Daikatana Exposed

John Romero spilled a few beans regarding ION Storm's upcoming shooter Daikatana. The big news out of Dallas is that the Quake II fueled game is doing so well under Romero's guidance that ION has - we kid you not - already started early work on Daikatana II.

Here are the quick details revealed by ION Storm's John Romero early Thursday morning:

Daikatana will consist of four worlds: Futuristic Kyoto, an Ancient Greek world, an ancient medieval world, and San Francisco circa 2030. Each world will have seven levels and one additional secret level.

Weapons, save for the Daikatana (sword), will not be transferable from world to world.

In RPG fashion, players will gain experience, but in a slight twist, the Daikatana will also gain ability as well.

Currently, there is one main character and two sidekicks - although it seems that only one will be playable.

Romero et al. have designed 74 monsters but expect to build additional monsters into the game over the months leading up to its release.

Romero is not doing any of the level design on Daikatana.

ION has begun preliminary work on Daikatana II and is using the services of Human Head, an outfit comprising former Raven Software employees who worked on Heretic and Hexen. Romero said DII would likely use Epic Megagame's Unreal engine (the same engine, you will recall, ION licensed for Warren Spector's still-untitled game).

Romero said there will not only be prerendered cinemas between worlds, but that there will also be in-engine cinemas through the game.

And finally, Romero also indicated the idea of developing Daikatana for a console release on the Nintendo 64 is of great interest to him.

Oh yes, when's the title due? Romero says September is the date. He attributed the delayed release date to certain problems encountered with the Quake II engine – to say nothing of the fact that ION had to wait until Quake II was released before QII code was available for implementation with Daikatana.

Will it be worth the wait. GameSpot News will bring you additional Daikatana news shortly.