Well if anyone wants a Breath of the Wild/Assassin's Creed hybrid that takes place in feudal Japan this would be your game. It's obvious the developers here valued attention to detail and art over monotization. Just a beautiful game that has a zen like quality to it. I'm actually surprised they squeezed this much out of the current generation PS4. People wouldn't be disappointed even if this was a PS5 reveal game. Impressive.
I actually watched this live yesterday. I doubt I'll be getting the game. Mainly because I just have so many other games to play before it. I just couldn't help laughing at the narrator of this reveal, though. It looks like a nice game. This is how I put it to my friends... "I'm enjoying how boring and yet deliberate this narrator is in describing things he seems to be trying to paint as new and revolutionary: you can dye your armor, you can pursue different skill lines, you can switch the language track of this game set in Japan to Japanese and it works pretty well. Oh, you want to promote exploration in your open-world game? Ya don't say?" Just being snarky. It gave me a sense of one of my favorite games ever: Tenchu for the PS1. It seems to have a stance system just like Sekiro, but it's probably not brutally hard like all FromSoft games. Hmm, well maybe I will consider it.
The allure of this game really is it's presentation and exploration similar to Breath of the Wild. Sekiro was semi-open world. Totally different game really. This isn't supposed to be an ultra difficult game like Sekiro. I'm sure it'll have somewhat of a challenge. This game is no means revolutionary though but it just has a certain relaxing presentation. Also this setting hasn't had a large scale open world game like this one yet.
Yeah, I wasn't really comparing it to Sekiro except I noticed that both used a stance system. I did like the dualistic concept of being the honorable samurai that fights head-on with skill or the clever guerilla that does anything necessary to get the job done. Now, personally, open world games tend to kill my fun levels faster than <insert deadly Australian animal>. I've been a Zelda lover for three decades, but I just couldn't get into BotW. However, I do like skill based games with tight controls. And I like Japan. So if this were to combine open world with tight player control, I could see owning it. Still have tons of other games on my docket, though.
Well the reason why open world games have become dull is due to waypoints and maps filled with markers that show you everything where the game hand holds you were to go instead of actually exploring the world. That's what Breath of the Wild did very different that a lot of new open world game devs are mimicking. They instead made the player rely on visual exploration. As in you see a far of thing out in the distance and you have no clue what is between you and that far off object and it becomes an actual adventure. You aren't just running towards a way point and the level design makes it where you don't just have a straight path towards that far off castle you can see. Breath of the Wild actually made the journey as fun as the destination while most other open world games you are just caring about the destination and the running back and forth just seemed boring. I frankly loved Breath of the Wild. Probably the best sense of adventure I've had in a game for a long time. This game seems to rely on actually paying attention to the world's instead of some waypoint. Also some open world's are worth it for the shear detail and art direction of the world.
