DmC Devil May Cry: 'Ninja Theory have been amazing', say Capcom

DmC: Devil May Cry launches worldwide next week, putting to bed years of controversy and speculation around the title. Capcom has told VG247 that through it all, developer Ninja Theory have been amazing to work with, and that they view the title as a true partnership founded on mutual respect.

As part of an unpublished VG247 interview from Eurogamer Expo '12 that you can read in full on Friday, Capcom US producer Alex Jones discussed the process of collaborating with Ninja Theory on the title and explained that there is a great understanding and marrying of skill-sets between both companies.

"These guys have been amazing," Jones explained. "Like most developers would had three or four random guys from Japan show up at some point and start lecturing them about how to do stuff, and it might not have gone as well.

"But the Japanese guys are super-open about knowing what Ninja Theory did well and leaving them alone to do that, and the Ninja Theory guys were really good about knowing that there is almost 30 years of fighting game experience at this table and thinking, 'We should probably listen to them.'

I then asked Jones for his thoughts on Capcom's drive to collaborate with Western developers and to create a family of worldwide partners, to which he replied, "There are very few good independent developers, and if you get the chance to lock one or two down and continue to work with them, as a publisher you have to do that.

"Because firstly you'll never have enough internal capacity – given the expense involved in making games – to keep your portfolio level where it needs to be. Guys like Ninja Theory and Dontnod who – in the case of Ninja Theory have a proven track record of delivering quality products more or less on time, and at an expected level of quality – I mean yeah, you have to keep working with those guys."

I then turned to Ninja Theory's communications manager Dominic Matthews and asked him if there was now a great mutual respect between his studio and Capcom as they approach the end of the development

"There's a lot of talent on both sides," he said, "and I think like Alex said; Capcom has got such a rich heritage in fighting games – probably better than anyone else in the world – so it's humbling for us to work with these people who know these things so well.

"But what we bring to the table is a different set of skills – story-telling, visuals, action gameplay that we've shown in out previous games – and there is huge mutual respect. The partnership between Capcom and Ninja Theory is very strong, and actually we're quite similar in many ways because we have such high standards on both sides that we both know we're pulling in the right direction.

"We've got amazing designers who have worked on this for three years," he added, "but we've also had amazing partners at Capcom with Itsuno-san, who was director on previous Devil May Cry games and who held our hands at the start, and helped us get this exactly right."

Stace Harman has written an in-depth, final preview of DmC before VG247's impressions go live next week. Check it out here. Are you looking forward to the game? Let us know below.