"The president has set the difficulty of this ga so high. The previous gas didn't feel this challenging. Will a ga like this be popular?"
On the floor of the city developnt departnt, the core mbers of the developnt team were holding a seminar on the developnt of Sekiro.
It had been almost half a year since Takayuki gave them the ga chanics and world-building concept for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and during that ti, they had built most of the ga's rough frawork.
However, the ga's frawork itself wasn't the problem.
The size of Sekiro was moderate, but the ga's chanics and other aspects of quality were top-notch.
It was a ga that focused on gaplay and storyline, while being light on technology.
For the Tenth Developnt Departnt, which had always focused heavily on technical gaplay developnt, this was actually a relatively easy task.
They had previously worked on WarioWare, Ring Fit Adventure, Gastar's motion-based sports gas, and other projects.
They had touched on various gaplay technologies and were considered the experintal departnt within the company.
They were progressing smoothly with Sekiro's developnt.
However, after completing the frawork, they encountered a more practical issue with the ga.
This ga... is quite difficult.
The protagonist is a samurai or ninja from ancient Japan, whose story is to find and protect his young lord.
During this journey, the protagonist must keep hunting enemies, and every ti he performs what Takayuki described as "sitting Buddha" (a ditation action), all the enemies and monsters respawn, and the player must go to the next "sitting Buddha" spot to pass through the stage.
Simply put, this ga doesn't have rigidly fixed levels. Instead, it uses a relatively free-form "sitting Buddha" thod for progression.
This was a rather novel gaplay chanic.
At least in this world, there was no ga that used this "souls-like" chanic yet.
Recently, there were so gas trying to emulate Dead Cells and other troidvania-style gas, but they were still quite different from Sekiro.
And the thing that made Sekiro fascinating, Takayuki had clearly pointed it out, was that it allowed players to grow through death.
That's right, it's not about the character's growth in the ga.
The character's growth in the ga is very limited, and leveling up only provides a very small boost to abilities.
When facing many powerful enemies, this growth rely increases the margin for error; it does not solve the fundantal weakness of the character.
To be honest, everyone in the Tenth Developnt Departnt had a hard ti understanding what made this ga enjoyable for players.
It seed like a ga designed to tornt players.
Look at how Monster Hunter is evolving toward a more lightweight and streamlined direction. The overall difficulty of the ga is even lowering.
Monster Hunter: World further reduced the difficulty, and as a result, its sales skyrocketed compared to previous versions, becoming the best-selling ga in the Monster Hunter series.
But Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice? It raised the ga difficulty to a whole new level.
They couldn't understand it.
The developnt team really couldn't understand it.
Faced with the questioning from the core team mbers, Kawahara Rinto actually resonated with them.
"Letting players' growth be a highlight? But wouldn't this just make players give up on the ga early on? If players give up early, how can it beco a rewarding experience later?"
Kawahara Rinto looked at their puzzled expressions and said, "These are the core gaplay ideas proposed by the president. I know you have many doubts, but the president has said that once the ga's half-finished version is made, we will understand what makes this ga fun."
"Well, honestly, I actually find the president's idea of adding more fragnted narrative in the ga quite interesting. By exploring the world, players can piece together a rough picture of the ga's world. For soone like , who loves collecting things, it's like a godsend."
"Oh, and I also really like the president's idea of having a deep map design. Although it's driving our map designers crazy, I find this deep map structure really appealing."
"You don't have to say that! Just talking about the map design is driving crazy!"
The team mber in charge of the overall map design looked pained.
If there was one thing that Sekiro tortured people with, it was probably these two aspects.
One was Takayuki's exaggerated requirents for the sound and actions when swords collided, which nearly drove the motion capture team crazy.
The other was the map design team.
The whole map of Sekiro was designed like a nesting-doll structure.
This was a brand-new type of map design they had never encountered before.
Actually, this kind of map design is quite common in troidvania-style gas.
It's simply that the areas players walk through early on can later be revisited after obtaining key items or unlocking certain chanisms, allowing players to re-explore these areas.
Just the first small section of the ga's path already hides several key plot events that the player must go through later.
This ans that from the very beginning, the ga's map design is deeply intertwined with the story.
In troidvania gas, due to the 2D side-scrolling perspective, this map depth design isn't too complicated.
But when such map depth design is applied to 3D gas, the difficulty of the map design increases geotrically.
No wonder the map designers were going crazy.
Takayuki had provided the overall world-building and gaplay design, but when it ca to the details of the ga's map, he couldn't rember everything clearly, so he had to let a dedicated design team create a new large map.
They needed to balance the ga's gaplay with the gradual, imrsive process of exploring the ga world.
"Sorry to bring up your painful spot, but I think if you can make breakthroughs in map design, this ga's map will definitely surprise people. Perhaps this is one of the aspects that will make the ga so appealing?"
After receiving so comfort, the map design team lead felt a bit better.
But his frustration with the map design wasn't completely gone.
At this mont, Kawahara Rinto asked, "Alright, I'll gather the difficulties and issues you raised and review them. Now let's summarize the progress of the ga developnt."
Reviews
All reviews (0)