Being a FromSoftware game, there are dangers on all sides when it comes to The Duskbloods. You’ll have the monsters you face, and then your opponents, the other Bloodsworn. If that scares you, don’t be too worried – creator Hidetaka Miyazaki isn’t great at the PvP, and according to him, you don’t need to be to win.
He went through the logic in an interview with IGN. “Personally, I am not very great at these high-intensity action games and things like PvP,” he says.
“So, at the start, the audience really is just myself while thinking about how I would go at this,” he explains. “Are there systems in place that I would enjoy, that cater to me as a player, not being someone who’s really into that intense PvP?”
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There’s some irony in hearing Miyazaki is bad at aspects of these games, when their reputation is of being relentlessly punishing. But his own experience raises important questions: how prominent should the player-versus-player aspects be? And what should be the alternative strategies? As is pointed after, it’s impossible to avoid facing at least one other person directly in a match.
“You will have to fight two other players in the final round. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be great at PvP in order to win,” Miyazaki says, pointing to the Kin, companion fighters that join you, as an option for dealing with other opponents less.
“The Kin [computer-controlled companions] can be further emphasized, and you can customize your character to further supplement their power to turn them into someone who can fight for you while you take a bit of a backseat,” he explains. “There will definitely be a section of the customization that caters towards that play style for people who don’t want to necessarily always be in an intense PvP thing, even if they make it to the end and want to take more of a backseat and enjoy the game in a different way.”
That’s good to hear, because I’m in the Miyazaki camp of just not being very good at these more tense moments. He makes it clear that, “We’re trying our best to cater to that playstyle as much as we can, currently,” so we might see more mechanics and ideas appear post-launch, too. The Duskbloods comes out on Switch 2 later this year.