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Last week's big 7-Eleven reveal, Okamiden, has turned out to be a DS title. As promised, this week's Famitsu got the first word on the new game.
Fully titled Okamiden: Chisaki Taiyou, the followup to the critically acclaimed PS2 original puts players in control of what appears to be a new wolf character, Chibiterasu. Picture a baby version of Okami main character Amaterasu, right down to the red marks. We can't share the artwork with you until Capcom provides official online media, but one word comes to mind when seeing Chibiterasu: adorable.
Okamiden follows the events of the original Okami by a few months, in a world now restored to peace. Issun, Amaterasu' guide from the original, accompanies Chibiterasu to Sakuya, the girl who called Okami to the world in the original. Sakuya asks Chibiterasu for some form of help.
You take control of Chibiterasu in a game whose fundamentals appear rooted in the original Okami. Just as you did in the original, you'll be exploring the game's brilliantly colored (well, for the DS) world while combatting monsters and solving puzzles. Much of the gameplay is being kept under wraps at present, but the combat system does appear to resemble that of the original.
The switch to the DS brings about some major changes thanks to the stylus. Capcom will be letting you use the stylus to make direct drawings with your Celestial Brush. Your uses of the brush once again include such things as drawing circles to make trees spring to life with flowers and drawing lines to slash enemies.
Also new for Okamiden is the presence of partner characters for Chibiterasu. Chibiterasu has to work together with the partners in order to progress.
As an example, there's a section of the world where the two have to cross a crumbling bridge. They wouldn't be able to get across with the partner riding on Chibiterasu's back. To clear this part of the game, you'll have to make use of the stylus to draw out a path for the partner character to follow on his own. Once the partner crosses to the other side of the bridge, you can directly move Chibiterasu across the bridge.
Famitsu introduces one such partner character, the young Kuninushi, son of a swordsman named Susano who appeared in the original. As you play through Okamiden, you'll apparently find out why Susano is suddenly able to have a son despite there being only a few months gap from the original.
(We previously made it sound like Kuninushi is the only partner character. There are actually multiple partner characters, but Kuninushi is the only one introduced in this week's Famitsu).
The original Okami was the swan song for Clover Studio before key members of the studio went on to form Platinum Games. From what we can tell, Okamiden is being developed within Capcom. The game's producer is Motohide Eshiro, producer of Ace Attorney Investigations and director of Onimusha 2. The game's director is Kuniomi Matsushita, a planner on Dino Crisis who went on to direct the Wii version of Okami.
In an interview with Famitsu, the two revealed a surprising start for Okamiden. In December of last year, Matsushita approached Eshiro and said that he wanted to make a portable version of Okami. Not only that, but he'd already created an advanced prototype. After seeing the prototype, Eshiro decided to turn it into a full product.
The magazine asked Matsushita why he wanted to bring Okami to a portable system. His response was that he wanted to give as many people as possible a chance to know the charms of Okami's visuals and game systems.
We already know the charms of Okami (it was our game of the year in 2006), and now we look forward to getting another look at the game on the small screen. Okamiden isn't due out in Japan until 2010, but we'll hopefully get a sneak peak at the Tokyo Game Show later this month.
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I don't know about taking a hit PS2 game and putting it on the DS, but this might do good.
