Dead or Alive 5 is all about the 'spectacle,' says dev

Team Ninja overlord Yosuke Hayashi has pledged to inject “spectacle” back into the beat-‘em-up genre with upcoming sequel Dead or Alice 5.
The developer is trumpeting the busty brawler as ‘fighting entertainment,’ noting that games of yesteryear were overflowing with fun gameplay and “a lot of stuff,” and reckons these days most beat-'em-ups are all about online competition.


Of course, Dead or Alive is already an intrinsically spectacular affair, so how does one go about taking it to the next level? Well, according to Hayashi, it’s largely down to the arenas.

Speaking to Joystiq, he noted that previous DoA games had stages featuring fixed dangers, such as electric fences or rickety wooden floors. However, in the fifth game, “you can see the entire stage changing and taking a different shape, and all sorts of chaos happening.”  Changes to a stage’s geometry can also be triggered by the player to boot.

Dead or Alive 5 is due out on PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2012.