In a recent interview uploaded on SEGA Interactive’s official website, the company interviewed The House of the Dead series director, Takashi Oda, on his life history as a junior high school student to his current role at SEGA in Japan.
The interview goes further in depth on his time developing The House of the Dead series with he and his team at AM1 were task to create a gun shooting game with horror taste after the success of Virtua Cop, his reaction to the location test version with the rejected blow back gun system, and the proposal on making The House of the Dead 5 back in 2012 before House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn was in development.
The few interesting tidbits within the interview is that Oda-san would love to continue making at least 3 more House of the Dead titles in the future, including a House of the Dead FPS to give players enough freedom to walk around stages if there was enough demand. You can read the full interview with Google Translate. What are your initial thoughts on the interview and the future of the House of the Dead series? I think HOTD FPS would be a good concept if it focuses on the aspects of virtual reality. Let us know in the comments below.
Ad:
“‘HOD Scarlet Dawn’ is the fifth numbering title (sixth if you include the phantom ‘5’)”
We’ll all just forget Overkill ever happened. At least Oda-san learned the perils of outsourcing.
(And yes, I know HoTD SD was co-developed by an outside firm – but that firm houses a ton of ex-AM1 team members that walked out of Sega… in disgust… of outsourcing).
Did he? Forever Entertainment is remaking House of the Dead 1 & 2, which is outsourcing as well. Anyway, do you mind telling me what you didn’t like about Overkill? I thought it was a very good game.
The game didn’t fit the style of a HoTD game. It was like they flew to Japan, had a couple meetings with the team, and then did their own thing with it beyond a couple of style guide and plot requirements.
I don’t think Oda-san has total control over the back catalog. If I had suspicions, I’d say Sega Europe ran that one solo. I suspect Oda-san has total control over new games however, hence why he structured Scarlet Dawn the way he did.
Sega should reboot HotD main series. The main problem of the series is its genre. Rail shooter is an absolutely irrelevant genre and Sega must understand this in 2019(Let’s be honest, nobody cares about HotD series in its current state in 2019)
This series should be something else and Sega should understand this. HotD Zombie Revenge: this is the perfect vision for main series IMHO( game for consoles, NOT arcade) based on the “Dragon Engine”. In this case House of the Dead may become as popular as Resident Evil……But unfortunately, this will not happen, because Sega does not understand this.
Although it is worth noting the fact that Sega is now “juggling genres”( Yakuza now turn-based RPG and Sakura Wars now action RPG)
Well, they are. Scarlet Dawn is their reinsertion into the main series. And by using Unreal Engine 4, they’re also building the basis for the future FPS that Oda-san was talking about in the interview.
It’s sounding like they want to make HoTD 5, a FPS spin-off (a la Zombie Revenge), and then one more game after that – because honestly – #3 was a really bad way to chronologically finish the series off. They only did it that way because Sega was low on cash at the time, and they weren’t sure they were going to be able to finish the series as a team.
Creating HotD5 makes no sense. This is a waste of money. A lot of time has already passed since the release of HotD 4. Another generation of players with completely different preferences has grown.Many of them do not even know about the existence HotD series.
Sega’s developers did the right thing by restarting Sakura Wars main series in a different genre after 14 years. Thus they create the basis for a new player base.
Takashi Oda needs to do the same with the House of the Dead main series(return G, Rogan, Roy Curien, Goldman).. Any spin-off is also a waste of money because this series is extremely not popular. Therefore Capcom did so many spin-off games in RE, because the RE main series is very popular.
And I doubt very much that the Japanese audience will like HotD in the FPS genre. I saw a lot of praise from the Japanese who really liked Zombie Revenge gameplay style.
Full reboot House of the Dead main series in genere beat ’em up, TPS for consoles it’s potential mega hit like Residen Evil 2 Remake.
But this is just my opinion.
I don’t think that’s correct. HoTD 4 was very popular in 2005, and got popular again in 2012 when it became one of the first “app sized” games on PS3. Sega also properly managed the IP by re-releasing HoTD 2 & 3 on Wii and Xbox 360 Arcade.
HoTD is actually one of Sega’s best-known IPs.
I agree that Japanese domestic audiences haven’t received FPS well, but they are extremely popular in the US and do well in China. It’s Oda-san’s call and the UE4 engine work makes it affordable.
Games like gal gun have done pretty well, abandoning the core formula the series is known for in it’s entirety often prompts the question of whether it would be better to just make a new or spin off IP – consoles like switch technically could use joycons as pointers like air mice. To me the issue is the fact that lightguns have essentially died in the home market – PS3 had move, wii had wiimotes, the core interface of playing these games isn’t in abundance this generation.