Dead or Alive 6 producer Yohei Shimbori is continuing his press tour, doing and saying anything he can to put eyes on the upcoming 2019 fighter for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. In a recent interview with WCCF Tech on September 6th, 2018, Shimbori explained that they decided to tone down Dead or Alive 6 because the fan-service caused them trouble in the past.

When asked about the decisions to change the visual style of the game, Shimbori explained…

“[…] One of the major aims was to tone down the features of the women which caused some trouble in the past. Our aim is to show this as a real fighting game. To do this, we are using a new engine for the game. This has helped the push on the visuals, the engine letting the game look more realistic.”

The “trouble in the past” he’s referring to relates to feminists and SJWs being angry about the fan-service in Dead or Alive games, which prompted Koei Tecmo to forfeit releasing Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 outside of Asia. He also mentioned that they didn’t like how they took the fan-service in Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 too far, so they’ve decided to scale back on it.

Shimbori mentioned in the past that due to “world trends” they decided to cover up the girls in this newest game, and base them more on the super hero-style costumes featured in properties like Marvel’s comic books and live-action films.

The “realistic” look Shimbori is talking about is physically based rendering. This allows for directional, real-time light materials to render under different light sources that directly reflect and refract from character and environmental objects without requiring separate light rigs to create the desired effect.

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Physically based rendering wasn’t natively built into the Soft Engine ver 2., which powered Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 and the more recent Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation. Instead, the Soft Engine was designed around soft-body deformation physics, where skin indentation and mass-based procedural physics calculations allowed for characters to jiggle, bend, and move more realistically. It was one of the only major engines in use for eighth gen gaming that allowed for character-based soft-body deformation physics in a fighting game.

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Shimbori scrapped the Soft Engine because he claimed it was “old” and “cartoony”. They switched over to a modified version of the Dynasty Warriors 9 engine, which had physically based rendering built in, but it didn’t have a dynamic physics engine, so they had to rebuild the physics engine from the ground up for the characters and fighting motions, which is why at the moment Dead or Alive 6 has unnatural movements.

While Shimbori has been talking about making the game more “realistic”, some people were left scratching their heads when they saw a giant tentacle grabbing at the girls. It turns out that some of the stages will have some hazards, but such over-the-top elements won’t be present in every stage. Shimbori explained…

“They aren’t in every single state. We have some stages that are simple in design, like those you’d find in more serious fighting games. But we have a range from very simple stages to those with flashy and entertaining gimmicks like those you’ve seen in this stage. As for adding them in, we wanted to add to the entertainment of a fight with these extra elements.”

It was mentioned previously that the stage hazards would be toned down from Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, so it doesn’t sound like we’ll be seeing Kraken-style hazards too often in Dead or Alive 6.

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A lot of gamers are still peeved at the toning down of the fan-service and the removal of the thigh and butt jiggle, as well as the toned down boob jiggle. Many blame the push to make Dead or Alive 6 serious in e-sports, but Shimbori told WCCF Tech that the online modes aren’t even implemented yet for the game…

“At the moment we are in development for what we can do online. We don’t exactly know what’s going to happen online yet but when we do, we’ll be sure to announce it. On eSports, we know that eSports is important but we aren’t focusing on it. It is an aspect we are looking at, but our major focus is to make the game entertaining. We will have settings that are geared towards eSports though.”

Dead or Alive 6 is supposed to be due out in the first quarter of 2019, but with some of the stages still incomplete, the online not finished, the physics incomplete, and the roster still far from complete, it seems unlikely that the game will make the early 2019 release.

(Thanks for the news tip Richard)