"Death is not a sacrifice in vain, but a new value derived from it."
At a time when "Only Wolves" was selling 5 million copies, in an interview, Miyazaki Talked about the concept of 'death'.
"For example, the player wants to extract some experience from it; or through the death of one person, it has some kind of impact on another person. When players face the death of a character in the game, they must cherish it and understand the cause and effect of it, and anyone's death has its meaning. ”
When he said these words, Miyazaki Hidetaka smiled, and his elegant conversation, kind and gentle demeanor seemed to make you feel that he was a well-respected elder, and you who met by chance chatted lightly about the past, so that you would not remember that he was the one who abused thousands of players and was 'denounced' by players as an 'old thief'.
From "Devil's Soul" to "Only Wolf: Shadow Passed Twice", each work polishes the quality and maintains the style, from the first "soul" niche game, to today's multitude of games always like to label the 'soul', innovation is a difficult thing, Miyazaki Hidetaka almost from scratch to open up a new form of game - 'soul' like game.
While complaining about the difficulty of the Souls series, the players with good mouths and the excitement of the "Passing the Fire" continued, and the sales of the three Dark Souls doubled, reaching 20 million sets by the time of Dark Souls 3.
Coupled with various games with the 'soul' label, 'soul' and 'soullike' have been familiar and recognized by the public as a new form of game. It's just that players have experienced a circle of various works, but they always feel that these works are less 'soul' flavored, and they can satisfy the feeling of soullike after the release of Hidetaka Miyazaki's "Eldon's Law Ring".
So what changes and designs did Hidetaka Miyazaki make the Soul and Soullike games known as the new game format?
The definition of 'soullike'
Although I understand that all of you here are well-informed and handsome men, I still can't help but emphasize to the newcomer brothers again - after all, the fire is still passed down by the newcomers - what is the game of 'Soul' Like?
You can open a browser, type in the Soullike game definition, and you'll get the answer:
There is no doubt that this answer is the true meaning (funny) of the 'Soul' series.
Putting aside these jokes, 'difficulty' is indeed the most well-known feature and selling point of the Soul series. The most difficulty sense for players in the 'Soul' series is not only in the "miscellaneous soldiers take you away with three knives" - the game NPC is difficult to fight, but also in the death punishment mechanism of "after death, monsters refresh".
The design of these difficulties was naturally borrowed by the successors and applied to their own games: the characters in "Renwang" will lose the essence when they die; salt and gold coins will drop when they die in "Salt and Shelter"; and "Burst 2" will drop technology fragments.
But most 'Soul' like games only imitate the mechanics in the Soul series, but ignore the relative mechanics, and more importantly, the Soul series consciously integrates the mechanics and the game world: the game content determines the game mechanics, and the game mechanics show the game worldview.
For example, in Demon Souls, after the player's death, the soul will be resurrected in the temple and continue the next journey in the form of a soul, which aptly shows the core mechanics and worldview of the game to the player: Beretania is a dark fantasy style world with the soul as the core.
Novice boss three-eyed brother
In the process of experiencing these things, the player does not have any text background narrative or cinematic screen cutscenes, in the words of the game designer, "to use the game content to narrate, to use the player's behavior to learn." This also explains why the Soul series doesn't have the general game to reduce the difficulty of the game for beginners to teach, glowing key guidance.
In a narrow sense, there is such a set of death punishment mechanisms in the game can be defined as a 'soul' like game, but for soul fans, such a simple imitation is far from the taste of the soul series, as mentioned in the beginning of the article, "death is not a sacrifice in vain, but derives new values from it,' suffering and death is the most inevitable feature of 'soul like', one of the outstanding places of the soul series is the expansion of the element of 'death', turning the game features into part of the game content.
Battles, maps, and other designs
The 'difficulty' of the Soul series is not only the punishment after death, its difficulty is reflected in many aspects of the game.
First of all, as an ARPG (action role playing) game, the Soul series is not like the traditional ARPG "The Legend of Zelda" and "The Elder Scrolls" focus on role-playing, light combat focuses on adventure puzzle solving; nor does it emphasize too much combat performance like "Three Kingdoms" and "Monster Hunter", and control the difficulty of the game through numerical values.
The combat operation of the Soul series is not difficult, after all, it is a few keys for light and heavy attack and defense roll, but the game gives players a simple operating environment, but it allows them to use this extremely limited operation choice to defeat a variety of enemies with complex designs. Almost every new enemy or boss in the Soul series will give the normal level players a decisive disloyal when they first see it, and experience 'Miyazaki Hidetaka's malice' in the next few or dozens of defeats. Even after the player swipes the brush to level up and get the equipment, it may not be able to pass.
Once you're familiar with the game, you'll find that you only need to accurately judge your opponent's behavior, and you don't need to react too quickly, and you can use attacks, dodges, defenses, or bounces at the right time to defeat the enemies that brought you death before.
This makes the Soul series difficult and makes a difference: you can't deal with this new enemy because you don't understand it, and you have to change a new tactic or even a different set of ideas to win, not like a normal game - you need to brush the value to increase the level, or a garbage game - get the artifact (quick charge money!). ）。
The soul series' excellent map exploration is also a game element that soullike games have to be repeatedly examined by soul fans. While many game designers are thinking about how to use code to generate roguelike games with maps, soullike games, whether it is "Ren Wang", "Salt and Shelter" or "Burst", will be complex map levels, rich map elements, these fixed maps as the design goal.
Demon Souls levels are of high quality and varied, and Dark Souls expands their strengths and connects them into a unified, seamless, vertical, and accessible map to depict a dark, deep, and mysterious soul world.
Complex maps are both a difficult point and a pleasure for players to indulge in.
Other "fragmented narratives" in the Soul series, "semi-networked player communication" and other designs also have a strong personal style of Hidetaka Miyazaki, some of which increase the richness and difficulty of the game, and some help to construct the world view, all of which are the hallmark designs of the Soul series.
epilogue
The selling point of the Souls series is that it is difficult, but the appealing essence is the game's unique design. Although the series has been derided as the 'Game of Death', this in no way means that players like to repeat their deaths pointlessly in front of enemies with exploding numerical values and low fault tolerance.
The vast majority of players like the game design details hidden under the appearance of super difficulty in the Soul series; it is a battle that can be won through their own growth after thinking; and it is a game world worth exploring and carefully designed. Instead of the 'high difficulty' brought about by the unreasonable high value, the 'open world' of the high repetition module.
"In making the game, I wanted players to follow me through the joy of challenging the unknown."
In an interview about the Ring of Elfaden, Hidetaka Miyazaki said:
We should have the courage to break the "type", and the source of inspiration for developers is always our hobbies and hobbies, as well as the heart that loves games. “