DmC: Devil May Cry

From my perspective, Dante has been the centrepoint of DMC. There's just something about the character – it's a stylistic element, like action cinema, and an attitude that I think is quite special. We've got to preserve that. We've got to make it current, but we've also got to preserve what made it special in the first instance.

But the game is about the combat. It's about the complexity, the depth, the style system that was introduced – it's about the fact that you can do these amazing long-chain combos. It draws you in, making you play from beginning to end. There's not many action games that can make you do that.

The collaboration with Capcom Japan was about getting as much knowledge as we could from people like Itsuno-san, who's worked on all four Devil May Cry games, into our studio, and what we're about is repackaging it in a way that makes it feel current again.

It used to feel current, but things are different now – a lot of games have now copied what DMC did back then. So we have to invent it in a totally new style that maybe doesn't even look at other games, in terms of the visuals, the music, the fashion, but which looks at popular culture, at what's on the ground now in places like London, New York and Berlin, try to impart that youthful energy, and back it up with a great story.

Dante's cool is the centre of Devil May Cry. But the key is, it's not just Dante that's cool. You're controlling someone who's so cool that you feel cool.

It depends – if you you think of Rocky 3 versus Raging Bull, it's that kind of difference. He's younger, he's rawer, he's cool in his own way. But it's different.

When you see the Casino Royale remake, you see Bond before he's actually killed anyone, and it's a really traumatic event. He's rough-hewn, he's not polished or debonair, but you can see the essence of what that character will become. That's what we want to do with Dante. The core of him is there, it's just a rougher version. It's a becoming. He's not fully actualised.

Oh, they are. Big time.

It's a new developer doing it, isn't it? I think Itsuna-san is best-placed to answer this question about how to reassure people.

Of course long-time fans are worried about us handing over such a big title to another company, another development team. But what myself and Eshiro-san want to convey is that people shouldn't be worried or concerned, it's nothing like that.

We've worked with Ninja Theory for a long time in pre-development, and we've seen that they're really talented and they have a lot of know-how, and we know that they're very serious about making this game good.

We've conveyed what we're looking for, and all of the knowledge and experience that we have, and now it's up to them to take it in a new direction. We feel that they have the confidence and talent to do that.

We don't really know how the final product will turn out. Nobody does. But we're going into this very positively, and we're looking forward very much to what Ninja Theory can make out of this title. We're looking forward to it, and we hope that the fans will also look forward to it and feel positive.