With titles like Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, God Hand and The Evil Within under his belt, Capcom’s Shinji Mikami has pretty much cemented his reputation as a game director. And, in a new interview with Variety discussing his 30 years in the business, Mikami reveals that he’s willing to come back to the director’s chair one more time. On his terms, that is.
In the interview, Mikami starts things off with how he got started in the business (“I started [in the industry] because I really liked games”) and his early works before Capcom’s development head, Tokuro Fujiwara (the man behind Sweet Home), came to him with the idea that would eventually become Resident Evil.
From there, the rest is history. Of course, years later, Mikami launched Tango Gameworks in 2010, which was eventually acquired by Bethesda Softworks parent company, ZeniMax, and gave us The Evil Within, which as of now is Mikami’s last game as director.
However, Mikami states that he would return as a director if he gets to make a game that is completely envisioned by him. In case you weren’t aware, The Evil Within originally started as a project called “Noah,” but eventually evolved into what we know, far away from what was originally conceived. But if Mikami had the chance to make the original concept of “Noah,” he’d return as director for that project.
“My thinking is that if I had a chance to make a game from the beginning to end that’s completely my vision, then definitely, that would be my big last project as a director,” he says. “It would probably be more fitting as that ‘last game I direct’ kind of thing.”
At the moment, Mikami and Tango are currently working on Ghostwire: Tokyo, which is set for release next year on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC.