The jewel in our Okami week is upon us -- our 1-on-1 interview with the game's director, Hideki Kamiya. While hardly reclusive, he's maintained a low profile over the years, preferring to let his games do the talking while Clover Studio CEO and president Atsushi Inaba handles promotional duties. In short, it's nearly impossible to arrange an interview with Hideki Kamiya.
But for 1UP, the revered game director came out into the sun, meeting with us one late July afternoon to talk about the shrinking Japanese videogame market, what inspires him as a creator, the shock of being replaced as director for Devil May Cry 2, and the three games that have had the most impact on him. The conversation occasionally strays into how he feels about focus groups (he hates them), whether wearing red tights and a helmet is cool (it is), and how he sometimes listens to Enya (fact).
Kamiya is a friendly man, whose face routinely breaks into a wide smile that threatens to split his head in two. During our two-hour session, he learned a few things about the Western market while we learned a lot more about him. This is an incredibly revealing meeting with a developer with a golden track record, a developer who entered the interview as an enigma but left revealed as a sensitive human being who cares deeply about the quality of his games. As he told us, his games are like children to him, and he wants to see them grow. So join us as we hold court with the rarely-seen Hideki Kamiya, father of Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry , Viewtiful Joe, and Clover's latest masterpiece, Okami.