"Oh, specifically...... How is it different? Hu Bin asked.

Zhong Ming thought for a moment: "This game ...... A little bit of difficulty? ”

"Oh, if it's a little difficult, that's fine. What about anything else? Hu Bin asked again.

"The combat system is a little different from other games, just look at the design draft." Zhong Ming began to explain some of the design details of the game to Hu Bin.

……

The game "Wolf" can be said to be a continuation of Hidetaka Miyazaki's personal style from "Dark Souls" and "Bloodborne", and what is even more commendable is that this is a new IP created from scratch, but it can continue to raise the level of game design in an all-round way.

Whether it is from the player's reputation or from the professional media score, "Wolf" is a work of self-transcendence, which is very rare.

This kind of self-transcendence is multifaceted, and from a design perspective, it can be roughly divided into two aspects: combat system and level design.

Of course, "Wolves" is also very good in terms of plot and boss battle settings, which is also a consistent advantage inherited from "Dark Souls" and "Bloodborne", but these other aspects do not significantly surpass the first two games.

Compared with the epic story of "Dark Souls" and the accurate interpretation of Cthulhu culture in "Bloodborne", the plot of "Wolf" is based on the neon history of the Warring States Period, which to a certain extent increases the game's historical sense of gravity and realism, and the combination of realistic and mythological elements in the plot forms a unique cultural output.

The story backgrounds of the three games have their own characteristics, and it is difficult to distinguish them.

And the reason why "Wolf" is a comprehensive transcendence is precisely because the biggest highlight of Miyazaki's game is the combat system and level design, which is also the key to the fame of "Dark Souls" and "Bloodborne".

To put it simply, one child's strength in the test has always been math and English, and others can only score 80 in math and English, and he takes 90 every time. And in the new exam, others still took 80, but he actually got 95, this kind of progress is very terrifying.

It is not to make up for the shortcomings, but to continue to make further progress in terms of strengths, and this breakthrough can only be described as "high mountain Yangzhi".

In terms of combat system, the biggest improvement of "Wolf" is to make the "abuse" and "coolness" in the game reach a very perfect balance, and in terms of game experience, it surpasses "Dark Souls" and "Bloodborne".

For the big guys, all three games have quick kill methods, and they can all be played very coolly, but for the regular experience of the average player, Dark Souls is a game that encourages defense. Raise the shield to turn two people, block each other's attacks, and then go up and slash twice, not greedy for knives, even if you are a handicapped player, as long as you are cautious enough, you can get a good game experience.

And "Bloodborne" is an attempt by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who directly cut off the shield and replaced it with a musket, and players either dodge or shoot back. As a result, players are taking more risks when fighting, but the pace of combat is faster and the risks are greater.

After the success of the Bloodborne experiment, the combat system of Wolf has been further improved. Changed "shield anti" and "gun anti" to "parry". The parry is divided into regular parry, imperfect parry and perfect parry, where the conventional parry is equivalent to raising a shield, and the perfect parry is equivalent to a shield reversal, although it is far from the same as before, but the player's feeling of playing has changed dramatically.

And the root of all this is that "One Wolf" directly changed the energy value of the previous work to a stance slot.

Originally, in Black Soul and Bloodborne, the player's energy value is a very critical attribute, and the player's attack, rolling, and blocking will consume energy, so the player must consider the limited energy value: if there are too many attacks, you can't block or roll, and if you roll too much, you can't attack.

Because the energy value is very limited, so the player can only be careful in calculation, sometimes they will be timid, first to be safe, raise the shield to block a set of enemy attacks, catch the gap in the middle and touch the two knives in the hurry, and then raise the shield.

In this way, the player is always in a state of extreme caution during the game, and although this is the usual routine of Miyazaki's games, forcing the player to backboard, this gaming experience clearly does not live up to Miyazaki's greatest expectations.

And "Wolf" changed the energy value to a stance slot, which made a huge change in this system.

