impossible to separate Tango game console from Mikami Shinji. The Tokyo-based studio employs a ton of developers, but resident Evil After more than a decade away, co-creator is still recognized as the face of Tango Gameworks Capcom Find the studio.
You’d think it would be natural for the director of games like The Hand, Conquest, and Dino Crisis to be in charge again at a new studio, especially since he has about 20 years of directing experience. but it is not the truth. “My vision for starting Tango was to create a studio that would provide opportunities for young, talented creators,” Mikami told iGamesNews.
Mikami explained that Tango’s main goal was — in particular — to make games that harness the “brilliant talent of young creators.” Mikami, however, will eventually direct Tango’s debut feature, The Evil Within came out in 2014, a survival horror game that combined the inventory management of the classic Resident Evil game with grotesque monsters and adrenaline-pumping boss fights. combine.
It was a disappointment for Mikami to be forced to command and abandon the goal of showcasing new talent in the first game – but it was necessary. A report by Polygon in 2014 revealed that Tango’s first project was an open-world sci-fi game inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune world, which was scrapped when the studio ran into financial problems. Over the years, Mikami has been fairly casual with Tango’s baptism of fire, only admitting that it was never planned to be the studio’s debut in 2014.
In the early days, these cards were aimed at budding developers—if you can’t find a crew, it doesn’t matter if the guy who created Resident Evil is your studio head. While his goal was to bring in a new generation of developer talent, Mikami had a hard time recruiting developers for Tango in the early days. The studio director pointed to the rise of “social gaming” as the main reason Tango was founded in the first place, as many console developers are turning to this new wave of money-making games (especially in Japan). But this makes it difficult to recruit developers for more “traditional” projects. 2013 saw the release of new Angry Birds, Call of Duty, Temple Run, Dota and Clash of Clans games on mobile, so it’s easy to see why Mikami and his unproven new studio found it hard to attract Established console developers stay away from emerging mobile juggernauts.
What ultimately led to The Evil Within was the acquisition of Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax. “They really value our creativity at Tango,” said Zenimax Group senior producer Masato Kimura, who has been with Tango for more than a decade since it was acquired in 2010. Kimura explained that Tango didn’t look to their parent company for guidance, quite the opposite – Zenimax would often ask Tango’s director, Mikami, what the studio wanted to do. “Never about anything [Zenimax] I want to do it,” Kimura added.
Development studios obviously change staff over time, and Tango Gameworks is no exception. Mikami explained that in wrapping up development on The Evil Within, “those who matched Tango well stayed, and those who didn’t.” Ultimately what was left was a tight, well-oiled development A “bond of trust” between the team, which was able to launch The Evil Within 2 in 2017 just three years later, and turn the same bloodthirsty combat into a great open world. Mikami’s trust in his employees (and his insistence on highlighting the ideas and talents of young developers) is starting to pay off.
It’s clear that Tango Gameworks is gaining a foothold. In the years following The Evil Within 2, the studio expanded. Hiring more staff to help the development studio grow — at least in Mikami’s eyes — though the co-founder says he still feels Tango is “sometimes understaffed.” That hasn’t stopped the Tokyo studio from developing multiple games at the same time in recent years: the influx of new hires has allowed Tango Gameworks to explore multiple projects at the same time, and has given Mikami a chance to showcase the new talent he’s long been so passionate about .
Enter Ghost Line: Tokyo. Set in an abandoned city of Shibuya, Ghostwire is more action-adventure-focused than any Evil Within, and focuses primarily on players battling the Yokai, the demons surrounding the city, as they struggle to unravel the mystery of why everyone inexplicably disappears, leaving only Take off their clothes where they once stood.
Although it was Mikami who took the stage at Bethesda’s E3 2019 demo, Ghostwire itself was debuted in a presentation by charismatic creative director Ikumi Nakamura, which many saw as the transition from a determined Mikami to a young creative” Torch Relay”. It may have taken a full seven years, but here – in front of a global audience – Mikami is achieving what he has been aiming for since founding Tango Gameworks. Nakamura’s warm stage presence immediately drew attention to Ghostwire: Tokyo, and the game looked charming enough.
Mikami’s plan to put new faces front and center works well—perhaps too well. Just a few months later, Nakamura resigned from Tango to go it alone as a freelance artist and creative director. As Mikami explains, while Nakamura may have left, her creativity still lives on in Ghostwire two years later: the choice of a first-person perspective for added immersion is her first, with a tone inspired primarily by the iconic anime Ghost. The same goes for swatches. shell.
