Restart the Gaming Era

“Oh, specifically … how is it different?” Hu Bin asked.

Zhong Ming thought for a moment: “This game … is it a little bit difficult?”

“Oh, with a little difficulty, that’s fine. 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 design details of this game to Hu Bin.

…

The game “The Wolf” can be said to be a work by Miyazaki Hidetoshi who continued his personal style from “Dark Soul” and “Curse of the Blood Source”. What is even more commendable is that this is a brand-new one created from scratch. IP, however, can continue to raise the level of game design.

Whether in terms of player word of mouth or professional media ratings, “Wolf” is a work of self-transcendence, which is very rare.

This kind of self-transcendence is in many aspects. Simply categorized from the design perspective, it can be roughly divided into two aspects: combat system and level design.

Of course, “The Wolf” is also very good in terms of plot, boss warfare and other aspects. This is also the consistent advantage of “Dark Soul” and “Burst of Bloodborne”, but these other aspects do not affect the first two. There is a clear transcendence.

Compared to the thousands of years of epic tales in the “Soul of Darkness” and the accurate interpretation of Cthulhu culture in “The Curse of Blood Source”, the plot of “The Wolf” is based on the Warring States period of neon history. To a certain extent, it adds a sense of historical weight and realism to the game. The combination of realistic elements and mythical elements in the plot forms a unique cultural output.

The story backgrounds of the three games have their own characteristics.

The reason why “Wolf” is a comprehensive work is precisely because the biggest highlight of Miyazaki’s game is the combat system and level design, which is also the reason for “Dark Soul” and “Blood Curse”. The key to fame.

Simply put, one of the strengths of a child’s exam has always been mathematics and English. Others can only score 80 points in mathematics and English, and he takes 90 times. In the new test, others still took 80. As a result, he passed 95, which is a terrible progress.

Rather than make up for the shortcomings, but continue to make further progress in strengths, this breakthrough can only be described as “high mountains.”

In terms of combat systems, the biggest improvement in “The Wolf” is to make the game “Break” and “Shuang” reach a very perfect balance. In the game experience, it surpasses “Dark Soul” and “Blood Curse” “.

For the big guys, all three games have quick-kill methods, all of which can be played very well, but for the general experience of ordinary players, “Dark Soul” is a game that encourages defense. Lift the shield to turn around, block the opponent’s attack, and then go up and cut it twice, not greedy, even players with handicap, as long as they are cautious, they can get a good game experience.

The “Bloodborne Curse” was an attempt by Miyazaki Hidetaka. He directly cut off the shield and replaced it with a musket. Players either evaded or turned back. In this way, players will take greater risks when fighting, but the pace of the battle will be accelerated, and the risks will be greater.

After the success of the “Bloodborne Curse” experiment, the combat system of “The Wolf” was further improved. The “shield counter” and “gun counter” were changed to “parry.” The parry is divided into a regular parry, an imperfect parry, and a perfect parry. The conventional parry is equivalent to raising a shield, and the perfect parry is equivalent to a shield counter. Although far away from the previous one, the player’s feeling of playing has changed dramatically.

The root of all this is that “The Wolf” directly changed the energy value of the previous game into a stance slot.

Originally in the Black Soul and Blood Source, the player’s energy value was a very critical attribute. Players attack, roll, and block will consume energy, so the player must consider in the case of limited energy value: if there are too many attacks, there is no Law blocks or rolls, if you roll too much, you can’t attack.

Because the energy value is very limited, the player can only do careful calculations, and sometimes hesitates. First, he takes the security as the first step, holding the shield to block a set of enemy attacks, catching the gap in the middle, grasping the knife in time, and then raising the shield.

In this way, players are always in a state of extreme caution during the game. Although this is the usual routine of Miyazaki’s game, forcing players to backboard, this game experience obviously does not reach Miyazaki’s Maximum expectations.

“The Wolf” changed the energy value into a stance slot, which caused a huge change in this system.

