Dead Or Alive 6 may look like it’s toned down some of the more stimulating elements of past titles, but Team Ninja says that isn’t actually true.
“The thing is, DOA was developed with a new game engine, and the new game engine was developed together with the game,” said game director Yohei Shimbori, in an interview with Eurogamer, regarding early indications the game’s sexualised elements had been toned down.
“So, it was just that the physics weren’t ready last year at E3… The first costumes you get when you start playing are the ones with the less physics and the most coverage of skin. When you start the game, the others need to be unlocked. You go to the quest mode, you earn coins and then you have to unlock the other costumes.”
Shimbori goes on to say that things like revealing costumes and exaggerated physics are “part of the legacy of DOA” and that “If you lose this, the core fans would move away.”
The discussion regarding the reaction of the fans is quite interesting when you consider that some series fans have already indicated that they are disappointed in the upcoming title over the assumption that they had catered to peer pressure and removed certain controversial elements. It seems that isn’t quite the case. Instead, it sounds like the team has decided to move those controversial features from the foreground to the background. Shimbori said that he blames some of the reaction on the highly-sexualised DOA Extreme series and expresses his wishes that everyone just moves on from the subject.
“We are honouring the long-term fans and making sure they also get what they expect,” said Shimbori. “We would really appreciate it if the media would focus more on the topic of we are building a good game here and not only focusing on this juggle talk.”
Furthermore, Shimbori reminds everyone that they can just disable the exaggerated physics and ignore the more revealing costumes if they choose to do so. For instance, he mentions that you can “stick with the schoolgirl uniform for Honoka” which he claims “will cover a lot.”
Dead Or Alive 6 reaches PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows on March 1st 2019.