25 Years Later, Kamiya Wants to Direct DMC Again

"That will become clear when I make another game in the DMC series."

That was Hideki Kamiya's response on X when a fan asked him about a piece of deep-cut lore from the original Devil May Cry: what exactly is the dragon Dante transforms into during the final boss fight? Is it a familiar, something tied to his aura, or something else entirely? Kamiya didn't explain. He dangled the answer behind a game that doesn't exist yet.

Now, Kamiya being Kamiya, this could mean absolutely nothing. The man is famous for blocking people who tweet at him in English, clapping back at trolls, and generally treating his social media presence like performance art. Reading a straight announcement into one of his tweets is usually a fool's errand. But the context around this particular tease is what makes it land differently than his usual antics.

Kamiya left Capcom after directing Okami in 2006 and co-founded PlatinumGames, where he led Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101. He then left Platinum in 2023 to start a new studio called Clovers. That studio has since partnered with Capcom on an unannounced Okami sequel. He's already back in the building, in other words. The distance between "Kamiya working with Capcom again" and "Kamiya directing a Devil May Cry" just shrank from impossible to merely unlikely.

Kamiya's Pattern

Here's what I find interesting: as GamesRadar's Dustin Bailey pointed out, Kamiya pulled a very similar move back in 2019 when he teamed up with Ikumi Nakamura to tease a possible Okami sequel on social media. Years later, that tease turned into an actual Capcom collaboration. If this is the same playbook, he's gauging fan appetite before anything gets greenlit. And judging by the reaction online, the appetite is there.

I'd love to see it happen. Kamiya directed the original Devil May Cry in 2001 and never touched the series again. Capcom handed it to other directors for every sequel, including Hideaki Itsuno's acclaimed DMC5 in 2019. Seven years have passed since that game shipped, and Capcom hasn't announced a follow-up. If there was ever a window for Kamiya to step back in, this is it.

The lore question itself is a fun detail. The fan, YokkelTV, specifically asked about the Devil Trigger dragon transformation in the Mundus fight, wondering whether it functions like Vergil's summoned swords or something else entirely. Kamiya's full response, translated via DeepL, was:

僕が再びDMCシリーズを作る時に明らかになるでしょう…

Which translates to: "That will become clear when I make another game in the DMC series." Not "if." When.

Could it be trolling? Sure. Kamiya normally blocks people who ask him about franchises he's no longer involved with, so his engagement at all is unusual. Whether Capcom has any interest in handing Devil May Cry back to its original creator is a question only Capcom can answer. But with Kamiya already collaborating with them on Okami and the DMC franchise sitting dormant since 2019, this feels like more than a throwaway joke. If he's testing the waters again, I hope Capcom is paying attention.