From Software made the teeth-grindingly difficult Dark Souls, and the developer is warning gamers not to expect any mercy from Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, the sequel to the Xbox mech simulation.
According to producer Kenji Kataoka, “Given From Software’s stern craftsmanship, we didn’t want to limit what they do, because that then gives us no advantage of working with From Software. If we don’t let them do what they want to do, then we could have chosen any developer. But we had to use From Software. So we said, yes, go ahead and go all out. Go nuts. So they did.”
In fact, Capcom still had to instruct From to scale some of the more hardcore elements back.
For example, ”One of the things From Software wanted to do was give players dramatic decisions. You have two comrades lying in front of you. You have the capacity to help one. Who would you choose, and why?”, Kataoka related, ”It was going to be so you play the game and there were all these decisions you had to make in turning points of the game, and that was how the story was moulded.”
However, the game had become too complicated, and the player had enough to do with their hands. The game was in danger of being confusing. However, ”most of it is as they wanted to create this,” he reassured Steel Battalion fans.
The game won’t be unfair, however. ”If you’re an experienced Kinect gamer, or if you’re a quick learner with coordinates and gestures, then that difficulty quickly slims down and it becomes just the game difficulty itself,” Kataoka promised, “It still is difficult, sure, but when they’re combined together people think it’s more difficult than it really is.”
