What to Expect From Resident Evil, Evil Within Dev Shinji Mikami’s Brand New IP
Although he is best known for creating the Resident Evil franchise, Shinji Mikami’s influence and history in the games industry goes much deeper than that touchstone IP. This breadth and diversity of experience are, hopefully, being leveraged by Mikami at his new studio Unbound Games, which he founded in 2023 after departing Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within studio Tango Gameworks.
Unbound Games’ inaugural release is still shrouded in mystery, but we now know a bit more about the organization thanks to the establishment of its website last year. The Unbound Games site, unsurprisingly, is vague about the company’s first release, although it does do a good bit to set the tone for its ambitions, painting a broadly positive picture of what’s ahead. And despite his Resident Evil roots, Mikami’s next project may not be horror-related at all.
Shinji Mikami’s Unbound Games Will Focus on “High-End” Experiences
It’s a bit sad that this even needs to be said, but Unbound Games has made it clear that it’s focusing on “high-end consumer game software for home use,” specifying that it won’t be making mobile games. Hopefully, this also indicates that the unnamed product will not be defined by problematic monetization or forced live-service antics, both of which have swallowed new studios whole in the past.
Fit the 9 games into the grid.
Right now, Unbound Games has about 50 employees, but it’s constantly expanding, hoping to reach about 150 total staff; this staffing goal is a further indication of Unbound’s planned scope. Interestingly, producer Masato Kimura, who has previously worked alongside Mikami on games like Devil May Cry and Resident Evil, described Unbound as “aiming for AAA quality and AA content.” This would indicate that, whatever the studio’s debut IP turns out to be, it probably won’t be a massive, sprawling adventure, multiplayer title, MMO, et cetera. Mikami is at his best when working on tight, focused projects like The Evil Within, so this is definitely promising.
According to Unbound Games’ job listings, the company is looking to develop “challenging smaller titles” in addition to its AAA ones.
Vast Talent Seems to Define Unbound Games
Worth noting is that Shinji Mikami and Masato Kimura are far from the only ones at Unbound Games with vast industry knowledge. According to the company’s website, its staff includes employees who have worked on a wide variety of games and franchises, including:
- Silent Hill
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Okami
- Dead Rising
- Lost Planet
- El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
While this obviously doesn’t mean that Unbound Games’ debut will somehow be an amalgamation of these aforementioned titles, the diversity within this pool of experience is rather exciting. Here we have professionals who have worked on some of the best, most genre-defining gaming IPs of all time, ranging from horror to platformer to RPG. Ideally, this will result in a unique, unexpected first release.
Unbound Games’ Debut May Not Necessarily Be a Horror Title
Mikami built his reputation on the horror genre, but one look at the man’s work history will reveal that his interests are far more vast. As a director, Mikami has worked on not just Resident Evil and The Evil Within, but also P.N. 03 and Vanquish, which are high-octane science-fiction shooters, and God Hand, a bold and avant-garde 3D action-brawler. He has also worked on a variety of other seminal games, such as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and Killer 7, either as a writer or producer.
All of this is to say that Mikami has experience working on non-horror games, and there’s a very solid chance that Unbound’s first title, if directed by Mikami himself, won’t be a horror experience at all. The director has gone on record regarding his interest in other genres, telling Variety in 2020 that he would be interested in “everything from puzzle games to RPGs,” so we should prepare for the possibility that his next project will be totally unexpected.