According to a Famitsu interview — that flew under the radar since E3 2018 was in full force — we learn from Hidetaka Miyazaki how FromSoftware and Activision are collaborating to make Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and what the former has learned from the latter.
Back on June 13th, when E3 2018 was in full swing, Famitsu struck up an interview with Sekiro’s director, Miyazaki, where the interview happened to be translated by ElDynamite of bagoum.com. You can catch highlights of the interview right here.
One of the many questions wanted to know why Miyazaki and From chose to work with Activision on Sekiro:
“Excluding actual game development and sales within Japan and Asia, we’ve left sales in the rest of the world to Activision. One of the most significant reasons for choosing Activision as a publisher was that they could give us advice about the entire length of game development.”
Another question from Famitsu inquired to know why From is working on this level of collaboration with Activision. The answer to the question lies below:
“Let me say this clearly: all decisions about game development are made by us. Activision respects the game that we are making, and that we desire to make, and offers play impressions as well as advice about what we could do to improve the game. As always, we ask that all decisions after the title screen be left to us, and we’ve been successful in collaborating under this framework.”
The publication later expressed that they didn’t expect Activision would be involved in the “creative aspects” of the game, to which Miyazaki responded:
“”Creative aspects” is quite vague, but what Activision principally focuses on is ease of play, comfort, and appropriate onboarding [tutorial-ish]. It’s embarassing to say, but we’re not particularly strong in those areas, so it helps greatly.”
Lastly, we learn that Sekiro is an action-adventure game without stats or classes, that there are different weapons and abilities to master, and that the game can be very hard if you rush through it, but if you take your time and learn the enemies/world the game can be rewarding.
Sekiro: Shadows Dice Twice will cost $59.99, and is slated to come out in early 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
