Lupinkogate: Nitsuma deconfirms Sentinel

This is exactly what this post is about.

A Spanish language magazine had a recent interview with Ryota Nitsuma, MVC3's producer. I translated the whole thing with the power of Spanish, so you don't have to do it yourselves or use Google translate. Aren't I a saint?




Eurogamer: So far 36 characters have been revealed for the game, aside two that will arrive in DLC form. How many fighters will the game contain?


Nitsuma: I'm sorry, but we can't reveal the amount of fighters, but we can there are some let to reveal.





EG: What factors  made you choose some characters over others?





RN: In a game of this kind, multiple factors come into play when it comes to the final roster. Obviously first  you list characters both Marvel an Capcom want in the game. We also look at which are fan favorites. Once we put together this 3 lists we decide which are appropriate for the game. That is to say ' should this  character be in a fighting game?'. Finally it's about balancing the roster in all aspects.  We do not want to have to many characters with similar characteristics, nor too many strong or fast fighters.  Then gender comes into play, and we also try to balance that. It's a mix of everything, and it's very complex.


EG: Let's ask more concrete questions: Will we see a Rival Schools character in the title?



RN:(laugh) In MVC3 we split characters between 4 criteria: Standard, Power, Technical and fast. With such divisions, Rival Schools characters did not fit very well. Besides, we had several standard types and it was(to be?) imbalanced. Another problem is that RS is not that well known. Not completely unknown, but it's been a while since the title was launched, so when you choose a Rival Schools character you wonder ' is this the best choice, or are other characters priority? And at the end that's usually the case.





EG: Will  we see Sagat or Zangief in the future?



RN It's a hard question. We where close to having Zangief, but it was a choice between  Zangief and Haggar, and of course most people preffer Haggar. Regarding Sagat, he was a very standrd character, very similar to Ryu, with the same  fireball and the same style of punc(ED: I think he means uppercut), so he had to choose between Ryu and Sagat ,and Ryu is always a priotrity in this type of choice. And we return to what we said before, we did not want similar characters, Clones. MVC2 had many clone characters and recived (bad) critiques over it, so we set out to solve that.



Eurogamer: ¿Qué motivaciones se esconden tras la elección de Sir  Arthur? Lo cierto es que es bastante sorprendente su presencia..

EG: What motivations hide behind Arthur's choice? Truthfully, we're surprised by his appearance.





RN :We did not want a roster with only typical characters  anyone could expect. We wanted characters that would surprise people and make them ask "Why?" (laughs). This was the point and I think we have achieved it.



Eurogamer: Has comentado que partíais de una lista confeccionada  por Marvel, ¿significa eso que a la hora de escoger personajes de su  plantilla tuvisteis limitaciones? ¿A qué superhéroes echáis de menos de  Marvel?



EG: You said you started off from  a list Marvel  made: Does this means when the time to choose characters of their roster you had limitations? Which Marvel Heroes did you miss?



Nitsuma: In effect, we where unable to choose characters that where not in th e list, and if there was one we wanted to use, Marvel would say : Don't use this one, use that other one. In that sense, we wanted to bring back a couple of MVC 2 characters such as Juggenaut  and Sentinel, but where unable to.



Eurogamer: ¿La licencia de Marvel va a ser sólo para este juego o servirá para otros títulos?

EG: Will the Marvel license be for just this game, or will it work for other titles?



The license is limited to Marvel. We do not have a specific contract for any one character,  but the whole roster, so it's all complicated.



EG: Which would you say are your favorites from each side?



RN: For Capcom, Dante, form Devil May Cry. My love for Dante is proportional  to the time it took us to put him in the game. We invested a lot of time because he has many moves, and it probably the hardest to balance, even though  he's been in the game since easly stages of development. On Marvel's side, Deadpool, for similar Reasons. He's a little(a bit?) Marvel sides most complete character and has a lot of elements and moves that we had never done, but wanted to do. We invested a lto of time in Deadpool.





EG: Much has been spoken of DLC. We wanted to know how it will work. For example, what price will a character 2 pack cost? How often do yoo plan to upload DLC?


RN: We are still unable to speak on the subject. We are still discussing this aspect  of ime scales and price with Capcom's American, European and Japanese divisions. In any case, I can say that, though there's no price, yet, it will not be too expensive. As for schedule,it is also undefined. We will keep working on the game and if we need a balance patch  to balance the game the game at launch, we could launch it. But just to give you an idee, we could potentially launch something  every two weeks, not during launch, but for a time(?).


Eurogamer: Pasemos ahora al aparto visual. ¿Os planteasteis en  algún momento hacer un MVC3 a la antigua usanza, con sprites y gráficos  en dos dimensiones?



EG: Moving on to visuals. Did you consider at some point to make MVC3 using old school sprites and 2d graphics?



RN: Really, the core of the title was American comics and in paper and taking that style to pixels and sprites was very dificult, so moving the models to 3d was very natural(ED: WTF?)




EG:  Seeing the success of SF4 with the visual style, why did you not choose that graphic style?



RN: Correct, SF4s visual style was a success, but the reason not to follow it was precisely because we did not want to make Street Fighter IV+Marvel chars. This was not the intention.  We wanted tp ,ale .




EG: Given SF 4s  will  be published in Nintento 3DS, is there a chance MVC3 will show on the handheld?




RN: As a developer, I am very interestd in N3DS. As of your comments on MVC...it is a very powerfull game technically, with many effects, charactes, and a screen full of elements. I do not know what happens to that if you add 3D, might be too much. Whoever, the machine itself is very interesting.


EG: Keiji Inafume left the company a few months ago. What is your opinion about it? How has if affected Capcom's march?





Inafume-San is very charismatic and a  natural leader. Obviously, his idea of what has to be is different from Capcom's as a company, and he's got his respect  for following his own idea, leaving Capcom, and doing what he wanted to really do, because it makes no sense  for someone to stay doing what they don't want to do. Regarding the second part of the answer,... well, we've lost a leader but I think I now we're even more united in tearms of teams, a comunicatting with each other more than ever. In stead of a single leader for the team, we now work more as a group. Bedsides, there s still much talent that feels comfortable  at Capcom and will keep working to make mindbending games.

 Booyah! Setinel's fuckin deconfirmed! WOOOOOO!