After removing the stamina, the player has no limit to attack, sprint, or dodge, and the player can attack or move wildly regardless of the energy consumption. However, there are stance slots in the game, and stance slots stipulate the upper limit of the player's parry: imperfect parries will increase staging slots, and once the stance slots are full, the character will lose their balance and fall into an extremely dangerous state, and it is very likely that they will be taken away by the boss instantly.

Therefore, in Black Soul and Bloodborne, players must learn to manage their own energy, and in the case of a fixed boss move, they must give priority to defending or dodging with energy, and then use energy to touch the boss twice.

In Wolf, players don't need to worry about this, and the best thing to do is to see the move. While dodging a few dangerous skills, hit as many perfect parries as possible, and then seize all the gaps to go crazy against the boss.

Moreover, the rebound in Black Soul and Blood Source is not a particularly common operation, this operation is only applicable to some bosses, and many people can pass the level without rebounding; But in "Wolf", parrying has become the same routine operation as attacking, it is suitable for most bosses, and if you can't learn to parry, you basically say goodbye to this game.

In this way, "Wolf" forces players to engage in more adventurous behavior, making the rhythm of the battle more tense, and at the same time, the battle of seeing the moves becomes more rhythmic, although it is still a "turn-based game", but the rounds are greatly shortened, with the sound of "clanging bells", this kind of sword and sword combat makes the coolness of "Wolf" to the extreme.

In other words, Wolf completely loosens the constraints of energy on players, allowing players to gain more freedom, but this does not reduce the difficulty of the game.

In addition, although "Wolf" does not have as many weapons as black souls and blood sources, through the combination of ninja hands and martial arts, players can explore many different ways to play, and different ninja hands can have different effects, such as spears can tear off the armor of large enemies, flamethrowers can restrain red ghosts, firecrackers restrain crazy animals, umbrellas have strong defensive capabilities, shurikens can attack fast-moving crispy enemies can also make enemies standing in the sky unbalanced...... As long as the player uses different items correctly, they can get the best combat effect.

These all make the combat system of "Wolf" brain-burning and exciting, and after mastering the entire system, the coolness of "Wolf" is higher than that of Black Soul and Blood.

On the other hand, there's the game's level design.

Dark Souls and Bloodborne have long been known for their top-notch level design. This kind of level design is not only the malice of the enemies in the level, but also a control of the player's action planning and rhythm.

For example: the reuse of a map, the arrangement of campfires and shortcuts, the traps in the scene, the distribution of monsters......

A good level design can make players feel fresh and unknown at first sight, and then feel "that's how it is" after figuring it out. There are a lot of breathtaking designs in Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and the different maps are connected to each other through a variety of different paths, so the player's exploration path is firmly in the hands of Hidetaka Miyazaki, and the mood of the game is naturally controlled.

And the breakthrough in the level design of "Wolf" is to turn the flat level into a three-dimensional level, that is, "let the undead have knees".

Originally, the level design of Dark Souls and Bloodborne was very strict, and the undead could not even walk up knee-high steps, because the level design of the game was built on a flat surface. If the dead can't climb the wall as casually as Link, then more than half of the enemies can go around without fighting, and the game experience is completely different.

But "A Wolf" has made a great breakthrough in this point, the protagonist has a double jump, a wall jump, and can also use his forbearance hand to quickly reach a specific point on the eaves. While giving the protagonist greater mobility, it also means that the original "Black Souls"-style level design is no longer applicable.

The level design of "Wolf" has made a new breakthrough while following the classic practice of souls-based games.

The game capacity of "Wolf" is very small, only 12G, but the content of the game is not a lot at all. That's what is typical of level design in Souls-based games: a high level of level design, reusing existing scenarios, and keeping players entertained with exploration.

In Wolves, Ashina Castle is used over and over again as a very central area, and each time it gives a completely different experience.

