which is when it comes down to the basic grammar of games, the method of game creation. And so we certainly fought some, but I think that I saw the value in a lot of the ways that they do things and learned a great amount.
So how much of the game has remained the same over this long development cycle? Itagaki says that the game is nearly the same as it was planned for Sony and Microsoft’s consoles in 2011. He says that while 90% of the game remains unchanged, the remaining 10% was influenced highly by Nintendo.
That other 10 percent I think really has been flavored by this cooperation with Nintendo. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, Japan is a small country in terms of landmass, but it still has an amazing concentration of lots of different cultures within it, and I think that Nintendo culture is one of those, and I had this opportunity to learn about Nintendo culture through the years working with them.