Helryu

KarbyP: With Leon and Rachel added to the cast, is the roster final? Or are you planning to include more characters?

Shimbori: The roster is final.

KarbyP: A friend of mine who goes by Shinobi (he's a Korea-born, Tokyo-based competitive Kasumi player and made it into grand finals/top 22 for Team Ninja's first official Dead or Alive 5 tournament in Tokyo) noticed in the new E3 trailer you put out that Kasumi and Hayate have new tag pose and tag throws added in Ultimate. He'd like to thank you for that, and at the same time, request specifically for Kasumi a new Great victory pose as well as new appeals/taunts.

Shimbori: Oh yeah, I know Shinobi. As for his request... I'll think about it when he wins a tournament. (Laughs)
KarbyP: I'm sure he's all fired up for the next tournament right now (laughs). Could you give us more specifics on what else you've added into Ultimate as far as tag poses and appeals are concerned?

Shimbori: We've tried to add as many tag poses and tag throws as we possibly could. So for instance, with the Kasumi and Hayate tag pair, they not only have a unique entrance pose, a unique victory pose, but they've also got two patterns to their tag throws.

Another example of one such pair would be Ryu Hayabusa and Momiji. We've added a lot of cool stuff for that tag pair, so please do check it out.

As for new taunts/appeals... actually we've added quite a few new taunts. as well as new taunt commands to activate them. It's actually still a secret, but the new taunt/appeal commands are actually in the demo version shown at E3.

(Attached is a screenshot showing all of Ayane's appeal commands in the E3 demo... can anyone spot if anything's different?)

KarbyP: What about stages? Personally I felt that a lot of the stages in DoA5 had this dark, gloomy, and overly serious vibe. But from the footage you've shown of the new stage Sky City Tokyo, as well as Lost World which you're resurrecting from past games, it seems like the stages new to Ultimate this time are more livened up.

Shimbori: We received a lot of feedback on stages, and we've really heard our fans loud and clear on what they wanted. For instance, we got a lot of requests from players all over the world for the Forest stage from Dead or Alive 3, so we thought "yeah, [since it's so popular] couldn't we bring that stage back for Ultimate? Why not?" And so that's in.

We also heard a lot of requests from our fans for a stage with many opportunities for players to knock their opponents off the stage, so that's why we brought back the Lost World stage.

Another request we heard a lot from our fans on was for a stage that has uneven grounding, like the undulations of a desert - and that's how we ended up putting in the Desert sage.

Since Momiji appears in DoA5 Ultimate now, we thought we definitely had to have a stage from the Ninja Gaiden series, so we brought over Sky City Tokyo and made it into a stage, as it's one of the settings that Momiji appeared in. We've tried to preserve the look and feel of Sky City Tokyo so it should feel very familiar to Ninja Gaiden fans.

Finally, there's this new stage that is really vast and great for Tag mode that we'd really like our fans to check out: the Aircraft Carrier stage.

KarbyP: Now let's switch gears for a bit and talk about one aspect that I think a lot of DOA players are anxious about: what sort of changes are you making to online to improve it?

Shimbori: Hmmm... where do I begin? There are just so many changes we're making to the online mode, and I guess the one that I can talk about now is that we've we've made improvements to alleviate an issue that players were experiencing with regards to not being able to join lobbies.

Another issue that we resolved from the original Dead or Alive 5 has to do with elements in the stages causing lag out scenarios previously.

But the changes we're making to online in Ultimate are not just bug fixes. There are some new elements as well, but I can't talk about them at this moment.

KarbyP: Finally, a message for all the Dead of Alive fans please!

Shimbori: Thank you for playing Dead or Alive 5. Because of the overwhelming feedback we received from all of you, we were able get another Dead or Alive game green-lit. We hope you'll enjoy Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate when it's out. Please look forward to it!

KarbyP: Tell us about what are the core gameplay changes you've made to DoA5 Ultimate.

Shimbori: Since we launched Dead or Alive 5, we received a lot of feedback from fans around the world. DoA5 Ultimate is a reflection of that feedback we received.

We've made numerous tweaks to the system, but the easiest one to perceive is probably the Power Launcher.

In the previous iteration, we had the Power Blow which was an attack you could use when your life was down to half or less, once per round. The Power Launcher is similar to that in terms of the activating conditions, but what it does is send your opponent flying into the sky, allowing players to follow-up with their custom juggle combos for massive damage, whereas the Power Blow sends your opponent flying into a wall.

Deciding when to use which of these two options is going to be a new tactical point that players will have to think about.


KarbyP: I see. Other than the Power Launcher are there any other game mechanic changes you could highlight?

Shimbori: The rest are not as easy to notice, but for instance, we've made quite a lot of changes to the Tag mode in DoA5U this time.

In previous Dead or Alive games when your partner is tagged out, that character can recover health for as long as he or she stays in the background — even all the way to full health. This time we've imposed restrictions on the amount of health that can be recovered (the maximum amount of recoverable health is decreased whenever you get hit; so basically it works like red health now).

We've also added a new attack option in Tag mode, called the Force Out which knocks your opponent's current character out of the ring to bring in the tag partner forcibly. After a successful Force Out, there are penalties like your opponent is not allowed to switch tag partners for a period of time, so paying attention and managing your health bars is quite necessary this time around, making it a higher-level game.

We've designed the new Tag mode for competitive, high-level players, and we hope that they will enjoy playing it in DoA5U.

KarbyP: This time at E3 you revealed Rachel and Leon. How was Rachel's fighting style conceptualized?

Shimbori: To put it simply, Rachel is a heayweight power-type fighter. She may actually be the first amongst the female fighters to be of that class, but basically her weight class is similar to that of Leon's.

As for her fighting style... I think that gamers who played Dead or Alive 4 might have noticed this already, but in DOA4 there was a certain guest character we had. [Since this is the Ultimate version of DoA5] we thought, "wouldn't there be fans who'd love to play this character again in DoA5?"

Unfortunately, due to certain obvious reasons we can't bring that character back into 5 anymore, right? Reporter's note: The DOA4 guest character Shimbori is referring to is Spartan-458, for the benefit of those of you who don't quite catch when he's getting at.

We'd love for fans who played Spartan-458 in DOA4 to give Rachel a shot. Her fighting style is quite similar to that of Spartan's. Spartan fights using the Close-Quarters Batte (CQB) combat style. Rachel fights using her fiend hunter style. Both are close-quarters styles, so they are quite similar in many regards.

KarbyP: Are there any special techniques you'd like players to notice about Rachel?

Shimbori: In Ninja Gaiden, Rachel has this move where she's swinging around the enemy on her giant hammer. In Dead or Alive Rachel can't bring weapons into the fight, but we've kept that move intact and tweaked it to be a bare-handed fighting technique instead.

Also, as she's a power-type character, even after performing an aerial grab on the opponent (putting him in a "bounce" state), Rachel can follow-up with more combo attacks after that.

KarbyP: What about Leon? Is he similar to the previous Leon? How is he different from Bayman?

Shimbori: Leon and Bayman have grown increasingly distinct from one another with each new iteration in the series.

But to put it simply, Bayman is about techniques. Whereas Leon is about power moves. So for instance this time Leon has a bunch of charge attacks that you can use to break the opponent's guard. He's a very direct fighter. We've also added a bunch of new throw moves for him, so please do give Leon a shot.