After removing the energy value, whether the player is attacking, sprinting or flashing, there is no limit. The player can completely ignore the energy consumption, attack or move madly. However, there is a stance slot in the game. The stance slot specifies the upper limit for players to parry: imperfect parry will increase the stance slot. Once the stance slot is filled with characters, it will lose its balance and fall into an extremely dangerous state. go.

Therefore, in the black soul and blood source, the player must learn to manage his own energy value. When the boss moves are fixed, he must first use the energy value to defend or dodge, and then use the energy value to touch the boss twice.

In “The Wolf”, players do not need to worry about this, the best practice is to see the trick. While avoiding a few dangerous skills, try to make perfect parries as much as possible, and then grab all the neutral gear to output the boss crazy.

In addition, the anti-bomb in Black Soul and Blood is not a particularly common operation. This operation is only applicable to some bosses, and many people can also pass the level without bouncing; but in “The Wolf”, parry becomes It is the same as the normal operation of the attack. It is applicable to most bosses. You can’t parry it. Basically say goodbye to this game.

In this way, “Wolves” forced players to take more risky behaviors, making the fighting rhythm more tense, and at the same time, seeing the battle of tricks and moves becomes more rhythmic, although it is still a “turn-based game”, But the round is greatly shortened, and with the sound of “Ding Ding Dangdang”, this kind of battle with sword and sword makes the refreshment of “The Wolf” to the extreme.

In other words, “Wolves” completely released the energy value of the player’s restraint, allowing players to get more freedom, but this did not reduce the difficulty of the game.

In addition, although “The Wolf” does not have as many weapons as Black Soul and Blood Source, through the combination of ninja and martial arts, players can explore many different ways of playing, and different ninjas can have Different effects, such as the spear can break the armor of large enemies, the flamethrower can restrain red ghosts, the firecrackers can restrain crazy animals, the umbrella has a strong defense ability, the shuriken can attack fast-moving crispy enemies, and it can also make The enemy standing in the sky is out of balance … As long as the player uses different props correctly, the best combat effect can be obtained.

All these make the fighting system of “The Wolf” brain-burning and exciting. After mastering the whole system, the coolness of “The Wolf” is higher than the black soul and blood source.

On the other hand, the level design of the game.

Black Soul and Blood Source have long been known for their cutting-edge level design. This level design is not only the maliciousness of the enemies in the level, but also a control over the player’s action planning and rhythm.

For example: the reuse of a map, the arrangement of bonfires and shortcuts, the organs in the scene, the distribution of monsters …

Good level design can make players full of freshness and unknownness when they first meet, and after exploring it, they will feel “this is what happened”. There are many amazing designs in Black Soul and Blood Source. Different maps are connected to each other through various paths. Players’ exploration paths are firmly held in the hands of Miyazaki Hidetaka, and the emotions of play are naturally controlled. .

The breakthrough in the design of “The Wolf” is to turn the flat level into a three-dimensional level, that is, “to give the undead a knee.”

The level design of the original Black Soul and Blood Source was very strict. Undead can not even reach the steps as high as the knee. This is because the level design of the game is built on the plane. If the undead can climb the wall just like Link, then more than half of the enemies can just go around and not fight, the game experience will be completely different.

But “The Wolf” has made a great breakthrough on this point. The protagonist has a two-step jump, a kick wall jump, and can also use a ninja hand to quickly reach a specific point on the eaves. While giving the protagonist more ability to move, it also means that the original level design of the “Black Soul” style is no longer applicable.

The level design of “The Wolf”, while following the classic practice of the soul game, has also made a new breakthrough.

The game capacity of “The Wolf” is very small, only 12G, but the content of the game can be a lot. This is the typical characteristic of soul game level design: through the superb level design level, reuse existing scenes, and let players explore the joy.

In “The Wolf”, Weiming City is repeatedly used as a very core area, and each time it can bring a completely different experience.

