"I think, for him, It looked like a breath of fresh air, and for me personally, it was something that I wanted to do, but also was a breath of fresh air. "And I think it was something that even Mikami-san felt, because from starting Tango Gameworks, it wasn't started to be a strictly horror studio, and he's been very vocal about that, that we've been wanting to make new ideas," he continues. It was an idea that I had for a long time and I put it together and then I basically pitched it as like, 'this is like a long shot that Bethesda will never approve, but I'm just gonna put this out here.'" "There's a lot of joking around in the office and we'll say 'Oh, it'd be funny if we did this, but we're in this Evil Within world, we're constricted. "You almost need a palette cleanser," he says. Apparently, Tango had simply eaten enough pizza. According to Johanas, there's no easy answer, and I suppose in retrospect it's a bit like asking why someone's in the mood for Chinese food instead of pizza. These insights add a lot of clarity into just how Hi-Fi Rush came to be, but it's fair to wonder why Tango Gameworks decided to skip the ghosts and grotesque killer creatures for bouncin' beats, joking robots, and talking feline companions. Hi-Fi Rush director John Johanas Wait, but why? It was both nerve-wracking and at the same time when it did happen, it was overwhelming. He trusted the team's vision and ability to get us to our goal." But he was kind of hands off in that respect. But then the further we got, the more it was very clear that we knew what we were aiming for and what we were doing, and he really acted as a mentor in that sense," says Johanas of Mikami. "And then when we were going further in development, he would jump in and say 'I think this is maybe a little bit easier if you do something like this'. And then he finally saw what we were going for. And he would come and he would test that prototype. So he's like, 'why don't we give this a try? Let's make a prototype of it and see how it works out'. And I think he saw that I had a very strong passion or at least an idea for how it should work. "I think he always saw the potential there," he says. Neither would it have happened if Johanas and Mikami enjoyed anything less than a trusting, mutually respectful professional relationship. Of course, none of this would've been possible if Johanas hadn't worked up the courage to pitch his wild card idea to famed horror maestro and Tango Gameworks founder Shinji Mikami. Team members in general were still a little bit 'is it gonna work?' But it is really fun to play and it's really cool to see the reaction … it's indescribable, because it just proved that the vision that we had in the beginning was correct, but also for the team members who worked so hard on it and put all the effort into it." Obviously I'm the director, so I'm like, 'I think we nailed what we wanted to do'. The experience is sure to be different for every developer involved, but for Johanas, it was "like going from zero to 100 in three seconds." A month ago, no one knew you'd been making a thing for almost five years, and now you're responsible for one of the most popular Xbox games of the year. It was both nerve-wracking and at the same time when it did happen, it was overwhelming." There is a risk factor involved and you're so confident in your product that you wanna show it off, but at the same time, it's probably that confidence in the product that we could almost precalculate that it will spread by word of mouth because the quality is there and the quality is good. "Obviously from a dev angle, it's incredibly scary to be working on something for so long and not show it," he adds. Allowing it to shadow drop and then having people just go right into it – especially with Game Pass as an option – alleviates any theoretical misgivings or confusion over 'Can Tango make something that's not horror?'" "It was well-received by our internal teams," he says. For the director, two things made the concept for both the game and its reveal less of a gamble: he knew what he had made would be good, and he knew it was coming to Xbox Game Pass. No doubt, Hi-Fi Rush forsaking years of potential marketing and hype for a surprise reveal was a risky choice, Johanas admits, but it undoubtedly paid off.
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