When FromSoftware first unveiled its upcoming ninja-esque action-adventure title Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, many fans remarked on how strikingly similar it looked to the studio’s long dormant Tenchu stealth game franchise. As it turns out, the reason why Sekiro so closely shares the same themes as the Tenchu series is because it was originally supposed to be a new Tenchu game.
In a recent interview with Games Industry (via GameSpot), FromSoftware community manager Yasuhiro Kitao talked about how the studio wanted to make a game which looked and felt noticeably different from Bloodborne and the Dark Souls series. When the studio settled on a Feudal Japan setting (the same setting in which the Tenchu series is based), making a new Tenchu game seemed like a no-brainer:
“When we originally set out to create something different from Dark Souls and our previous titles, we thought it would be interesting to make a Japanese themed game. So from that we started going in the direction of the shinobi and ninja, and of course Tenchu was an IP with that history; that was the original impetus for this project.”
However, once FromSoftware started working with Activision (Sekiro’s publisher), the scope of the game quickly expanded, so much so that the development team realized it was better off spinning the project into an original IP rather than keeping it rooted in the Tenchu mythos:
“[A]s we developed and as we partnered with Activision, and started building it together, it started becoming its own thing and the game we wanted to make was no longer just Tenchu, so it really evolved into its own thing.”
Despite shifting away from Dark Souls and Bloodborne, FromSoftware will still be using Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice to flaunt its unabashed love for challenging gameplay, though the presence of an in-depth tutorial system will also ensure players know how to best use the tools they are given.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is set to launch on March 22, 2019 for Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4.