All About Zombies With Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Creator Keiji Inafune Keiji Inafune may be best known for Mega Man, but hes also a huge fan of zombies. Inafune created the Dead Rising series and is working with Team Ninja on Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.
In this interview we talk about the games comic book style, Yaibas fight with Ninja Gaidens regular protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, and Inafune breaking his personal zombie rules. When I played Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z there was humor, like the scene where a zombie was driving a truck into another zombie.
I remember back when you were working on Dead Rising you had an idea of making zombies like toys, which is quite different from zombie flicks of even Resident Evil. Keiji Inafune, CEO of Comcept: I feel there are two sides that make zombies interesting when it comes to movies and games.
There is a drama aspect like you would see in The Walking Dead, which has elements of tension and fear, but there is also humor and thats what makes working with zombies a fun theme. Personally, I like the humor aspect, which is why both of those games have humor in them. I love zombies and I have my own rules for what zombies can and cannot do. Zombies cant run. They arent intelligent, and so forth. For this game, those rules dont apply.
The zombies that appear in Yaiba are different from other zombies. Like in the truck scene you mentioned, a zombie told another zombie to get out of the way. We loosened the mold of what zombies can and cannot do. That leaves a lot of freedom for us, Team Ninja, and Spark to input lots of ideas. Certainly, there will be humorous ideas that come from that.
I hope you look forward to different kinds of humor in this game. All About Zombies With Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Creator Keiji Inafune Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z also has wacky weapons like the zombie nunchucks you can get when you yank a zombies arms off. Where do you get ideas for weapons like this? When I produce a game, I dont necessarily say, Do this specific idea. I give a high level idea and set the framework. So, I told the developer [Spark Unlimited] to come up with an idea for this. Harvesting arms and limbs from zombies actually came from Spark. From those ideas, I choose what I like.
After setting the framework, ideas come out. If ideas slip out of the framework they arent used and I pick the ones that fit the game. Was having a comic book art style one of the high level ideas? Were there any alternate ideas? It was decided early on in the development of the game that we were going with this art style. We talked with Spark and Team Ninja and all of us decided this was a fitting art style and we went with it.
There wasnt an alternate art style we were considering. Why did you pick a comic book art style for Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z? The inspiration came from when I saw the Walking Dead graphic novel. Even though the story addresses serious issues and has a dramatic story, its done with a comic style. For me, that stood out and I wanted to do something with zombies in a visual style like The Walking Dead. Will players be able to fight Ryu? I mean the game starts with Ryu Hayabusa cutting through Yaiba.
I dont want to give it away at this point, but I think players will have expectations of what will happen and certainly we want to cater to those players. At the same time, we want to go beyond their expectations and surprise them with the outcome. I can imagine Yaiba having multiple endings then depending on what happens, if Yaiba and Ryu fight. At the moment, we havent decided if the game will have multiple endings. Its common to have multiple endings and online co-op and we dont want to be confined by those kinds of rules. Its too early to be discussing this, but Yaiba will be the game it will be whether it has multiple endings or not.
Hmm
early? Isnt the game coming out in early 2014? [Laughs] Theres still time! All About Zombies With Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Creator Keiji Inafune Compared to Ryu, who is portrayed as a stealthy and honorable character, Yaiba is completely the opposite. Hes vulgar, angry, and loudkind of barbarian-like. When developing a new protagonist, its always easier to go with the archetype of what a main character should be. What happens if you go with that, you end up with a character that is like Ryu Hayabusa. I gave the direction and told the team to take off the breaks and get as far away as possible from Ryu Hayabusa. When we started this project it was mutually agreed with Team Ninja.
Who is the girl with the pink hair who acts like a navigator for Yaiba? She is intertwined with the gameplay. She informs Yaiba where he needs to go and gives him information. She is also the heroine of the game. Since there are two ninjas we need to have a female character, too. Just like how Ninja Gaiden games have female characters as well. Shes also the character that makes Yaibas cybernetic body parts, too, I believe. [Laughs] I cant really go into that, but its not like shes Roll-chan from Mega Man or Bulma in Dragon Ball. Its certainly not like that. All About Zombies With Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Creator Keiji Inafune How has Team Ninja guided the game in terms of combat, since their specialty is making stylish action games. We have a director from Team Ninja who looks specifically at the games combat.
He needs to sign off to approve all of the combat decisions. If it isnt feeling right Team Ninja will give feedback on how to make it better. Even the combat is a collaborative process. Spark gives us ideas and well discuss if its a good idea and figure out how to grow it into an even better idea. With Dead Rising, you threw a survivor in a mall. With Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z you mixed zombies with ninjas. What else do you want to with zombie games? Not specifically, a zombie game genre, but one of the things I would like to do is a big budget zombie game that would be the last thing you would see at a Sony or a Microsoft conference. Something really big. All About Zombies With Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Creator Keiji Inafune What about you, Ohara-san? You also worked on Dead Rising 2 as the games co-producer. Shin Ohara, Producer at Comcept: Probably the same.
I would like to see a big, big zombie game that involves a lot of people. Maybe multiplayer or a grand scale zombie game. Maybe an outbreak starts from an area and as the game progresses the area grows. Maybe there is another group of people that try to suppress the zombie outbreak. If its a multiplayer game, maybe there is a group of players trying to suppress zombie outbreak and another group trying to spread it.
That would be interesting. Since we talked about Dead Rising 2 a couple of years ago, what are your thoughts on Dead Rising 3? It seems like Capcom is trying to go that route. SO: I saw it. I went to their booth and saw the presentation. Its open world and since its Dead Rising it takes on the good elements of the series, but its just much bigger. Not a whole lot of new gameplay has been introduced yet, that I know of. It doesnt necessarily fill the gap for me. Certainly, I will play it and most likely enjoy it, but its still a single player game.
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Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Is For PS3 And Xbox 360, Says Spark UnlimitedDecember 20, 2012 . 6:30pm
YAIBA: Ninja Gaiden Z Being Developed On Unreal Engine 3. March 27, 2013 . 10:15am 
Inafune And Hayashi Talk YAIBA: Ninja Gaiden Z. March 31, 2013 . 2:45pm 
Inafune Explains What The “Yaiba” In YAIBA: Ninja Gaiden Z Means. June 7, 2013 . 12:00pm
YAIBA: Ninja Gaiden Z Looks Like A Crazier, More Colourful Ninja Gaiden. June 12, 2013 . 9:00am
All About Zombies With Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Creator Keiji Inafune. July 17, 2013 . 2:30pm 
Tecmo Koei Holding A Zombie Movie Night To Promote Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. August 29, 2013 . 11:00am 
Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Will Be On Steam And Be The First Team Ninja Game On PCTecmo Koei announced Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z will be released for PC as well as consoles. The PC version will be available as a digital download on Steam in early 2014, which sounds like it won’t be too far away from the PS3 or Xbox 360 version.
Inafune And Hayashi Talk YAIBA, Action Games, Mighty No. 9 Collaboration. October 11, 2013 . 11:05am 
