14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the claims that Dead or Alive 5 will move away from the portrayal of women that the series is known for, one of the leading developers working on the title has justified the approach taken by Team Ninja by saying that it conforms to Japanese norms.
Yosuke Hayashi, the game director working on Dead or Alive 5, has told MCV that, “For us, within our culture, we’re showing women like that, and we’re trying to make them look attractive. We can’t help if other cultures in other countries around the globe think that it’s a bad representation.”
“Within our nationality and within our national borders we obviously have morals that we create our female characters from, but within our Japanese sensibilities, we’ve made those characters the way they are and we’re not going to stop doing that,” he also reported.
It’s not clear whether Team Ninja is trying to simply explain its approach to female character design or the company is actually encouraging those who dislike their choices to abandon the fighting game series.
Dead or Alive 5 is being created by Team Ninja and the company has previously claimed that it wanted to insert more storytelling and more emotion, starting by making the characters more relatable.
The series has often been criticized for its overly sexual undertones and for exploiting women’s bodies in order to rack up sales.
Publisher Tecmo Koei has always stood behind the Dead or Alive series and praised it for its innovation in the fighting game genre.
Dead or Alive 5 will be launched on September 25 in North America and in Japan and three days later in Europe, available on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony. This is the first title in the series to be launched at the same time on both its core platforms.