The director of Rise of the Ronin says he wants to see Team Ninja‘s next game accomplish things that couldn’t be managed this time around.
Before the PS5 exclusive’s release last week, Fumihiko Yasuda and producer Yosuke Hayashi spoke to VGC about its development and the lessons it had taken from the experience.
According to Yasuda, Rise of the Ronin—Team Ninja’s first open-world game—was created to provide a change from the studio’s usual output.
“Until now, we’ve been creating games based on Ninjas and Samurais,” he told us. “We wanted to create a game that has a sense of freedom as well as a rich story.
“For this title, we decided on the concept of Ronin. We wanted players to become a Ronin, explore an open world and be able to affect the story. Of course, we have established a foundation with our action combat systems.”
Yasuda explained that the game’s conception was around eight years ago, and at the time, he was playing games like Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption for inspiration.
However, he conceded that Ronin’s open-world environment provided a “challenge” for the studio and that he hoped its next project would learn from this.
“Rise of the Ronin was a big challenge for us, because it’s something we hadn’t done up until now in terms of the level of freedom and the story while retaining the action gameplay,” Yasuda said. “I believe we were able to realise the concept, and I’m hoping that as players get their hands on the game, they’ll be able to experience it as we originally envisioned it.
“I think going forward, our challenge is to build from that and perhaps achieve things we weren’t able to do this time, and continue to build from there.”
Producer Hayashi added: “We’re always trying to do a lot of things with each title, and we’re always trying to utilise what we learned in the past on what we work on next.
“I think with Rise of the Ronin you’ll see that it’s kind of an amalgamation of the games that we’ve worked on in previous years. We’re going to utilise what we learned with Rise of the Ronin to further expand our work going forward.”
‘Both sides of the coin’
Elsewhere in the discussion, Yasuda admitted that he still preferred the more level-based approach of other Team Ninja games like Nioh, but hoped that players who also favoured this style of play would find something to like in Rise of the Ronin’s open-world structure too.
“With Nioh, we were able to create something with very tight pacing and create levels that benefit that kind of gameplay,” he explained. “Personally, I’m a fan of those types of games, but with Ronin, we wanted to emphasise freedom and to allow players to approach and engage scenarios in multiple different ways.
“That being said, there are still main missions that have boss battles and things like that which are far more straightforward in terms of their design. We wanted players to have both sides of the coin.”
Concluding, Yasuda said he was confident the game would still appeal to Team Ninja fans despite offering something different to what they may be used to.
“Personally, I’m a fan of [more linear] types of games, but with Ronin, we wanted to emphasise freedom and to allow players to approach and engage scenarios in multiple different ways”
“I know our fans have played our games and they have certain expectations when it comes to our action gameplay,” he said. “I strongly believe Rise of the Ronin will be able to satisfy what they come to expect from us. With that said, there are a lot of new elements that weren’t in our previous titles, so I think a lot of players will be surprised at what’s waiting for them.”
Since the discussion, the PS5 exclusive has now been released to generally favourable reviews, and currently has a Metacritic score of 76.
VGC’s Rise of the Ronin review called the game “a fine open world adventure that never elevates itself to greatness”.
“Nothing in Rise of the Ronin is bad,” we wrote. “It’s a completely passable game that feels like it would have been much more warmly received by us had the last eight years of open-world games not happened.
“In 2024 it feels profoundly dated, and while there is fun to be had in a solid combat system, there’s not much in Rise of the Ronin that you haven’t seen before.”