As Elden Ring Nightreign’s exclusive Passthecontroller initial coverage continues, we bring you interviews with Miyazawa’s Combat and Combat Designer. enjoy!
First of all, can it explain something like working on fromsoftware and working on highly acclaimed titles like Elden Ring or Nightreign?
Takuya Miyazawa- Nightreign Games and Combat Designer:
I myself was a fan of huge souls before. I’m a huge fan of these games and what the company has made, so it’s a great honor to work on such titles as well as the fun of creating these games. Thank you as I feel a bit of pressure and responsibility from fans who enjoy these games too.
When you enter Nightreign, there are a lot of very subtle differences between the combat mechanics of Base Eldenling and Nightleague. Can you talk a bit about why you felt that some of these mechanics needed to be changed for multiplayer games like Nightreagn and how the resulting gameplay fits a little better with Nightreign’s fast multiplayer style?
So, a change in Nightreign’s design… First, let’s take a look at some general designs for Nightrign itself. So, as you know, it uses Eldenling as the basis for its design, so the world and many assets and basic combat flow comes from Eldenling. But it uses it as a base for enemies and so on, but one area we wanted to focus on in Nightreign was how to encounter these enemies, the flow of battle, and the abilities you can use. And with the Elden ring as the base we were able to branch out and experiment in these other regions, making it stand out from the Elden ring and become something of its own newness.
So, although the game base sits at the core of Eldenling, I wanted to create a very different gameplay experience in the end. Eldenling is a much slower pace and is more open-ended. You take your time and carefully go around the world, but Nightreign is what we call a short RPG. There are a few restrictions here. For example, three days, three nights time aspects, and player limits. But at the same time, we wanted to allow for free points that were not otherwise available in Eldenling while putting these restrictions on players from a structural standpoint. Therefore, the way they pass through the maps allows them to sprint and they can quickly climb the wall. Let’s take a look… there is no fall damage compared to Eldenling. So, while placing these constraints on the player from a structural perspective, we wanted to open them up and allow this freedom from a gameplay perspective as well. So it was about creating that balance and contrast.
As for stat leveling and how players build characters, of course, in Eldenling, there was character creation and construction from the start, but in Nightrign, you choose from preset characters as your archetype from the beginning, then change weapons, change equipment, and change playstyle a bit. So you can start as a tank, but you don’t have to play that tank’s role from a gameplay perspective.
We wanted players to enjoy roleplaying each character from their character’s traits and abilities rather than concepts like preconceived notions of approach. And actually, they wanted to cut down on the menu time that players spend on menus. So instead of carefully checking the statistics and going through the leveling process, it’s more in-place, it’s more ad hoc, and we wanted to reduce and condense these elements we found in previous games, but with a narrower, more compact experience, this short-shaped RPG experience becomes narrower.
So these are just some of the aspects that we tried to consider when approaching this from a multiplayer cooperative perspective.
The boss we had to check out today as we were playing was Libra: The Creature of the Night
So for this particular boss fight… obviously with each boss fight in the game, we are trying to give them their own idiosyncraticity and their own touch, breaking them apart and making them feel original. We wanted each of us to feel like our own experience. So we added this trade-off feature that takes place before battle, especially when using Libra. And of course, this allows players to get new special weapons, important leveling ups, or anything that benefits them. But of course, it’s the nature of Libra and the nature of the game, so it doesn’t necessarily make them the advantage, so I wanted to create this interesting and risky feature for this particular boss.
As for the real experience during combat, I also wanted this kind of Libra nature to be reflected in the gameplay. Thus, this kind of duality aspect of the character is in both its appearance and behavior. So we wanted to offer a two-type mobile set. First, there are magic and traps that can confuse players and trick them, and then there are attacks that focus on more power and damage. Therefore, this duality was hoping to reflect both its appearance and its pre-battle and gameplay experience.
One of the things that really hit me about the boss battles was that it reminded me of a boss like an MMO raid. Did MMO boss designs design any inspiration when creating this boss battle?
Yes, we paid attention to boss fights with other genres such as MMO and took some notes and inspiration from these. But one thing we want to note was the fact that what we see as Nightreign is a cooperative and multiplayer-focused game. During these boss battles, when another player draws Aggro, the boss still feels like a big threat to other players in the group. So, even if another player is drawing an aggro, the attack the boss is trying to do and its behavior keeps the other players on their toes, even if they are adjacent to it or take a more solo-oriented approach.
By the way, I definitely felt that. Even if I didn’t have a boss aggro, I still feel threatened. Shifting gear into class, what does Nightreign character class design do? Do you want to fill in a particular archetype? Do you come up with some cool ideas for your skills and design a class based on them, or how does the process really look?
This is a very unorthodox approach we used to design Nightreign’s character. Start with this kind of general role or role title for each character, for example, Tank or Magician type mentioned above. So we start with these very common and loose bases of the character archetypes. And from the director, we get ideas for the characters and their personalities, and the abilities they intend to use and things like this.
