I've never really known what to make of the Dead or Alive series. On the one hand, you have people doing their absolute best to murder one another with their bare hands; on the other, they occasionally take off their clothes and play volleyball. It's weird. The fighting games aren't as blatantly sexualized as the beach blanket 'balling, perhaps, but the lengthy list of DLC available for the free-to-play Dead or Alive 5 Last Round: Core Fighters on Steam includes stuff like, well, this. That much exposed skin is not good, either for prolonged exposure to the sun or in a no-holds-barred bare-knuckles fistfight.
Developer Team Ninja may be looking to get away from the worst of the games' bouncy excesses in Dead or Alive 6, however. Director Yohei Shimbori told Game Informer during an E3 presentation that the studio is looking to move away from the overt skin show and get the focus back on the fighting.
"This is a work in progress, a prototype, so we might change in the future," he said. "For this version, we still have Kasumi with her previous costumes, and there are some parts that are going to jiggle or move, but we want to make it a lot more natural. That is one goal, to make movement very natural. Also, each character has a very strong personality and we want to emphasize that."
But while the game itself may be toned down, the DLC could go in the other direction. Shimbori allowed that DoA5: Last Round may have gone a little overboard with the jiggle physics, but there's no overlooking the fact that sex sells. "We have to see what gamers really want, what their response is," he said. "Not all the gamers want the same thing, but we want to ask their opinions, all of them, and get feedback on it."
The ultimate goal is to come up with "a very cool, mature look compared to the other games," and also one that's more natural. "Not just for the characters, but for the stages, backgrounds, renderings, and everything." I try not to judge, but I do have to think that maybe nixing stuff like SCHOOLGIRL STRIKERS might not be the worst place to start on that. Dead or Alive 6 is currently expected to be out in 2019.
Thanks, RPS.
