Castlevania: Lords of Shadow producer Dave Cox has spilled the beans in regards to Hideo Kojima’s involvement in the development of the hotly anticipated franchise reboot.

According to Cox, while Kojima-san affords the development team total creative freedom in which to do what they please, he’s still in overall charge of the project, and as a result frequently chips in with technical advice and suggestions as to where to take the game’s storyline.

"He's basically overall in charge of the project, Cox told VideoGamer. "I report to him. He's not involved in the day-to-day development of the game. That's my role. I'm working with MercurySteam very closely. I'm in Spain pretty much all of the time these days. But he's lending support, advice, not just technical advice, but advice on story elements - maybe you want to try doing this, maybe you want to move it in this direction. At the same time he's being quite hands off. He's allowing us the creativity and freedom to do what we want, but he feels that the game needs to be at a certain level, a certain quality.”

“Putting the Kojima Productions name to it means we have to achieve that. So he's helping us, and his team are helping us. Some of his team guys are at MercurySteam working on the project as well. So it's more like Del Toro comes along every now and then, works with a young Spanish director, he wants to give him a leg up, wants to help him. He might help him with advice, might help him with some of the story direction, but essentially he's the top guy. I have to send him builds, I have to keep him up to date on what's going on."

Cox added that Kojima-san also pops in from time to time to visit the studio and see how things are progressing, heaping substantial pressure on the team to deliver a quality product.

"… we're shitting ourselves! You got to make sure that the quality of what you deliver is very very high. You're constantly saying to yourself, is that really good enough? Is that really going to be good enough?" he said.

"It's funny, because sometimes you think, no, he's not going to like that and he loves it, and then other times you think, check this out, it's amazing, and he'll go, hmm don't know. It's shit. So it's swings and roundabouts."

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is due out next year for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

http://www.psu.com/Castlevania-dev-feeling-the-pressure-from-Hideo-Kojima--a008058-p0.php

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Yes Kojima Pressure them, Beat Them, Hurt Them, Make sure That game is one of the first 3D AAA Castlevania game

"Yes Kojima Pressure them, Beat Them, Hurt Them, Make sure That game is one of the first 3D AAA Castlevania game"

^This.

Also, Konami should really consider a completely new 2D Castlevania for PSN/XBLA/WiiWare..(perhaps they are? ^_^)

This is game is one of the reason i decided to buy a PS3, so it better be good or someone will be punished

Oh thank God, thank God.

Kojima's greatest expertise is in gameplay and general direction. He's not near the scripts, he's not near the characters, there's nothing for him to do here but make sure it plays right.

This is perfect. Perfect. This just upgraded from "cautious optimism" to "Yes, I'm going to buy thisg ame"

Well...Ds castlevanias have been great, but all 3D castlevanias have been...
They never happend ok.

Even though we may disagree with how his scripts, characters and stories come out. ( I personally love them and think they're some of the best the industry has seen) I'm glad you agree that his gameplay is also awesome. Thought for a second you were going to drop a Movie Gear Solid quote. But Yes buy this game 1st day.

Thank god. I thought he was, like, deciding every single thing, but if he's just giving advice then it might turn out alright after all.

Go on Kojima you crap that whip and make sure this is a game worthy of theKojima Productions Stamp

But he's giving the guys who made Clive Barker's Jericho total creative freedom?

Sounds like a reason to be more than a little cautious to me.

In fairness there's only so much you can do when working with Clive Barker.

HEY-O