If there’s one thing that remains a fond memory/source of frustration for players of the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne, it’s the corpse run. Every time the player dies, they would drop any Souls/Blood Echoes on their person and restart from the latest Bonfire/Lamp. Since they could be used to level up, reinforce weapons, and purchase new gear/weapons, exploration would be a tense affair, since you never knew what could deprive you of your hard-earned currency.
FromSoftware’s titles may have popularized this mechanic, but you won’t see it in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The developer’s upcoming stealth action adventure game is doing away with the infamous corpse run. As CEO and director Hidetaka Miyazaki states, they don’t want to “keep doing the same thing over and over again.”
“The reason there’s no corpse run as is is that first of all, we don’t really want to keep doing the same thing over and over again with our games,” Miyazaki told Game Informer in an interview. “We want to try different approaches and different switching up the systems. Speaking of death penalties, we do want to incorporate a new sense of demerit or a disadvantage to death.
“We want the player to fear death in the same way they did before. But this will take on a different shape this time. If we were to just add in corpse-running or having to go retrieve something on top of that, it would have felt too messy or too desperate or a little too much like there’s too much at stake.
“We want to concentrate on the new systems such as the resurrection system as well. Speaking of resurrection, this time we’re taking this into elements of the story as well. So there’s a reason for coming back to life, and there’s more general themes and concepts around death and rebirth, so this is something we wanted to explore on the gameplay side as well.”
Another interesting mechanic is baiting enemies to attack each other. “Yep. Sometimes they will. And you’re a shinobi, so you can create these situations in some way. There will be ways to – just imagine this battle between a soldier and a rooster,” said Miyazaki. So if you see some demons and feel like they could be used against hostile human soldiers, give it a try.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice releases on March 22nd for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. It may have beta in the coming months, so stay tuned for a chance to try the game beforehand. Head here for more information on how the game mixes combat with exploration.