Devil May Cry 4 interview - the men behind the mayhem

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We travel to Japan to speak to two of the masterminds behind the latest in next-generation action-adventure

GR: Obviously you've moved to the new platform, PS3. Please discuss what sort of challenges, and what sort of new opportunities, that brings to you as a developer.

HI: So not just the PS3, any new hardware, but all of the previous consoles that came out when they were new, they were new and challenging, but at the same time, they were fun. When you get a new screen that wasn't possible on previous hardware, you think "woah!" It's also challenging to think of ways to utilize the new technology.

GR: So what kind of ideas, based on the fact that you moved to PS3, made it into the game?

HI: There's not a whole lot, in terms of inspiration, that we got from the hardware. We dream big. We have a lot of things we want to do, and then we get the hardware and there are still things that we find "oh, we can't do this" or "we can't do this." So our dreams, our vision of the perfect game, and the hardware are not always compatible. Our expectations have to come down. So, though the PS3 is a new and good machine, it's still not what my expectations are.

More than any fault with the hardware, it's the time element. There are things we need to get done in a certain amount of time, and so, based on that, we maybe have to cut this down a little bit, or massage this, so that it fits inside the time frame. If we had more time, we could make more into the hardware. But it's not the hardware's fault that anything is missing.

GR: As the next generation of consoles has begun, we find that gameplay changes. How does Devil May Cry move into the new generation?

HI: I don't think gameplay will change that much.

GR: Specifically with DMC, or just generally with any game in the new generation?

HI: Inside the world of Devil May Cry, we're not changing gameplay very much. We're making it more beautiful, more action-packed and giving you a few more features, but the gameplay itself is the pretty much the same.