Filling the void left by Nakamura’s departure is Ghostwire’s current creative director, Kenji Kimura, another young developer under Mikami’s tutelage, who is now busy finishing the game and releasing it for PS5 on March 25.
“This is my first time as a director and my first time working with Mikami,” Kimura said. Kimura has worked in the game industry for quite some time, entering a career right out of college, but he’s still growing as a creative, and he readily admits “there’s a lot to learn” from Mikami, and at times he’s taking over He “felt a little lost” after such a large and important project.
Bringing in a new generation of creatives is having a notable impact on the game; Ghostwire has other differences from The Evil Within aside from the immediately noticeable camera changes. Both Evil Within games feature traditional firearms, but Ghostwire no longer uses firearms because “Japan is not a country where firearms are easy to obtain,” says producer Masato Kimura. Surprisingly, instead of guns are bows and arrows. That’s partly because “Japanese rituals use arrows to cleanse,” adds Kenji Kimura.
As Mikami said, more emphasis is placed on “hand casting” in battle. This system, which radiates ethereal power from the hands of the player character, is based on jiu-jitsu, which Kenji Kimura believes has gained popularity with the hit anime/manga JuJutsu Kaisen. These attacks, through the protagonist’s quick change of the spiritual power of his hands and the use of various patterns, are mainly used to disperse the “spiritual enemies” of the ghost line that invaded Shibuya City after the population suddenly disappeared.
“In English terminology, we call them ‘visitors’ because they are visiting us in this world,” Kimura said of the ghostly foe. For example, instead of the lanky archetypal demons you might take for granted in The Evil Within, these enemies can appear in the appearance of ordinary people. “You might be walking on the sidewalk in Shibuya to see who you think is,” Kimura said, “but when you approach them, you might realize they don’t even have a head.”
These enemies are actually based on Yokai. No, not the demonic entities with glowing horns you might see in Nioh, but more like “urban legends,” according to Kimura. “In Japan, yokai are often featured in bedtime stories read to young children,” says the creative director, “to convey a message of how to be a better person or citizen. The yokai more embodies Ghostwire’s “ghost” vibe,” Kimura said. Said he strays from the pure survival horror of The Evil Within games, but remains firmly rooted in the unsettling atmosphere.
During the development of Ghostwire, Zenimax, Tango’s parent company, was acquired by Microsoft. All Bethesda-owned developers became Xbox property, including Tango Gameworks, at a time when the gaming industry was changing. In a bit of a surprise though, Ghostwire remains a PlayStation 5 exclusive, and Xbox has committed to honoring all the agreements it made before the acquisition. Still, Mikami thinks they’re “likely to have something for Xbox” about Ghostwire’s future.
Despite this shift in ownership, little has changed for developers. “Working with Xbox went really well,” Kimura said, “although that part was mostly handled by Mikami,” the director added. “Having Mikami on top of Tango to make sometimes difficult decisions just makes things very smooth,” Kimura explained, making sure to add that Tango usually gets “a lot of help and support” from Xbox and Microsoft.
With Ghostwire development wrapping up, Tango is already gearing up for the near future. Mikami himself announced late last year that a new project under “The Evil Within 2” director John Johanas was already in the works, and neither he nor Kimura would say whether it strayed from “The Evil Within 2” Survival horror genre tango known as Possessed.
One thing’s for sure, though: Mikami explained that survival horror “hasn’t reached its peak of popularity,” with more excitement geared toward the pure horror experience. “The tide is low and there are no big waves behind,” he explained, choosing the surfing metaphor for some reason. “Survival horror is on the low end of the wave right now, so surfers aren’t going there. Better to wait for a bigger wave until there’s a big enough survival horror game that’s more popular.
What we do know about the next game is that, similar to Ghostwire: Tokyo, it won’t be directed by Mikami himself. But that doesn’t mean he’s done. At 56, Mikami has been developing video games for over 30 years, and he reiterates to us that directing the last game before he finally retires is still his plan. “We didn’t want him to say it was his last game,” added Kimura reluctantly from across the room. Mikami may have started Tango Gameworks with the idea of giving young creatives a chance, but he’s still planning to go to the director’s chair again.
