Before departingCapcomin 2022, Hiroyuki Kobayashi’s nearly-three-decade history at the world-class company helped to usher in some all-timers. Kobayashi served as the producer onDevil May Cryand Devil May Cry 4, the originalDragon’s Dogma,Resident Evil 4, and more. Following his service to Dante and Leon fans everywhere, he moved over toNetEase Games, where he’s served in a similar role ever since.
The thing is, we haven’t known much of anything about Kobayashi’s follow-up project. We knew he’s making something, and we knew it’s an action RPG. That’s it. And while that’s technically still the case, it looks like things are about to change in a big way - and reasonably soon.
A Man Of His Word
In a new interview with Japanese publication Famitsu (spotted by Automaton!), Kobayashi provided a promising update:
“In our New Year’s greeting card for 2025, I said I wanted to announce it by the end of the year, and as a man of my word, I want to keep that promise. We’ve already entered the second half of the year, but rest assured that our studio is already preparing to make the announcement.” -Hiroyuki Kobayashi
While there’s no reason to doubt Kobayashi’s integrity, game development is a tricky business,and that’s putting it lightly. It’s always best to maintain tempered expectations when it comes to this stuff, but the founder and CEO of the brand-new studio GPTRACK50 has actually gone into a bit of detail that further solidifies the likelihood of a full-blown announcement by year’s end.
“As for how far development has progressed, we’re about to enter the voice recording phase,” Kobayashi added. Voice recording can come at varying times throughout the production process, but it seldom arrives especiallyearly. This is a good sign that the as-yet untitled action RPG is pacing itself well.
Kobayashi has been appreciably proactive in avoiding getting his fans' hopes up for something that hewon’tbe making. “[T]here were many people expecting it to be something like Devil May Cry because I’m involved in it. It’s not a good thing to give people the wrong idea of what to expect, so I ended up calling it an action RPG.”
I, for one, am not complaining; RPG mechanics tend to increase my hype, rather than deflate it. Still, we can always use more DMC-esques in the world, so maybe someday the producer responsible for overseeing Dante’s first ever adventure will fire up a spiritual successor.
