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Sakurai Wants To Fix Shooter’s ‘Creativity Problem’

Masahiro Sakurai, the brains behind Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the new Kid Icarus and the creator of Kirby, plans to fix what he sees as "an overriding problem with a lot of game design" according to an interview at TechLand

"As far as creativity, in designing Kid Icarus, I took a look at what I thought was an overriding problem with a lot of game design. I've found that, in the established genres, the controls are always the same. For example, in shooting games, you find first-person-shooters utilize all of the buttons on the controller and always do the same thing the stick is for moving, triggers for shooting and they're always trapped in this very restricted framework for gameplay. And, that's just not creative. It feels like people are taking this empty shell and just swapping out the story and art and whatnot.

This time, with Kid Icarus, we wanted to address that certain problem and not only because I think the industry deserves it, but also because it's a more satisfying experience personally. And for this different direction, I wanted to take what was a common control system in shooters and get something that was new and smooth and easy for new players, but something that was suitable to the hardware as well. In the same sort of way that fighting games started to feel stale, there was definitely something new to be had in a design like Smash Brothers. That series, I think, was able to allow new players to come in and made it more accessible. There are so many more possibilities for game design out there but I think a lot of developers are shutting out those ideas and it is definitely a creativity problem."

Kid Icarus Uprising's control scheme only uses the 3DS's touchscreen, analog stick (or "slide pad") and the L button for much of the action.