Nioh Sequel Should Have Different Era or New Character Other Than William

Nioh has become Koei Tecmo's most successful game in the recent years, having surpassed one million copies in sales worldwide. Naturally we wonder if they are willing to make a sequel to this game, and Nioh's director Fumihiko Yasuda talked about it in a recent interview with Dengeki Online.

The interview covered various aspects about Nioh, but in this article we would like to focus on the talks about future DLCs, and especially regarding possibilities for a sequel.

When Dengeki asked why Koei would release 3 DLC batches for Nioh, Yasuda explained that they wanted to carefully depict the relations between William Adams and Tokugawa Ieyasu, so they would like to make the battle of Sekigahara as climax for the story from start.

However as the game took place in the Sengoku era, the team also wanted to depict famous generals in that era like Date Masamune and Sanada Nobushige (or more famously known as Sanada Yukimura), so they then decided to include the latter figures in DLCs. They also want William's story to conclude at the third and final planned DLC, Bloodshed's End.

Having received an unusual amount of supports and requests, Koei Tecmo does have the desire to expand this new IP into a sequel. However considering the aforementioned point, if they are to make a sequel to Nioh, it will have to take place in a different era, or focus on a new character other than William. Yasuda wants it to be fixated on the era of samurai, so the possibilities for the sequel can range from covering one of the many other popular generals in the Sengoku era, to samurai and onmyo mages in the Genpei War or Heian era such as Minamoto no Yorimitsu.

Yasuda promised to Dengeki that the sequel would not take as long as 10 years to develop, as they now have a proper game design as well as experience in handling trials and errors, so they want to make a sequel that has higher precision and level of perfection.

Other than that, Yasuda also expressed interest in adding even more weapon types in the upcoming DLCs after the Odachi was added in Dragon of the North. He also would like to consider collaboration contents with series like Ninja Gaiden and Samurai Warriors as requested by fans, however he noted that it would be difficult to consider Dead or Alive as its world setting is too different from Nioh.

Nioh has been released on February 7 in North America, February 8 in Europe and February 9 in Japan and Asia. The first DLC Dragon of the North was released worldwide on May 2, and two more DLC batches Defiant Honor and Bloodshed's End are also planned in the future.