Here's the relevant parts from the interview with Hideaki Itsuno:
"I've really wanted to be able to make a sequel right after [the original game] came out, so sorry for making everyone wait so long," said game director Hideaki Itsuno in the Play magazine interview. "I've been so grateful to see so many fans appreciate the quality of the game and support it for so many years. Having fans support the game - both inside Capcom and out - is definitely something that helped push the project towards realisation."
"We held multi-day sessions where the team came up with ideas for things that could happen in the game, and the funniest ideas were always the ones people came up with when our work kept us up late at night," said the game director. "When we actually went to implement those ideas, we put aside the question of 'can we really put something this silly in the game?' and put as many of them as possible in it."
This is so sweet to me. The thing he says about ideas that came late at night is very curious to me also, sometimes staying late for some reason or not getting usual amount of sleep my thinking or headspace could get sort of expanded, or more open or unrestricted, kinda hard to describe exactly, I wonder if it's the same or similar thing.
Reading this stuff makes me 10x more excited for the game than any cinematic trailer or celebrity face-scan cameo could ever dream to.
I love it when developers are passionate about the game that they're making. It seems to happen less and less these days, but Itsuno is seriously one of the good ones.
Resetera gonna be unhappy that the staff are working till late at night and Jason Schrier gonna write an article about crunch at Capcom because they are a bunch of people who haven't worked a day in their life/don't know what it means to be passionate about their job. Getting this Day 1.