Hideaki Itsuno has a lot to be proud of. The longtime Capcom producer and director, who recently departed the company after decades of hard work, spearheaded the development of Devil May Cry's third, fourth, and fifth mainline titles. He supervised both underrated Project X Zone games, consulted on quite a few other releases, and - most importantly for the purposes of this article - directed both Dragon's Dogma and its divisive 2024 sequel.
In late 2024, Itsuno forged LightSpeed Japan Studio, a subsidiary of Tencent. His future output is presently shrouded in mystery, but he still has plenty to say about his many years at Capcom - including some candid thoughts on player reception to Dragon's Dogma 2.
In an interview with VGC, Itsuno proudly proclaims his satisfaction with the mixed reaction in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Hideo Kojima's own eccentric musings. (It's not quite on that level, but then, few can match Kojima on this front.)
"I made the game not like a Nintendo one to be liked by all the people, but for a certain type of audience, so it’s normal if some people outside that target audience don’t like the game."
"Not like a Nintendo one,"...
