“If you’re enjoying the bosses in Nioh 3, you owe Lies of P some credit, because it was key to their design.” Team Ninja director Masaki Fujita has pointed to the Pinocchio-led soulslike as a major source of inspiration.

The day has arrived: Nioh 3 is out, and fans of action games and dark fantasy worlds can finally put their skills to the test in Team Ninja’s latest release. Early impressions from both press and players are highly positive, and more people are starting to notice the upgrades in its carefully tuned combat, which clearly feels like a step forward from Nioh 2. The developers pulled ideas from other Koei Tecmo titles to shape the fights, yet when it came to boss design, they leaned heavily on Lies of P.

That detail came from Masaki Fujita, director of Nioh 3, in an interview with PC Gamer, where he broke down which games and elements helped guide Team Ninja while building the new entry. Beyond the rhythm and movement similarities between Nioh 3 and Lies of P, Fujita emphasized that Neowiz‘s game shines thanks to the bosses’ visual inventiveness and animation work. Team Ninja then drew on those approaches when shaping the bosses players will be facing from today onward.

“Alongside the solid action – which demands careful defense and well-timed dodging – I really enjoyed the boss fights, because they feature a wide variety of designs” Fujita said in the interview. “In particular, the bosses’ attack patterns made strong use of their distinctive designs, and that became a great stimulus for me when thinking about the yokai actions in Nioh 3“.

The Influence of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Rise of the Ronin

Of course, Team Ninja wasn’t looking only at Lies of P while developing Nioh 3, because the team also revisited its own projects to draw conclusions from player feedback. On that front, the developers cite Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, where players pointed out that the relationship between the protagonist and the counterpart NPC felt undercooked, which is why Team Ninja chose to deepen the connections players will see in Nioh 3.

Meanwhile, Rise of the Ronin contributed lessons through its open-world design. Because some players were asking for “more to enjoy in exploration” and a larger number of side quests, Fujita and his team decided to deliver on that request in Nioh 3. And there are further echoes of the 2024 action title that users will spot in the new release, as the director ended the interview by saying, “As for how we applied those lessons in this game, I’d like you to explore the open world of Nioh 3 and see it for yourselves”.

Source: 3djuegos