When Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was first teased last year, many, I included, believed that it would be a new Tenchu. Yet, it turned out to be a slightly different beast. At Gamescom 2018 DualShockers had a chat with FromSoftware Communication Manager Yasuhiro Kitao, and we asked him whether the game was inspired by the old and glorious ninja franchise.
Kitao-san explained that Tenchu was indeed the initial inspiration for Sekiro, but then things changed gradually into a different Shinobi game.
“When we decided to create a game set in Japan, with the shinobi as a motif, we did think about Tenchu, and that was the initial impetus for this game. Yet, in time, it gradually evolved and changed in various ways. It became simply a Shinobi game set in Japan that FromSoftware and Miyazaki-san want to create right now. That’s what you see here.”
When I mentioned that I’d still like a new Tenchu, Kitao-san mentioned that the folks at FromSoftware feel that if they were to create a new Tenchu, it would feel like an imitation of past titles.
“We feel that Tenchu is a very interesting series with its own quirks and personality. We think that if we were simply to create another Tenchu, it would feel like an imitation of past games. So we thought about what we wanted to this time, and if we wanted to make Tenchu or not, and the answer was simply that we wanted to do a cool Shinobi game.”
If you want to see some gameplay, we have plenty that we directly recorded at Gamescom 2018, and you can also check out a smaller chunk of gameplay directly from Activision.
The game releases on March 22nd for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.