Since it was initially announced back in 2011, we haven’t heard much about Sony Computer Entertainment Japan’s Over My Dead Body 2, the PlayStation Vita sequel to the cult hit PSOne game about a cursed bloodline that must defeat a demon. After recently revealing a first look of its trailer, director Shoji Masuda spoke to 4Gamer about the upcoming sequel.
The above is a look at Over My Dead Body 2 (to the left) and the original Over My Dead Body on PSOne. As you may have noticed, the graphics have been completely revamped in 3D, but the upcoming sequel still retains its Japanese-style artwork.
According to Masuda, this change is a result from the request of fans. It was not because fans wanted to see it in 3D, but because there was a high demand of those who wanted to see a hereditary resemblance in the characters. The reason being is that your progeny can only live for two years, so your distant descendants will be the ones to lift the curse, which means that you’ll be playing through various generations of the family with the cursed bloodline.
“If we did this in 2D, it would simply be something like ‘Fukuwarai’ (Japanese ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ game),” explains Masuda. “The talks of making it into 3D completely influenced everything, as we felt that by displaying the family in 3D, it would’ve been strange if the other things weren’t, so from there we thought that it’d be better to also display the map and battles in 3D.”
“It’s not that we wanted to make it into 3D, but it was a result of everything else that it ended up being mostly in 3D.”
Fan feedback has been a crucial part of developing Over My Dead Body 2. Since the release of Over My Dead Body’s PSP remake, Sony have gathered input from questionnaires, various social media networks such Twitter, mixi, and even from those on the Japanese 2channel discussion boards.
Masuda shares that they have a thick stack of papers that are full of fan requests. For every request that has been mentioned by three or more people, the development team puts it into a list of considerations, which are then examined thoroughly. 4Gamer then asks what some of the most common requests were.
“The one that had the most [requests] was about about removing the limit of having 256 people in your family tree,” answers Masuda. “At the time, it was limited due to the capacity of the PlayStation’s memory card, but this time you’ll be able to register at least 1,000 people, so I don’t think there will be any trouble. Also, ‘please let us have more than one save’ was another big one. This was also limited to just one in the past because of capacities, but this time you’ll get to have up to four saves.”
Masuda also teases a new system that will be a part of Over my Dead Body 2 that will involve some sort of communication.
“You see, playing Mahjong with computers is fun, but playing between people you know, is definitely much more fun,” shares Masuda “I’d like to capture the fun part of such a communication method and put it into Over My Dead Body. While we’ll be releasing more details a little at a time, I’m sure you’ll be baffled by it once you get to try it out for yourself.”
Over My Dead Body 2 is slated for release in summer 2014 for PlayStation Vita.
