Despite the fact that it will retain the same uncompromising levels of extreme difficulty as previous FromSoftware games, the recently unveiled Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be unlike anything that FromSoftware has made before. During a recent E3 interview with GameSpot, FromSoftware also put fan speculation to rest by confirming that Sekiro won’t be connected in any way to the studio’s previous Soulsborne games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, etc.).
On the surface, Sekiro certainly shares some similarities with From’s past titles, including the previously mentioned extreme difficulty, RPG mechanics, and tense, deliberate melee combat. However, according to Sekiro’s game director Hidetaka Miyazaki, that’s about where the similarities end:
“Sekiro was not designed as an evolution of Soulsborne, of the Souls series. It was designed from the ground up, from scratch, as an entirely new concept, as a new game. So we don’t know if you’d call this an evolution of the series in this sense.”
While Miyazaki was clear in his insistence that Sekiro won’t have any direct connections to the previous Soulsborne games, he also made sure to clarify that FromSoftware doesn’t want to turn away existing Soulsborne fans either:
“Of course with Sekiro, we don’t intend to disappoint or turn away fans of previous FromSoftware games, that core fan base. We want to keep the challenge. We want to keep that core experience very much intact for those people.”
Lastly, Miyazaki touched on Sekiro’s unique resurrection mechanic, a mechanic which will allow players to revive themselves on the exact spot where an enemy felled them. Some fans worried that such a mechanic would make Sekiro easier by contrast, but Miyazaki said that won’t be the case:
“The resurrection system is not created to make the game easier in any way. It’s created to assist the flow of battle and that general rhythm and tempo throughout the game that was made difficult by that constant pressure of death and that constant fear of death.”
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC sometime in 2019. For the time being, most of FromSoftware’s attention will be focused on both Sekiro and its upcoming VR game Déraciné, but that doesn’t mean the studio is entirely done with the Dark Souls series.