For games under development, the promotional cycle for each one is never very long. Once promotion begins, it means the game has already reached a certain stage of completion—enough to be shown to players.
Just like back with Dark Souls, anything shown in demonstrations is all real in-game footage. There's no using flashy CG that would never actually appear in the game to fool people.
This time with GARO, it was the same. Everything shown in the PV came straight from the game itself. The development team selected close-ups from some story cutscenes, briefly introduced a few of the characters and the basic background at the start, and then used the remaining minute entirely for combat footage and system showcases.
Under the video on the Bilibili account, players immediately erupted into heated discussion after watching the promotional PV.
This combat smoothness is insane—was this really their first action game? This is completely different from Hollow Knight!
They totally nailed the feeling of the Makai Knights!
I can't wait to play it—has pre-ordering started yet?
I heard pre-orders start tonight.
There's this in the first half of the year, and apparently a Berseria game in the second half. Just don't know when Dark Souls 2 is coming.
Will they even make a 2?
It sold over ten million copies—how could they not make a sequel?
That's nonsense. Persona didn't get a sequel either, did it?
After scrolling through the comments for a while, Ichin felt a bit embarrassed.
As for Dark Souls, he probably wouldn't be making a direct sequel. At least not in the short term. Bloodborne, on the other hand, was definitely on the table, and Demon's Souls was also something he could consider.
As for Persona, Ichin was thinking about whether to remake P4 and P3. He liked both of those quite a bit. The story wouldn't need much alteration—he'd just need to remake the visuals and systems using his current level of expertise.
"Hmm…"
Sitting in his office, Ichin opened a document filled with game titles.
Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Tales of Arise, Tales of Destiny, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 & 2, Persona 2 & 3.
All of these were games Ichin felt confident he could develop without too much trouble. Given enough time, he could make each of them properly.
But there was one game that genuinely gave him a headache.
Elden Ring.
It was a game Ichin didn't know all that well. Back then, he'd only watched a few trailers. He hadn't even played the first network test—only watched streams and analysis videos.
Still, he understood some of the basic design concepts. He knew it was essentially a Hidetaka Miyazaki playground, packed with all kinds of Souls-like elements.
Rubbing his chin, Ichin kept his gaze fixed on the words Elden Ring.
Souls-style action. Open world. High difficulty.
To be honest, merging an open world with a Souls game was extremely difficult. Based on what Ichin remembered from the network test footage, the approach Miyazaki took was essentially to merge what would've been separate regions in earlier games into one massive map, then fill the underground with a series of medium and small dungeons to enrich exploration from multiple angles.
And from what players later pieced together during the network test, the content shown back then was probably less than one-tenth of the full game—maybe even less. That alone spoke volumes about how massive Elden Ring really was.
With an open-world map, the hardest part was stuffing it with enough meaningful content to keep players constantly exploring.
"Open world, huh… then balancing regional difficulty becomes a problem. You can't scale areas based on the player's level, and you can't restrict exploration either—otherwise it wouldn't be an open world anymore. But if players are free to explore, they can just ride a horse straight into high-difficulty areas early on, grab mid- to late-game weapons and upgrade materials, and power up their gear to trivialize the challenge… yeah, there are way too many things working against each other."
Leaning back in his chair, Ichin rubbed his brow and decided to stop thinking about it for now.
Elden Ring was definitely something he wanted to develop—but how to do it was the real issue. This was a game that would demand an enormous amount of manpower and time. There was no way a team the size of the old Dark Souls crew would be enough. At minimum, everyone in the Tokyo office would have to be involved.
And open-world development came with all kinds of optimization nightmares on top of that.
He'd wait until some projects were finished before seriously considering it. In the meantime, they'd also need to continue recruiting capable developers to prepare for the future.
Just then, there was a knock at the door.
"Come in."
The office door opened, and Yukino walked in.
"What brings you up here?" Ichin said with a smile when he saw her. "Weren't you downstairs testing Fall Guys' new map with everyone?"
"We ran two rounds. I got a bit tired, so I came up to see you."
Noticing the faint exhaustion on Ichin's face, Yukino walked over and stood behind his chair, placing her hands on his shoulders and gently massaging them.
Glancing at the computer screen and seeing nothing but game titles, Yukino asked,
"Thinking about future projects? Are these all candidates?"
"Yeah, some follow-up development plans," Ichin said with his eyes closed.
"Games like Persona have been out for so long that players keep pushing for sequels. Same with Dark Souls. As for the Tales series, after Berseria, I want to turn that IP into a full series, so there'll definitely be more coming. And then there's open-world games—something I haven't really touched yet, but definitely will in the future. When you add it all up, it feels like there's just no way to develop everything fast enough."
"So… more hiring?" Yukino asked.
"Definitely," Ichin nodded. "Ongoing operations for games like Fall Guys, new game development, IP merchandise and marketing—all of it needs manpower. We've already got a decent number of people, but compared to a truly large-scale game studio, it's still not enough. At this rate, in another two years, this entire building won't be enough for us."
Hearing that, a smile appeared on Yukino's face.
"If other people heard you say that, they'd definitely think you were bragging. In just a few years, you've grown the company to this scale, and every game you've made has been well-received. You've already surpassed so many people—don't push yourself too hard."
"Mm. I know."
Letting out a breath, Ichin pressed down on the hands massaging his shoulders and pulled Yukino onto his lap.
"This is fine. Let's take a break together—watch the player discussions on the forums for a bit."
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