Daikatana Interview with John Romero 1997
The difference between Daikatana and the action genre and every other game is that I wanted to have more of a real story in the game and not make the game look like we basically built a lot of levels and then threw monsters all over them to get the player through it.
In this interview, John Romero explains his creative vision for Daikatana and how it was meant to stand apart from traditional first person shooters. His goal was to make every part of the experience feel new and story driven rather than a sequence of repetitive levels.
Story and Design Vision
Romero describes wanting players to feel like they were on a journey that constantly evolved.
He wanted every level, weapon, enemy, and piece of music to be unique, ensuring that players were always discovering something new.
I wanted to have every single piece of content and data that you get out of a first person game to be new while you're going through Daikatana, which includes the music, having a different song in every level, the graphics, the weapons, the artifacts, monsters, the levels, every single thing that you get out of a game, I want it to be new while you're playing the entire game.
He compares this philosophy to story based RPGs, where progression introduces new locations, characters, and events rather than repeating earlier concepts.
Design is Law
Romero emphasizes a guiding principle at Ion Storm called “design is law.”
Technology, he explains, was a tool in service of creativity rather than the other way around.
Our philosophy is that design is law and we'll use whatever technology that we can license to help the game along to just be really great looking and be out there with every other A title.
This approach meant the studio would license existing engines rather than build everything from scratch. This saved development time while allowing designers to focus on crafting the world, characters, and mechanics.
Development Speed
Romero explains that licensing an existing engine cut years off the typical development process.
What you're looking at usually is a game that took about three years to make and we get to do it in a year and a half or so because of the time that we save by buying the engine.
Despite these ambitions, Daikatana would face major production delays and shifting technology, ultimately releasing in 2000 after years of anticipation.
Legacy
The ideas Romero describes here unique content in every level, story first design, and a philosophy driven by creativity show the ambition that defined both Daikatana and Ion Storm itself.
Though the game received mixed reviews, it remains an important part of gaming history for its bold vision and the lessons learned from its creation.