Home Gaming Nioh was inspired by the challenging action of Dark Souls

Nioh was inspired by the challenging action of Dark Souls

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Nioh! 12 years in development, and it doesn’t look a day over 4 to be honest. That’s because Sony’s upcoming darkly-souled slasher has been in the hands of Team Ninja for the last couple of years, as development shifted to the masterminds behind the devilishly challenging Ninja Gaiden series of games. It’s a game that has been through some big changes over the years, changes which David Bowie would sing about if he wasn’t tripping the light fantastic in the afterlife.

“Team Ninja has only been on this for 3-4 years, so this is what I’ve heard (but can’t attest the whole truth of it),” Nioh’s creative director Fumihiko Yasuda said to Eurogamer in a TGS interview.

Initially it was meant to be a JRPG, then at some point it was handed to Omega Force and it resembled something more like a Warriors-style game. And after Team Ninja took the baton, then it became a hardcore action game.

That just about aligns with previous comments on the changes made to Nioh, as Yasuda explained that earlier incarnations of the Samurai slasher just didn’t match up to the grand plan that Koei Tecmo CEO Kou Shibusawa had for the title. “The earlier versions didn’t live up to his vision. And ever since Team Ninja took over he has been rather hands-off, but he has been vigilant,” Yasuda explained.

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So basically he would not question every decision that we’d make, but on the other hand he would constantly play the game himself, so we could feel his watchful eyes. But he does respect what Team Ninja does, so he hasn’t been heavily involved in its development recently.

Thing is, Nioh looks like it happens to have borrowed a lot of inspiration from the Dark Souls series, to craft a game that feels like a big departure from Koei Tecmo’s usual brand of action. “Yes, it did have a big impact on the direction this project eventually took. We have very, very high opinions of the Souls series and it’s captivated a very wide audience, even here in Japan,” Yasuda said of the Dark Souls inspiration.

Also, fundamentally that the game is very difficult, very challenging, yet very well-done and refined as a great action game. That part is in common with the past Team Ninja titles. So we did take some inspirations from Dark Souls.

Nioh has had two betas so far, and you can expect even more changes to be implemented between now and the release of the final game next year as Yasuda outlined these plans:

Nioh (12)

The change from beta version to final will not be as drastic as we’ve seen from alpha to beta. That part is for certain. There won’t be major changes, like the fact that we got rid of durability for equipment. Nothing too major like that. One big negative feedback we’ve seen is about the camera. When you’re surrounded by multiple enemies, the camera has its limits as of right now.

We as a team definitely agree with that and we might reduce the fact that you encounter too many enemies in the same area. We may just get rid of the lesser enemies during a boss fight. Eventually we’ll have a clean list that we’ll announce to the public.

That’s not to say that we want to make this game easy in any way, shape or form. We want to make sure that this game stays fair. It’s going to be difficult, but it’s going to feel fair to everybody. The challenging part will always be there.

Nioh is shaping up beautifully so far. It’ll be dropping some of that sweet katana action on PlayStation 4 on February 9 in 2017.

Last Updated: October 4, 2016

2 Comments

  1. Didn’t know he did video-games. LOL !

    Reply

  2. Paul

    October 4, 2016 at 16:52

    I played the Nioh Beta Demo in it’s entirety and even made a short youtube series on the boss fights. It looks and feels like Dark Souls but if you try to play it like Dark Souls you’ll probably die a lot. Souls games, for all of their punishing difficulty, have highly simplified controls. Nioh plays like a fighting game where you get to choose perks for special combination moves and sometimes even have to activate them in your perk trees in order to use them. I’ll be honest, I found the game very difficult at first and then after I’d settled on combos that seemed to work for me I found it perhaps too easy. I’m curious to see how they tweak the final product because a lot of the feedback was that it was simply too hard (they published the beta demo feedback on their website). And it was too hard, at first. But then it became too easy, so if they make it easier it won’t satisfy the fanbase they’re trying to attract (people who like really challenging games).

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