In the prologue, the wolf crawls out of the valley floor and sneaks into the water storage city to meet Miko, which is a night scene; The second time was to officially come to Ashina Castle to start exploring, at this time it was daytime, and the cloth monster became completely different, and the original location of the royal son became the Ashina Seven Guns; The third time is after experiencing the plot of Shuisheng Village, returning to Reed City to find that the inner government has invaded, and the two forces are fighting inextricably in Reed City; The fourth time was after the death of the Sword Saint Yixin, the Inner Mansion invaded in a full-scale manner, and the entire Reed City fell into a sea of fire......

Every time you enter Reeda Castle, the route the player takes is different, and the scenes and enemies encountered are also different, but in the final analysis, Reeda Castle is still the same Ashina Castle, and this time the resources of the four scenes are condensed into one scene.

While saving resources, it also allows players to have four different experiences, and allows players to have a deeper understanding of the layout of the entire Reed City, so as to sigh "This level design is really awesome".

On the basis of inheritance, "One Wolf" also has a breakthrough, that is, the level is designed not only for frontal combat, but also for assassination.

In Black Souls and Bloodborne, the process of the protagonist's exploration of the level is: pathfinding, cleaning up mobs, cleaning up elites, and cleaning up bosses, because in these two games, players can only fight monsters when they see them, and there is no other choice. Although some bigwigs can parkour after being skilled enough, that is not the designer's intention after all.

But in "One Wolf" it's completely different.

In "Wolf", players have a higher degree of freedom, and for most players, it is best to run away from the ghost Buddha first, and be able to move quickly in high places, so players don't need to clear all the mobs anymore.

At the same time, players also have many ways to deal with mobs, which can be positive and tough, but the risk will be great, because most of the mobs in the black soul and the blood source have low intelligence and can be led over to kill one by one, while the mobs in "Wolf" will shout out to their companions, and they will be beaten if they are not careful. Players can stealthily assassinate, and after clearing all the mobs, they can also secretly assassinate elite monsters for a blood, making the difficulty of the battle superficially reduced.

The degree of freedom of the level is high, and the player's exploration does not need to be so rigid, you can explore the path first, kill the elite, improve your physical strength and then kill the boss, and finally explore slowly, players of different styles can have different ways of playing.

The unique combat system and level design make "Wolf" a game completely different from Hidetaka Miyazaki's previous works, with a very unique charm.

……

Listening to Zhong Ming's narration, Hu Bin felt a little confused.

This combat system is so different from the combat system of "Ink and Smoke 2"?

Strictly speaking, the combat system of "Ink and Smoke 2" is the current mainstream combat system, except for calligraphy and painting skills, "Ink and Smoke 2" basically has all the combat content of the current mainstream games, such as: knives, swords, different attack methods of long weapons, charged attacks, jump slashes, shield defense, blocking, etc.

And this is also the upper limit of the combat system that Hu Bin can imagine.

There are so many RPGs in the world, and there are so many rich combat systems, but none of them can jump out of the framework of this combat system.

However, the combat system of "Wolf" has undergone earth-shaking changes after adding the concept of "stance slot".

In short, the stance groove can be said to be a state in which the character maintains physical balance, and the higher the stance groove, the more the character is on the verge of imbalance. And the enemy's "imbalance" means "revealing a flaw", at which time you can seize the flaw and kill the enemy with one blow.

That is to say, in the battle of "Wolf", the duel between the two characters is no longer one in which you slash me and I slash you, whose defense is high and whose blood bar is long, but most of the time the blades collide, and when the real sword is red, the winner has already been divided.

This kind of setting made Hu Bin think a little bit of the internal and external injury setting of "Taiwu Picture Scroll", with two internal injuries and external injuries, and any one of them can kill the enemy.

It's just that the setting of the stance groove is more special, the stance groove can be eliminated quickly, maybe you put a lot of effort into the opponent's posture groove but didn't have time to successfully kill, the opponent's posture groove quickly fell, and all the previous efforts were in vain; It is also possible that the opponent is still full of blood, but you are hit with a set of attacks and bullets full of posture slots, and directly full of blood in seconds.