Pejo
Member
That's fine that they're using assets/lessons learned from RotR, but can you name any benefits of the game being open world? I guess there's the fact that you can go at an enemy camp from any angle, but it's still going to play out the same way. Stealth kill 1-2 enemies, get found out, kill the rest, collect loot, move on. In the old games, you would probably get one less stealth kill and otherwise the same outcome. Maybe it's easier and cheaper for them to design open world stuff, but nothing I saw in that video showed me any sort of benefit for it.They're building off of what they did with Rise of the Ronin. Probably using most of the same bones from that game, putting in the Nioh 2 content, then adding on top with new systems. Similar development style to From Software. They get stuff out quickly, but it's usually building off what they've already done. I'm willing to give a more open layout a shot. Even the biggest Nioh fans never said it had great level design, so might as well try something new there but keep the phenomenal combat.
Not to bring up FROM, but Elden Ring actually had some benefits to being open world. You could run to any number of places and try out new areas since the story was non-linear. Areas tied in to the lore and had distinct landmarks that enriched the immersion, and they even put noob traps in the game like the warping chest that sent you to that mine and fucked over a lot of players. There was an overall urge to explore in that game and plenty of options available if you hit a roadblock and didn't want to beat your head against a particularly hard part.
Nioh 3 seems to still follow a single story plot at a time and probably has artificial gates so that you can't explore too far, too early. Also, the shrines every 50 meters in any direction seems kinda overkill. There doesn't seem to be any particular reason to warp back to any of these places after you 'clear' them, so I don't know why they needed so many.
I will grant you though, this is like an alpha or beta or something, so maybe the content simply doesn't exist yet to make the open world feel worthwhile. I don't hate it on principle, but after watching that video, I just don't get the point.