"The president has set the difficulty of this game very high. No previous game has felt this high. Will a game like this be very popular?"
On the floor of the Municipal Development Department, the core of the development team was conducting a seminar on Sekiro Development.
It has been less than half a year since Takeyusei gave them the gameplay and world view of Sekiro Shadow Dies Twice, and during this time they have almost established the general framework of the game.
But the game's framework isn't actually a problem.
The game size of Sekiro itself is mid-range, but the quality of the gameplay and other aspects is considered top-notch.
This is a game that emphasizes gameplay and plot over technology.
This is a piece of cake for the Tenth Development Department, which has always attached great importance to the development of technical gameplay.
They have previously participated in Made in Wario, the somatosensory game Ring Fitness Adventure, and the Yusei somatosensory sports game.
They are involved in various gameplay technologies, and it can be regarded as an experimental department within the entire company.
They came to develop Sekiro quite smoothly.
To put it simply, this game does not have a very restrictive level range, but a relatively free form of sitting on the Buddha to pass the level.
That's right, it's not character growth in the game.
Can't understand.
If you want to say what is the most torturous part of Sekiro, it would probably be in two aspects.
It's just that you can get some key props in the later stages through the places you visited in the early stage, or you can find certain mechanisms that can be unlocked, and then go back to the previous map for new exploration.
"Stop talking! When I mention this map design, I almost go crazy!"
The protagonist himself is an ancient Japanese warrior or ninja. His story is to find his young master and protect him.
Egawa Rinto looked at their questioning expressions and said: "This is the core of the gameplay proposed by the president. I know you have a lot of doubts, but the president has already said that after the semi-finished product of this game is actually produced, we
You will also understand the fun of this game.”
Faced with the questioning voices from the core team below, Rinto Egawa actually resonated with them very much.
In this process, he needs to hunt continuously all the way, and every time he performs the sitting Buddha described by Zhu Yuxing, all enemies and monsters will be refreshed, and he must enter the next place where he can sit Buddha.
Passed a level briefly.
But after they completed building the framework, they discovered a more realistic problem in the game.
In fact, this kind of map design is quite common in Metroidvania type games.
No wonder map designers are going crazy.
"Well, to be honest, I actually think that the president's proposal to add more fragmented narratives in the game is quite interesting. Through continuous exploration of the world, I can piece together the general appearance of the entire game world. For me,
It’s simply good news for collectors.”
One is that Zhu Yusei had very exaggerated requirements for the sounds and movements when the swords hit each other, which caused the motion capture team to go crazy.
Only recently have there been works imitating Metroidvania games such as Dead Cells.
It is necessary to take into account not only the gameplay of the game itself, but also the gradual process of the game itself from the inside out.
To be honest, it is difficult for everyone in the Tenth Development Department to understand how this kind of game can make players happy to play.
"Is it fun to let players grow themselves? But wouldn't this kind of abuse of players make players give up on the game at the beginning? Since players have given up on the game in the early stages, how can it become a fun point in the future?"
That is, through constant death, the players themselves can grow.
"Oh, by the way, I also like the map design with sufficient depth proposed by the president. Although this makes our map designers go crazy, this kind of perfect map depth really attracts me."
But when this kind of map depth design is used in 3D games, the difficulty of map design really increases exponentially.
Monster Hunter World further reduces the overall difficulty of Monster Hunter by a level, and the reward is that the overall sales of Monster Hunter World have increased by millions compared with previous works, making it the best-selling game in the Monster Hunter series.
And Takeyusei pointed out very clearly what makes Sekiro so fascinating.
The character growth in the game is very limited, and each level upgrade can only increase the ability to a very small extent.
This is also a quite novel gameplay.
The other one is the team responsible for map design.
But this Sekiro Shadow Dies Twice? Once again, the overall difficulty of the game has increased crazily.
Zhu Youxing gave the entire world view setting and the gameplay design of the game, but it was difficult to remember the details of the map in the game too comprehensively, so he could only let a specialized design team design a brand new large map.
When facing many very powerful enemies, this kind of improvement can only increase the probability of fault tolerance, but it cannot solve the fundamental weakness of the character itself.
The entire map of Sekiro is simply a matryoshka-like design with links inside each other.
Just the short stretch of road at the beginning of the game actually hides the only way to pass several key plots in the later stages of the game.
This is a brand new map design that they have never encountered before.
In other words, the game map design must be deeply tied to the story from the beginning.
You see, Monster Hunter is now developing in the direction of lightweighting and simplicity, and the overall difficulty of the game is actually decreasing.
On the sidelines, the backbone of the team responsible for leading the overall design of the map had a look of pain on his face.
But there are still some essential differences from Sekiro.
This is simply a cruel game.
Because of the 2D horizontal perspective of the Metroidvania type game itself, the depth design of this map is actually not too complicated.
The development team really can't understand it.
At least in this world, this kind of soul-based gameplay has not yet appeared.
This game...is not easy.
"I'm sorry to mention your sadness, but I think if you can make a breakthrough in map design, this game will definitely shine on the map. Maybe this is also the attractive part of the game.
one?"
After being comforted, the person in charge of map design felt a little better.
But this still cannot stop him from resenting the map design itself.
Egawa Rinto also asked at this time: "Okay, I will summarize the difficulties and issues you raised and study them. Now let's summarize the game development progress."