Capcom says Ōkami sold quite well, actually, and it's wanted to do a sequel for ages but was waiting for 'the stars to align'
Capcom's announcement of a sequel to Ōkami came as a big surprise last year, not least because the original is notorious for being a commercial flop. But in a recent interview, Capcom producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi pointed out that Ōkami's reputation for underselling is no longer deserved, and because of that the publisher has wanted to do an Ōkami sequel for a while.
Speaking to IGN, Hirabayashi observed that while Ōkami did undersell on its initial launch in 2005, its various ports have provided a consistent trickle of sales across the last twenty years, racking up a total of 4.6 million units across its different versions. "I know specifically that people are still enjoying this game, just from the numbers. Normally when we look at games, the sales sort of slow down and they decrease steadily," Hirabayashi told IGN's Rebekah Valentine." But for Ōkami, we see that it's been a steady stream of people always enjoying the game. So in that way Ōkami is a very, very unique IP."
Consequently, Capcom has been eyeing an Okami sequel for years. But Hirabayashi says the publisher "needed to have certain key people in place" before pursuing the project formally. When Hirabayashi says "key people", he means Ōkami's original director Hideki Kamiya, who until recently was busy at PlatinumGames, as well as several other Ōkami veterans employed at Machine Head Works. Given the dispersion of Ōkami's talent, Hirabayashi says "it took a bit of time for all the stars to align."
Kamiya, for his part, was likewise convinced to pursue an Ōkami sequel due to its enduring popularity, albeit from a less commercial perspective. "Just hearing all the cheers from the fans pushed me," Kamiya told IGN. "Without everyone's voices out there, without everyone cheering us on, we wouldn't have moved forward with this. So thank you very much."
Ōkami took a long time to wend its way onto PC. But it finally arrived in glorious HD form in 2017. Former Edge deputy editor Chris Schilling sang its praises for PC Gamer at the time. "There’s something in the way Okami directly involves you in the telling of its story—essentially casting you as an artist retelling a fable in the strokes of your brushwork—that feels strangely magical," he wrote in his review. "There’s a sense of wonder in even the simplest interactions, whether it’s gentle dabs of ink producing stars to complete constellations, a crescent to accelerate nightfall, or a snaking line traced to a floating bloom to spirit Amaterasu upward."
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