Okami was a 2006 game of the year winner that never achieved sale success in-line with its critical-acclaim. It’s fitting then, if still completely bonkers, that a sequel to the Legend of Zelda-inspired adventure game would get announced at this year’s Game Awards. A musical medley on stage revealed we’re getting Okami 2 from the original director almost two decades later.
What made players fall in love with the original game back in the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii days was its evocative art inspired by Japanese folklore and its innovative painterly mechanics that had players emulate brush strokes across the screen to solve puzzles and combat enemies. There’s never been anything quite like it since, until maybe now.
It was directed by Hideki Kamiya as part of Clover Studio. A Capcom veteran, he had also previously directed Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry. Following the game’s release, he and other creative leads at the company departed to found Platinum Games. At the Game Awards, Keighley revealed that Kamiya has returned to Capcom to lead a new studio called Clovers that’s working on the sequel.
In the years since its release, Okami received a spiritual successor called Ōkamiden on the Nintendo DS and later an HD port which is currently available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. We still don’t know much about Okami 2 and it sounds like it could still be early days. The original game was so special and fans have waited so long that I’m sure they’ll be content to sit patiently for a few more years to play the sequel.