Ōkami

1001 Video Games

Ōkami appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cover

The front keep case cover of the US Wii release contains a watermark of games website IGN. It is faintly visible to the right of Amaterasu's mouth. Apparently the designer used concept art from the IGN website to compose the background picture, rather than the original image. At the end of April 2008, Capcom offered a solution. Players with the faulty cover could visit Capcom's Art Redemption website to apply for a replacement cover (US and Canada only). Multiple options were offered, the original cover or two new pieces of artwork. The new covers eventually shipped near the end of August.

Credits

To the dismay of Ōkami's director Hideki Kamiya, in the Wii version the entire PS2 Clover Studio Co., Ltd. staff end credits have been cut from the game. The official explanation comes from Seth Killian, Capcom's Community Senior Manager:

The credits were removed because they were a pre-rendered movie that contained the Clover logo. We have no legal right to use the Clover logo in a game they were not involved with directly. We also didn't have the source to the credit movie itself, so we couldn't just use it and remove the Clover logo.

Development

The developers wanted to make Ōkami a photo-realistic game but due to PS2 hardware limitations they decided to make it a cel-shaded one.

Title

The game's title, Ōkami is spelled in Japanese as 大神, meaning "great god" (or goddess). However, the Japanese word for "wolf" (狼) is also pronounced exactly the same way. Quite fitting, considering the heroine of the game is a goddess and a wolf at the same time!

Awards

• 4Players
  • 2007 – Best PS2 Game of the Year
  • 2007 – Best Action-Adventure of the Year
  • 2007 – #2 Biggest Surprise of the Year
  • 2007 – #3 Best Graphics of the Year
• GameSpy
  • 2006 – #5 Game of the Year
  • 2006 – #4 Console Game of the Year
  • 2006 – #2 PS2 Game of the Year
  • 2006 – PS2 Adventure Game of the Year

Information also contributed by Kaminari, YID YANG and Sciere