Nioh 2 will not be a dramatic departure from the original, says director

Nioh 2 was one of the genuine surprises of E3 2018: it was one of only a small handful of games that hadn't been leaked or announced in advance of the major press conferences. While it was only confirmed for PS4 (it's unveiling happened during Sony's press conference), the first Nioh made its way to PC and I fully expect this one will, too.

We now know a few things about the Souls-esque sequel, thanks to an interview during PlayStation's Live from E3 stream, reported by Polygon. Speaking during the stream, game director Fumihiko Yasuda assured fans that the sequel would not mark a dramatic change for the series, and it will still be a "masocore" game. In other words, it'll still be bloody hard (please tell me how the first game wasn't hard in the comments below!).

One major change was confirmed during the stream: rather than playing as set-in-stone protagonist William, players will be able to customise their own characters based on gender and race. Meanwhile, Yasuda said Team Ninja hoped to make "more satisfying deaths for players". I don't know what that means, but maybe you do.

Annoyingly, there still isn't an official Nioh 2 trailer to be found online, so you'll have to make do with this offscreen capture of it from the Sony conference:

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.