Dynasty Warriors producer says he’d rather not make more remasters, because he doesn’t know how many more games he has left
Tomohiko Sho says he’d rather make new games or sequels now he’s in his fifties
The producer of the Dynasty Warriors series says he’d rather not keep making remasters, even though he knows they will likely keep continuing if they’re successful.
Tomohiko Sho joined Koei in the ’90s and was a planner on Dynasty Warriors 2 – the first game in the series to offer the ‘one vs many’ hack and slash gameplay the series has become known for (the first Dynasty Warriors was a one-on-one fighting game instead).
Since then, he’s been involved in every major entry in the Dynasty Warriors series, working his way up to the role of series producer.
The latest entry in the series is Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered, which was released this week and celebrates the 25th anniversary of the PS2 game Dynasty Warriors 3 with a, Unreal Engine 5 remaster.
In a new interview with 4Gamer to mark the release of the game, Sho says he expects to see more remasters of other Dynasty Warriors games if it’s a success, but that he’d actually rather not make them.
“If this remaster of Dynasty Warriors 3 goes well, I think the chances of remastering 4 and beyond will increase,” he said (via machine translation). “I can’t say anything at the moment, and I haven’t even thought about it, but it’s not impossible that we’ll remaster titles that aren’t available on Steam.
“However, to be honest, I don’t want to do it. It would be almost a complete remake, and even this time I sometimes thought, ‘why am I remaking something I made myself?’,” he laughed.
Instead, Sho said he wants to focus on using what time he has left in his career to develop entirely new games, and may instead hand off development duties on further remasters to someone else.
“I’m in my 50s now, and I sometimes wonder ‘how many more games can I make before I retire’, so I’d rather make new games or sequels,” he said. “But at the same time, I also want to respond to the voices of the fans who have supported the series.
“So I’m thinking of letting someone else take on the next project. It was really hard work to make this remaster a reality, it took so many years,” he laughed. “This time, the staff on-site made a lot of adjustments and finished it properly, so I think we’ve created something that we can be proud of as a game of today. Even so, I have no idea how it will be received and evaluated.”
