Highlights
- Game director Choi Ji-won confirmed that Lies of P will not have difficulty options, as tight level design is integral to the genre's appeal.
- Despite the lack of difficulty options, Lies of P has been designed to be a fun and accessible experience, with a focus on storytelling and a deliberate emphasis on ease of gameplay.
We’re a couple of weeks out from the launch of Lies of P, the highly-anticipated Soulslike from Korean developer Neowiz Games.
Lies of P attracted a lot of attention for its demo at Gamescom last year, earning awards for “Best Action Adventure Game” and “Best RPG” at the event. Well, this year, we had the opportunity to sit down with game director Choi Ji-won at Gamescom. At one point, Choi touched on a contentious topic for fans of the genre - difficulty settings.
“No, you can’t choose difficulty options [in Lies of P]. We believe Soulslike games shouldn’t have difficulty options. We believe the tightness of the level design is one of the most attractive things about this genre,” he told us.
According to Choi, they never considered putting difficulty options in Lies of P. This is typical of the genre’s biggest titles, but a stance that some of the gaming community takes issue with from an accessibility standpoint.
That being said, Choi isn’t advocating for inaccessibly difficult games. He previously stated that Lies of P has been designed to be a fun experience that isn’t excessively hard. This is being achieved through overall game design, rather than through the use of difficulty options.
As Lies of P has such a heavy focus on storytelling and narrative, the game has been designed to be deliberately easier than other Soulslikes so people can absorb the game and difficulty isn’t as significant a barrier.
For those unfamiliar, Lies of P tells the story of a humanoid Pinnochio travelling through a steampunk setting fighting biomechanical creatures. As the game takes inspiration from the classic literary tale, it will have a built-in lying system that determines its ending.
Lies of P was initially supposed to launch in August but was pushed back slightly to give Neowiz an opportunity to further polish the game. Lies of P releases September 9 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.