How much love does Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami love Bethesda‘s Skyrim? Enough to have a life-sized statue in his Tango Gameworks lobby. And he’s not just saying that because he’s on Bethesda‘s payroll.
“I started playing it when it was released, though right now I’m terribly busy and have had to stop,” Mikami told PSM3 magazine (via CVG). “It’s a fantastic game. Just amazing. To have such a huge open world and so much freedom is wonderful, and the gameplay too is so varied; all those parameters and details that you can tweak and that affect the game. The characters are great too.”
Mikami admits that Bethesda’s open-world hit is time-consuming, but also says that this is what makes it great. He digs open-world titles, and points out that the marketplace is still pretty light on them: “There are very few – Red Dead, GTA IV, Skyrim… It’s not like there are dozens of them yet. So right now I think it’s a really interesting genre. Perhaps once the market is saturated I won’t think so, but right now it’s a wide open field.”
Maybe Mikami might one day work on his own with his team at Tango. When they’re done with Zwei, of course: “We don’t have hundreds of staff, so I’d keep it simple. I’d introduce one major rule, but within that you’d be free to play it however you like. It would be a game that mixes the best of the old kind of games with this relatively new open-world concept.”
I’d play your open-world game, Mikami. For sure.
