Nioh studio founder says if he wasn't in charge, he would have been fired for spending 12 years and 3 reboots making the action RPG
Dec. 2, 2024It’s a long path to greatness
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Hack-and-slash extravaganzaNiohwas in production purgatory for so long, Koei Tecmo co-founder Yoichi Erikawa says he would have been fired for it had he not been responsible for the lengthy development period.
“After remaking it three times, we put out a good game,” Erikawa — according to atranslation from Automaton— tells Japanese magazineDen-fami Nico Gamer. He jokes: “Development took 12 years. If it were someone working under me doing this, they would have been fired.”
And, like Dark Souls and other notoriously difficult video games, Nioh ingeniously makes you feel like Sisyphus, had he fallen in love with his rock; every back-breaking milestone you reach makes you desperate for more. Plus, there’s a boss battle with a giant toad, which is awesome.
“Nioh was created when Koei and Tecmo merged, and it combined the strengths of both companies into something entertaining,” Erikawa says, adding that while “Koei’s forte was historical games,” Tecmo “excelled” with the action genre - the perfect recipe to create Nioh. Good things come in time, clearly, and there’s no doubt that the combination of the two studios' strengths worked a treat.
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Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.
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