Tokyo Game Show week was pretty busy for Team Ninja. It announced Rise of the Ronin exclusively for PS5 and released a limited-time demo for Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. The latter is especially interesting in how it fuses elements from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Nioh, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms for a unique experience. However, it still retains the difficulty the developer’s titles are known for.
Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa was interviewed by MP1st (specifically NextGenPlayer) at Tokyo Game Show 2022 and asked whether the team is looking at ways to make the title more accessible. Elden Ring’s addition of Spirits was provided as an example.
Yamagiwa replied, “We’re thinking it’s ‘good’ to have one set difficulty so that everyone has the same experience of overcoming an intense obstacle, and they all have that feeling of achievement, like ‘I did it.’ But the caveat there is giving players all different ways that they can do that. So you could talk to your friends and say, ‘Hey I beat this boss, and this is how I did it.’ You want to talk to people and go online because you want to have communication with them.
“It’s really important to keep the challenge the same and give players different ways to overcome it. Wo Long is not an easy game by any means, but we’re working to give players as much freedom and agency to play it as they want, and overcome obstacles in their own way. One thing that comes to mind is the Morale system. You have a Morale rank, and as you keep increasing it, you get stronger. You can use that to choose which enemies to fight or raise it so you can take on a harder enemy, and maybe they’ll be a little bit easier now that you’re stronger.
“You can also level up your character like a traditional action RPG and get stronger that way. There’s multiplayer as well, so you can get online with your friends, two other people, so a total of three online and then take on bosses as a group. We’re giving players their own ways to tackle all these things. That’s important to Wo Long’s game design.”
In short, the different play styles will provide multiple avenues for success, even if the overall difficulty is still the same. Those looking for accessibility settings or difficulty options will be out of luck.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty launches in early 2023 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC, along with Game Pass. The demo is available until September 26th for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.