Just to give an example of that. You may have used her in network tests, play sessions, and The Recluse. Her typical example actually began as a magician, magic user, plain and simple. But from there we began to discuss what was fun and interesting about playing as a magician from a player’s perspective. And of course, it’s about using magic to use your intelligence to bring together enemies and their weaknesses and kind of battle puzzles. Of course, just blasting magic is fun, but it required additional layers, such as using resources, timing of spells, and more, using multiple spells in combination. And we began designing the system around that new kind of magician concept and how players interact with it. That’s the kind of approach we’ve taken to character design.
Another aspect of the approach to class design was how to engage in a multiplayer environment. So of course, Nightreign is a three-player cooperative game at its core, and we wanted these skills and characters to be interesting from both solo and multiplayer perspectives. So one example of this might be the Duchess’ Lesrestoric skills. Obviously, this is a very powerful skill when playing solo play, but if you take it to the next level and master it, you might be able to see what your allies are doing, deal a lot of damage, then rearrange your attack patterns, and deal extra damage like that. That’s why we really encourage this kind of teamwork and thinking as a group and thinking from a cooperative perspective.
This is the first from Soft Souls, with fully developed ready-made classes, each with their own unique skills and abilities. Does that have any effect, rather, do you pose a challenge regarding how to design boss and enemy encounters, knowing the powerful tools that allow teams to take part in battle?
As for each character’s individual abilities and their ultimate and skill, I didn’t want to tell them how they approach enemy designs and encounter designs. I didn’t want the player’s action level to be infringed much on the enemy’s action level. We wanted to focus on these characters and make them feel unique and fun for the players first and foremost.
One area we focused on is the sense of roles or responsibility within each character. So, some may find it their duty to try and protect others during difficult boss battles, or to deflect additional (enemies) during enemies, certain boss battles. Something like this was a feature of ready-made designs that could be included in Nightreign, which may have been less of a try in previous titles.
Of course, another aspect is that since this is a cooperative game focused on having a team of three, I wanted the boss to feel particularly hardcore from that perspective as well. That’s why they use very large-scale attacks. They use certain abilities to inhibit or limit players, or they use abilities that put a kind of urgency in their movements, like the timer given them in the boss battles of Gladius. This is what we really wanted to make them feel unique and proud in their own way.
You mentioned the duchess’ abilities and combinations used by one of your allies with very strong abilities. Are there other favourite ability combos or synergies from the available character classes?
Another example I can give is the raider character who raises a giant totem from the Earth. This itself deals damage to enemies and bosses, but at the same time, various characters can climb onto it. For example, Irony characters can also bring arrows down from the safety of their gravestones, or shoot them with long range attacks to revive the character. I feel that these things have a great range and synergy to experiment with each of these characters.
Another example is a more general example. This is a recluse that can also be used in network testing. Her ultimate art actually marks enemies and places them this kind of seal that grants HP and your teammate’s HP when you attack. Therefore, this can be used in conjunction with high damage output or subsequent fast attacks from teammates, and is highly effective at healing your team and may keep them alive. This is what I hope players will experiment with and enjoy playing with these different combinations.
Was the Libra boss battle inspired by certain characters or myths?
Well, he can’t talk about a particular title or name. One of the main inspirations for Libra Boss Battle was the focus of this kind of large-scale multiplayer raid battles. So there was this idea that many players would come together to fight this boss battle. This includes not only knowing the type of exciting and dangerous elements of that battle, but also knowing when the puzzle elements are right to attack, knowing when to retreat, and understanding the various elements of this boss battle. So we wanted it to feel like everyone, not just everyone, but for the charm of ourselves.
Personally, what are the Nightregign characters I like to play and what builds are they really hoping for players to dig deeper and enjoy?
My personal favorite is Guardian, a character from the Avian Knight in the Shield. He prefers the kind of defensive, tank-like builds that this character Archetype offers. I enjoy being able to both attack and defend at the same time, or to provide his team with such a breakwater and its safe area. If players are not so enthusiastic about the perfect timing of fast Dodge Rolling and Parry or anything like that, this is a great character that makes them feel like they can really contribute to the side of the team and enjoy the fight in that sense as well.
In general, the game was designed so that players could beat it as any character. So I wanted them to break the game with their playing style and characters they enjoy, feeling like they could choose their favorite character from a abilities perspective or from a look and backstory perspective. That said, balance remains important, and the synergy of the teams we talked about found a good balance between, for example, tank-type characters, magician-type characters, and damage deal-type characters. This is often as important as the choices you make of the boss. Therefore, the battles of bosses on different night lords can also promote different synergistic effects or different types of roles, different team compositions. So, let the player understand these aspects and try out different characters. Find something that really resonates while they do it.
We really wanted both the boss characters, these encounters, and the players themselves to feel unique in their own unique way. And we wanted it to feel unique enough so that the player could go back into the game and approach another character perfectly. So, even if they beat the boss with the Guardian, they might want to go back and try it as a recluse and see the other tricks they can come up with. Players may also be able to enjoy three re-employment teams, so they are really looking forward to that aspect of the game as they triple a particular character and see what crazy stunts they can come up with.
The last question, and this may be the most difficult, but what is your favorite video game?
As mentioned before, I really like these action RPGs, From games we make. I’m also a huge fan of Final Fantasy 14 and other multiplayer online games.
