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Capcom’s action role-playing game Deep Down is still out there and the developer hasn’t ‘completely given up’ on it, as stated in an interview with Eurogamer.
Five years ago, we saw Deep Down at Tokyo Game Show and it was shaping up to be a considerable contender in the arena of massively multiplayer free-to-play games. It showed off two player and four player co-op, it looked shiny and swishy, and an open beta for PlayStation 4 was in the pipeline. Then, we heard that Deep Down’s development hadn’t been a walk in the (Central) park.
Describing it as ‘one step forwards, two steps back’, Deep Down producer Teruki Miyashita said that the demands and maintenance of an online game and the requirements of the next-generation PlayStation were causing the hold-up. Capcom was optimistic, though, and had mapped out what the next ten years would hold for the action role-playing game. That was in 2015, but now Capcom corporate officer Yoshinori Ono has spoken on the current status of the project.
‘The original team is clearly no longer together at this point, but people might have noticed that we’ve kept the trademark registered, and it’s not been completely given up on,’ he said. ‘Every year we examine titles we’re doing in future, and we bring up projects to approve and move forward. There’s not much I can say about it, but if you’ve noticed we’ve kept the trademark it means we haven’t given up on the title completely.’
To me, it sounds like the scope of the game wouldn’t have worked on the current generation of consoles. Capcom has placed it on ice but there could be a very good reason to revive it on the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett. Both are packing some serious heat when it comes to their technical capabilities, and Ono mentioned that the game had been ‘developed a bit further than that [the TGS demo]’. And, the company declared that it’s interested in returning to its ‘dormant intellectual properties’ after the runaway successes of Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2.
Arguably, Deep Down has been dormant for a while now. Though its concept was interesting and it looked very polished in the Panta Rhei engine, the developer might prioritise one of its classic properties like Castlevania or Dino Crisis. Or, it might not. Who’s to say? Capcom, probably. We’ll bide our time until we hear again from Ono and his team.