In the prologue, the wolf climbed out from the bottom of the valley and sneaked into the water storage area to see Yuzi. At this time, it was a night scene. The second time, he officially came to Weiming City and began to explore. At this time, the cloth monster became completely different. The location was changed to Weiming’s seven guns; the third time, after going through the plot of Aquatic Village, returned to Weiming City to find the invasion of the inner government, and the two forces fought in Weiming City; the fourth time, the sword master died with one heart Later, the inner government invaded completely, and the entire Weiming city fell into a sea of ​​fire …

Each time he enters Weiming City, the player ’s route is different, and the scenes and enemies he encounters are also different, but in the final analysis, Weiming City is still the Weiming City. At this moment, the resources of the four scenes are condensed into A scene.

While saving resources, the player has four different experiences, and the player has a deeper understanding of the layout of the entire Weiming City, and thus sent out the feeling that “this level design is really awesome.”

On the basis of lineage, “The Wolf” also has a breakthrough, that is, the level is designed not only for frontal combat, but also for assassination.

In Black Soul and Blood Source, the protagonist’s process of exploring levels is: exploring the road, clearing mobs, clearing elites, clearing bosses, because in these two games, players can only fight when they see monsters, there is no other choice. Although some big guys can pass the parkour level after being skilled enough, but that’s not the designer’s intention after all.

But it’s completely different in The Wolf.

In “Wolves”, players have a higher degree of freedom. For most players, it is best to run away from the ghost and Buddha to be able to move quickly at high altitudes, so the player does not need to put all the mobs all over again. Give clear light.

At the same time, there are many ways for players to deal with mobs. They can be positive and rigid, but the risk will be great, because most of the mobs in the black soul and blood source are low in intelligence, and they can be drawn one by one to kill. The mobs in the area would shout out to their companions, and they would be beaten if they were not careful. Players can sneak assassinate, and after clearing all the mobs, they can secretly assassinate a blood of the elite mobs, making the battle difficulty apparently reduced.

The level of freedom is high, and the player’s exploration does not need to be so rigid. You can explore the road first, kill the elite, kill the boss after improving your strength, and then slowly explore. Finally, players of different styles can have different game modes. .

The unique combat system and level design make “The Wolf” into a game completely different from Miyazaki’s previous works, with a very unique charm.

…

Listening to Zhong Ming’s remarks, Hu Bin felt a little embarrassed.

This combat system is so different from the combat system of Ink Yunyan 2?

Strictly speaking, the combat system of Ink Yunyan 2 is the current mainstream combat system. Except for calligraphy and drawing skills, Ink Yunyan 2 basically has all the combat content of current mainstream games, such as: sword, sword, and long Different attack methods of weapon, charge attack, jump cut, shield defense, block and so on.

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

There are so many RPG games in the world and there are so many combat systems, but no game can jump out of the framework of this combat system.

However, the battle system of “The Wolf” ~ www.mtlnovel.com ~ has changed dramatically after adding the concept of “stance slot”.

In short, the stance slot can be said to be a state in which the character maintains physical balance. The higher the stance slot, the more the character is on the verge of imbalance. The “imbalance” of the enemy means “exposure”. At this time, you can catch the vulnerability and kill the enemy with a single blow.

In other words, in the battle of “Wolves”, the confrontation between the two characters is no longer that you cut me, and I cut you. Who we fight for is high in defense, and whose blood bar is long, but most of the time It’s all a knife-to-blade collision, and when the sword really turns red, the victory and defeat are already divided.

This setting made Hu Bin think a little bit about the internal and external injury settings of “Taiwu Painting Volume”. There are two internal injuries and external injuries, and any one of them can kill the enemy.

It ’s just that the setting of the stance slot is more special. The stance slot can be quickly eliminated. Maybe you have worked hard to fill the opponent ’s stance slot. As a result, you have not had time to successfully kill the opponent ’s stance slot. They are all in vain; it is also possible that the opponent is still full of blood, but is attacked by a set of attacks and bombs, and the stance slot is directly filled with blood. Remember the website URL, www. biquxu. Com, easy to read next time, or enter “” on Baidu, you can enter this site