Devil’s Third is the name of Tomonobu Itagaki’s newest title. He was the action game mastermind behind the revamped Xbox Ninja Gaiden games, along with being the creator of the Dead or Alive female-focused fighting series.
Although some of his latter work wasn’t exactly amazing, he has been known to push the envelope and develop some extremely solid stuff, with the original Ninja Gaiden Xbox 1 game being a masterpiece of design . . . until they milked it for all it was worth.
Now we have an all-new title from his new company Valhalla Games, being published by THQ for Xbox 360 & PS3. And once again it looks like Itagaki is going to innovate with a masterpiece of hyper-violent action.
Nothing about the game and how it works is truly known, except what can be gleaned from the E3 2010 trailer, which shows some outrageous and awesome action, of both hand-to-hand/sword combat and gunplay variety, as well as some explosions, environment navigation ala Uncharted 2, and some crazy set-pieces/boss battles.
The game’s name, “Devil’s Third”, is another name for the Devil’s Interval, a tritone that rose to prominence in the beginnings of Baroque classical music, which would upset the Catholic church when it was first created centuries ago. While I thought the music of the trailer didn’t exactly fit, it does when you realize that it is what Itagaki is aiming for. As the music will have some kind of relation to one of the characters in the game as well as the setting, according to Danny Bilson, THQ’s Executive Vice President.
The game will have at least two-playable characters (although likely three as seen in the game’s logo) and is sure to be one heck of an action experience if the trailer is anything like the actual game. The trailer seems to show lots of actual gameplay footage, so let’s hope so (note: Apparently the footage is exclusively from the multiplayer mode of the game!).
Here is the debut E3 2010 trailer for “Devil’s Third”.