- Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki admits The Forsaken Hollows expansion will be a "little bit harder" than the base game, but "it's not ridiculous or anything like that"
- Ishizaki says balancing the game for both casual and expert players was a challenge post-launch and remains a challenge for the DLC
- He adds that the DLC is what the team "would consider to be a fair challenge"
According to Elden Ring Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki, the game's The Forsaken Hollows expansion is "definitely a little bit harder" than the base game.
Speaking in an interview with GameSpot, Ishizaki discussed the challenge of balancing the FromSoftware game for all players, including both casual and hardcore experts, and admitted that "the main takeaway" the development team had post-launch was "trying to get the balancing right".
Ishizaki explained that this remains a challenge with The Forsaken Hollows.
"I think balancing is just so subjective, so a lot of our thoughts post-release working up to the DLC were how can we get the balancing in mind with what we were initially envisioning, and also with that balancing set, how can we take a different approach and devise new enemies, new characters, and stuff like that to play into that and utilise the new balancing that we are working with," Ishizaki said.
"Obviously, we don't want it to be so hard that new players can't get into it, but I think the original idea is that when the game initially had come out, there were even players who are veterans of some of the other games trying to figure out the new systems, trying to figure out how the game works. I think [we want our] ideas when we're working on the DLC content to be a reflection of that. So whenever people who have played the main game extensively go into the DLC content, they'll be able to have a bit of that feeling like they had when they first played Nightreign, where there's still a bit that they're trying to figure out."
In terms of how much of a challenge players will be faced with, Ishizaki admitted that The Forsaken Hollows is "definitely a little bit harder, but it's not ridiculous or anything like that, but that's still within what we would consider to be a fair challenge."
The paid downloadable content (DLC) was unveiled during Sony's latest Japan-focused State of Play and will offer two new playable Nightfarers, the Scholar and the Undertaker, along with two additional bosses.
The Forsaken Hollows releases on December 4.
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