How Platinum Games' Project G.G. Builds Off of Viewtiful Joe, Wonderful 101

Platinum Games has officially announced Project G.G. According to studio director, Hideki Kamiya, Project G.G. is the first wholly-owned Platinum Games project, and while the studio says this new project will stay in keeping with with the studio’s love of the action genre, the game will also be broader in scope.“We have labelled it as being part of the Hideki Kamiya hero trilogy,” said Kamiya in an interview with IGN Japan. “The first two titles being Viewtiful Joe, which is a solo hero story, and The Wonderful 101, which is a story of a group of heroes. In Japan, the next type of hero would be the giant hero, and I’ve always wanted to make a game based on that idea.”

"But while Viewtiful Joe and The Wonderful 101 were pure action games, this will not be like that. Any game I make will of course include carefully crafted action elements, but this won’t be simply an action game. There will be much more to it than that.”

The giant hero and kaiju genre, or tokusatsu, is best known in the west from shows like Power Rangers. But while Kamiya says he’s inspired by the genre, Project G.G. isn’t a straight adaptation of it.

“[I]t won’t be a very niche kind of game; giant hero stories are popular in Japan, with things like Ultraman, and the game will have that kind of flavor to it, but I don’t want to restrict myself to the Japanese hero genre,” Kamiya says. “So the setting will probably not be Japan, as that might be restrictive. But I haven’t decided yet.”

Not much else is known about Project G.G. other than how Platinum is aiming to launch on every current console. “Basically we’d like to hit PS4, Xbox One, Switch and Steam, and then of course PS5 and Series X are coming soon. We don’t know exactly when this will come out, but we’d like to release it on whatever are the main platforms at that time,” Platinum Chief Creative Officer Atsushi Inaba said.

Project G.G. (New Platinum Game) - First Images

 

 

There's no concrete release date at this point, but Inaba explains that there's a general window the studio expects to be able to release it within:

“Put it this way, we’re not looking at something as long as three years. Nor will it be as soon as half a year or a year. But as our first self-owned and self-published game, we want to deliver it as soon as we can.”

However, Kamiya makes clear that he'd prefer to make a quality game over a timely one: “Hey, I don’t have any desire to release games quickly! My only desire is to release games that are good.”

In the meantime, Platinum Games still has one more announcement to make as part of its “Four” initiative which included The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter, Project G.G., and a brand new Tokyo-based studio. But IGN will be there to cover the big surprise when it’s announced.