We haven't heard a great deal from Tomonobu Itagaki, the long-lost member of Guitar Wolf turned game developer who, after a bit of unpleasantness with former employer Tecmo, went off and founded his own studio. We've known for a while that Itagaki's production house, Valhalla Game Studios, was working on a new action title called Devil's Third, and that THQ would be publishing, but with nothing shown of or said about the title at this year's E3, one could not help wondering exactly what might be going on with the game.
Fortunately, Itagaki just recently emerged from his self-imposed exile to give an interview to GAME Watch (which Andriasang thankfully translated), in which he gave a few key updates on the status of Devil's Third.
First and foremost, the game is a good, long ways from completion. Itagaki says that mechanically, the game is 100% in place, but from a content perspective, it's closer to 20-30% done. He currently has Devil's Third's targeted release date as "early 2013."
With all that time between now and completion, that does allow Itagaki a bit of wiggle room in terms of trying out some new things. One thing he may be interested in is bringing about a Wii U port of the title. Though he wasn't at E3 to try it himself, Itagaki is reportedly very excited by the possibilities of the tech, and is actively looking into bringing the title to Nintendo's new system.
Lastly, Itagaki noted that we should expect to hear more about Devil's Third around this year's Tokyo Game Show, where he hopes to have new announcements regarding the game's multiplayer modes. Evidently, the core multiplayer component is already up and running, and now simply requires additional content and tweaks to add more players. However, it does sound like this will only be a competitive mode, and that co-op play won't be included during the primary campaign.
It's not much, but for a title we've heard little-to-nothing about for quite some time, it's nice to see Itagaki pop up for air (and perhaps a new pair of sunglasses) and let the world know where the development process is at. Sounds like we'll know a whole bunch more come September in Tokyo.