Team Ninja: Xbox Game Pass, Nioh on Xbox, and Elden Ring … the studio delivers | Xbox One
In an interview with VGC during Gamescom, Fumihiko Yasuda and Masaaki Yamagiwa discuss their work on Team Ninja. An opportunity for them to look back on their experience in the kind that resemble spirits, elden ringeagerly awaited Wu Long: Fallen Dynasty, but also new information on the projects and possibilities available to the studio. Here’s what to remember.
Don’t say like-spirits anymore, but Maskory
The masocore genre is an old classification of video games that mainly corresponds to 2D horizontal scrolling games, which are particularly challenging and we can cite it heavenly A recent example of this type. However, the likeness of spirits, although made in 3D, is perfectly legitimate to claim that name. Like Souls, Team Ninja knows a lot about it, but the Japanese studio talks well about masocore to qualify Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty in Interview conducted with VGC last August.
In this interview, the director of Nioh and the producer of Bloodborne discuss in detail their next game that will be available in Xbox Game Pass When it was released in early 2023. When asked about the significance of another FromSoftware-inspired title, Team Ninja explained that it was the developers’ job to make it attractive. In the case of Wo Long, both creators delve into the new morale system and the ability to use magic in a new way.
Yes, we think there is still plenty of room to do new things with a mission-driven format and structure. And you know, one thing we’ll do with Wo Long is the morale system. The morale system works, for example, when you are facing a strong enemy, and you have a morale rank that increases as you defeat the enemies.
So you can look at the map and wonder which routes you should take based on your current morale. And for example, you can bring down a great enemy, your morale will rise, and you will be stronger. And if you die, there’s a balance between the top and the bottom, okay? So you might be thinking, I want to go this route without enemies to keep my spirits in place in order to stay strong. Or maybe I want to take on powerful enemies in another path and try to level it more.
When it comes to evoking the Elden Ring, Team Ninja praises the success of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s latest creation, but points out the huge difference in their games that aren’t open worlds. For them, the gameplay mainly depends on the system of tasks and levels, and it does not prevent a certain form of openness and diversity of styles, but nevertheless it differs from the open-world game.
We’ve played the game, and we think Elden Ring did a great job creating an open world experience. But for Wo Long, we’re not looking to make it an open world experience. Instead, we try to focus on what we do well here in Team Ninja, which are mission-based action games, with a lot of focus on the stages you’ll go through.
Following the exclusive Nioh diptych for PlayStation consoles, Wo Long: Fallen Dynsaty benefits from a partnership with Xbox that should allow many players to discover the creators’ work jaden ninja. However, the studio states that there is no further conclusion to be drawn from this collaboration regarding their future projects. This interview confirms that at the moment, there is no possibility for Nioh and a sequel to arrive one day on Microsoft consoles.
Wo Long’s presence on Xbox Game Pass is seen as an opportunity to reach a large audience while riding the success of Xbox Series X | S in the Japanese archipelago. The other concern is to have the maximum number of players in the multiplayer portion of the title and to maintain that presence over time. Unfortunately, we won’t know anything at the moment regarding the online game.
We are very pleased that many players have the opportunity to experience the Team Ninja title, probably for the first time, with Wo Long. But just because it’s on Game Pass doesn’t mean we’ve changed XYZ… it’s not something we’ve done on the development side. We just want to make Wo Long the best game possible, and hope new fans or users can play and enjoy it. We don’t want to change it for a specific audience or anything like that.
As for the future, Fumihiko Yasuda and Masaaki Yamagiwa are not closing any doors. Their main concern is to meet the expectations of the players while listening to the desires and capabilities of the different studio teams. The intention to revive the Ninja Gaiden franchise is always on their mind, but it seems difficult to implement. However, a possible new authorship can be entrusted to a junior team, or even to an external team, but it will be necessary to ensure coherence with the DNA of Team Ninja.
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