Temo Koei’s Dead or Alive franchise has seen something of a resurgence in recent years. With a successful competitive push recently concluded during the Road to the Fall Classic and yet another update to Dead or Alive 5 in the works, things are looking up for the Team NINJA fighting game series.
Venture Beat’s Stephen Kleckner (who Shoryuken forumites may know as Sosage) recently caught up with producer Yosuke Hayashi, creative director Tom Lee, and director Yohei Shimbori for an interview to talk about the Dead or Alive 5’s development and their balancing process. On the latter, Shimbori specifically mentions the balancing act of taking in player feedback while still trying to stick to his guns and make sure that each character maintains their unique styles.
That challenge was compounded when they adapted Virtua Fighter guest characters, which ultimately forced a change in the game’s combo system due to direction from Sega AM2 representatives.
“We had a rule from Dead or Alive 4 which forced a juggle to end if the player input the same command twice in a row, but we wound up changing that rule. Virtua Fighter characters use P, P, P… as a base for combos,” Shimbori explained. “We weren’t talking about just two of the same command; we’re talking 4 in a row. So thinking about giving players more freedom in their combos, we decided to revert our rule to what had been in use through Dead or Alive 3: the same command doesn’t necessarily end the juggle. It’s simpler to juggle by using the same command rather than figuring out how to string together different moves, so novice players will find it easier to juggle their opponents.”
They also had the opportunity to touch on one of the game’s more controversial aspects–the oversexualizing of its female characters. Lee’s reply to this is interesting to say the least, pointing out that they are creating “strong, sexy, confident, and attractive” characters. That said, he also acknowledged that the issue was a touchy one even within the development team and that they are aware of the criticisms against their designs.
To read more on this and other topics regarding Dead or Alive 5, be sure to visit VentureBEat for the two–part interview.