Dave Cox: I Left Because Konami Had No Vision About Where They Wanted To Go or What They Wanted To Do

Eurogamer has merely published an interview with Dave Cox and Enric Alvarez from MercurySteam, and it'due south a rather interesting one. It'due south focused on what happened with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 which, dissimilar the first game, was panned by critics only sold well and got a positive overall reception by gamers.

It also immune Dave Cox, who was Executive Producer on the trilogy from Konami's side, to explain why he so left the company.

Konami decided... allow's only say it wanted to go in a dissimilar management in terms of development. Information technology'due south one of the reasons why the studio I was heading upwardly closed downward. They wanted to movement more than into mobile. They wanted to do more development in Japan. At that time it was simpler to brand a clean break, for me personally and for the studio.

I don't retrieve Konami knew at that time what they wanted to exercise or where they wanted to go. They still obviously had Metal Gear in evolution. They still had Foot in evolution. Only at that place wasn't a vision at the top of the company about where they wanted to go or what they wanted to do.

Information technology was painful for me from a personal point of view, considering information technology was clear there wasn't a role there for me whatever more. So I decided later talking to the senior management at that place that it would exist better if I moved on, which was very difficult for me later being there for 17 years and achieving so much. I started off as a lowly assistant product director, and ended up producing a successful Castlevania series. So that was very difficult.

These comments depict a similar situation to the i we've all pictured with Hideo Kojima'south departure from Konami. After in the interview, Cox also confirmed that MercurySteam and Konami had indeed talked about doing a new Contra game, but that opportunity never took off.

We talked to MercurySteam about that, and we did have early discussions about Contra. But it but wasn't to be. The planets weren't aligned, essentially.

That was, substantially, it. But besides the guys at MercurySteam didn't desire to motility on with that human relationship too. So it was mutually agreed that nosotros wouldn't motion forward with it. Nosotros had discussions about it, absolutely. And at that place were concepts, and a basic idea was drawn up. But that'southward as far equally information technology got, sadly.

MercurySteam is at present going forward on its own with Raiders of the Broken Planet, an online asymmetric multiplayer adventure game which recently entered the beta phase on PC. I've had the chance to check it out and speak to both Cox and Alvarez at Gamescom 2022, leaving pleasantly impressed.