Deep Down is Alive, Despite Almost 7 Years Since the Announcement

In a recent interview, producer Yoshinori Ono confirmed the fate of the spectacular action RPG called Deep Down, which was announced back in 2013. Although the developer team that worked on the game under his lead has been dissolved, Capcom does not forget about the title and is still considering its future.

Deep Down is an action RPG from Capcom, inspired by the Dark Souls series, announced back in 2013, so before the official debut of PlayStation 4, on which it was to appear as one of the first exclusive titles. Yoshinori Ono, known mainly for his Street Fighter series, worked on the game together with a dedicated development team. Only the greatest fans of Sony's platform remember about the game now, because after many years of silence on the part of the Japanese, the game evaporated completely from the consciousness of the players. The last details about the project were announced in 2015. Eurogamer recently had the opportunity to talk to Ono and ask about Deep Down. The dev confirmed what we might have suspected. The team was disbanded and the works on the game were suspended. He stressed, however, that Capcom had not abandoned the franchise and was still regularly renewing its trade mark.

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. 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.

It also added that the early version of Deep Down was significantly expanded beyond what was shown in the last playable public demo released in 2015. In the end, these ideas did not work out and did not meet the expectations. With the success of the new Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry and the recent installments of the Resident Evil series, Capcom is now experiencing a small renaissance and has gained wind in its sails, so perhaps the company will decide to use the finished skeleton and reanimate Deep Down, this time as a position for a next-gen platforms.

The biggest impressions in the game's announcements were made by its visuals.

Recall that the first Deep Down presentation in 2013 made a huge impression mainly due to the visuals of the title supported by a new original Capcom engine called Panta Rhei. The creators boasted of its many unique features and advanced graphic effects. Despite its potential and promises, Panta Rhei has been forgotten, as has Deep Down itself. After several years of presenting tech demos Capcom hasn't used the engine in any game or other project so far.

Let's add that the first promo materials from Deep Down indicated that we were dealing with a classic fantasy production. With time, however, it turned out that Capcom's work combined fantastic elements with science fiction. Its action was set in the distant year 2094. During the game, the players traveled into the distant past written in the artifacts they collected. On site, they travelled through partly randomly generated dungeons and labyrinths, searching for treasures and battling fantastic beasts. The title was to function in a free-to-play model supported by microtransactions and rely on cooperative multiplayer to a large extent.