Nmia Gaming and several other South East Asian game medias have been given the honourable opportunity to interview Mr. Kitao Yasuhiro from FromSoftware regarding the game Elden Ring that is going to be released soon. Below are the some of the questions asked in the QnA that we would like to share with the series fans and gamers out here:
1. What are the biggest difficulties faced during development when you’re shifting the dimensions of mobility in the game? For example from the dungeon crawling in soulsborne to the verticality in Sekiro to now the highly mobile mount system.
>The mount was needed to explore the huge world comfortably and in a fun way, also partly comes from Miyazaki’s personal taste,where he felt the need of a trusty steed by his side in a fantasy setting. The mount is not a majestic looking, tall and long legged horse, but it is something more “From-esque”, which is more well worn that fits the world and our style of game, that is why the mount is this weird looking four legged creature who turns out to also be a spiritual creature.
2. What is the core element of Elden Ring? (e.g. Flame for Souls series, blood for Bloodborne series)
>The golden tree, the “Erdtree”, is a symbol of both the lands between and Elden Ring as a game and it ties into the world and the story in various different ways.
3. In terms of Multiplayer, will there be bosses that would react to the increased amount of players in terms of maybe attack patterns or AI? Or will it be just the same?As we’ve seen, bosses become trivially easier when you play in co-op previously, as well as co-op being more accessible now in comparison to previous games.
>It comes down to various things, given the lowered barrier to enter multiplayer,and it is also a question of enemy and player parameters, AI, attack pattern and logic. At the end of the day, Co-op is a way to recieve help, and it should make the boss encounter more manageable for most players, but we also don’t want to make it too trivial, and to make it fun, the bosses have extra attack patterns like multi directional aoe and spinning attacks, to keep the player on their toes, while keeping co-op as the way to receive aid in the game.
4. The weapons in Elden Ring have customizations never seen in any previous games, of which includes the customisable weapon skill. What is the decision behind this? as we’ve known that the equipment in previous games carries quite some identity and weight as they each carry little pieces of lore with them.
>The increased level of freedom,as the map became more expansive, and players will spend more time exploring,we wanted to expand on the customization aspect.As the Weapon Arts were first introduced in Dark Souls 3, personally for me, I wanted to change the skills for the weapon I liked. The aspect of bits and pieces of story in the weapons are still intact. Whereas the customizable skills do not apply to all weapons, they are locked to their own weapon types,which is some limitation to make sense and balance, but the customization does expand to magic equipment as well.
5. Based on the Closed Network Test, most bosses have a site of grace, which allows players to challenge the bosses again after you die more conveniently. Is this available for all bosses? Or will there be some bosses that come with a longer run up, much like in the previous souls titles?
>While it’s not all bosses, it’s certainly the case that we’re more mindful of the distance between sites of grace and each boss fights, we wanted to reduce the stress of repeating the track to the boss room, where in the open world setting of Elden Ring, this would definitely result in stress if we need to have a long run to the boss every single time we die. Having the checkpoints near the boss also allows players to tune their builds or level up a bit before trying the boss again.
6. Can we reset our stats or looks, like how we could in the previous games?
> Yes you can do both, reallocation of the stats will need certain conditions and rare items but it will be possible. For appearance, It’s a little bit more free and easygoing, Miyazaki himself sort of half jokingly said that he wants players to feel a lot less restricted because the length or size of the game, or maybe something scary or shocking happened to the player and they want to turn their character’s hair shocked white or something like that.This should be possible in Elden Ring.
7. How did you feel about the collaboration with Mr. George R.R. Martin?
>It was great inspiration working with him, as it was the first time that we made a game based on something written by another creator,it do poses new challenges.And in the original manuscript written by Mr. George R.R. Martin, it is a story full of conspiracy and mythological drama, and it shaped the world and history in Elden Ring, using his imagination to piece together everything that took place before the game.
Regarding the multiplayer server and security issues that has been a topic lately, Mr. Kitao has gave a response right before the interview ended:
> We wanted to reiterate that both the Dark Souls and Elden Ring are very high priority to us, and getting players feel safe when they connect to us and play these games, it’s just the fact that Elden Ring is in mid development, and we have the development environment set up, and we’re ready to address that immediately, Dark souls development environment has not been established for a while, and so having to put that back in place will take some time. But we want to reassure all of our players that both of these games are very high priority for us and we’re gonna do everything we can to ensure that they each get back to a good place.
Elden Ring is now available for pre-order on Steam and Playstation platforms as well as other game retail platforms and physical stores.
The game will be released on 25th February 2022.
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