In an interview with VGC, Fumihiko Yasuda admitted that he didn’t get to do everything he wanted with Team Ninja’s latest game, and the challenge for the Japanese studio is to build on that.

Yasuda was joined in the interview by Rise of the Ronin producer Yosuke Hayashi. According to Yasuda, Team Ninja’s first open-world game was created to be a departure from the studio’s typical games: “Up until now, we’ve been making games based on ninjas and samurais. We wanted to create a game that had a sense of freedom as well as a rich story. For this title, we decided on the concept of Ronin. We wanted players to become ronin, explore an open world, and be able to influence the story. Of course, we laid a foundation with our action combat systems.

Rise of the Ronin was a big challenge for us because it was something we hadn’t done before in terms of the level of freedom and story while maintaining the action gameplay. I think we’ve been able to realize the concept, and I hope that when players get their hands on the game, they’ll be able to experience it the way we originally envisioned it. I think our challenge going forward is to build on that and perhaps achieve things that we weren’t able to do this time, and build from there,” Yasuda said. The concept began to take shape eight years ago, with inspiration coming from the likes of Red Dead Redemption and Assassin’s Creed.

“We always try to do a lot of things with each title, and we always try to apply what we’ve learned in the past to what we’re working on next. I think with Rise of the Ronin, you’ll see that it’s kind of an amalgamation of the games that we’ve worked on over the years. We’ll use what we’ve learned from Rise of the Ronin to expand our work in the future,” Hayashi added.

Yasuda admitted that he still prefers older, level-based concepts like Nioh, but hopes that Rise of the Ronin will appeal to older fans: “With Nioh, we were able to create something with a very tight pacing and levels that lend themselves to that kind of gameplay. Personally, I’m a fan of that type of game, but with Ronin, we wanted to emphasize freedom and allow players to approach and engage with scenarios in different ways.

That said, there are still main missions that have boss fights and things like that that are much more straightforward in terms of their design. We wanted players to have both sides of the coin. I know our fans have played our games and they have certain expectations when it comes to our action gameplay. I firmly believe that Rise of the Ronin will be able to deliver on what they expect from us. Having said that, there are a lot of new elements that weren’t in our previous titles, so I think a lot of players will be surprised by what’s in store for them,” Yasuda said.

At least they know their game isn’t perfect. Its Metacritics score (76/100) suggests as much.

Source: VGC