Released only a few weeks ago, Rise of the Ronin byTeam Ninjahas received mostly favorable scores from critics and players alike, as it currently sits comfortably at 79 onMetacritic. Praised for its smooth and enjoyable gameplay,others feltit was “inconsistent and unpolished”, but there’s no denying one thing at least - the dev team really love cats.
Having already turned catchingcats into collectibles, the game’s director, Fumihiko Yasuda, confesses that they may have gone overboard on Rise of the Ronin’s cat animation, but can we really blame them for that?
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In aninterviewwith Game Informer, the game’s producer Yosuke Hayashi and director Fumihiko Yasuda sat down to chat about its mechanics, Japanese history and, of course, our feline friends. In Rise of the Ronin, lost cats are scattered across its Yokohama map and, as a side quest, players can hunt down these little, furry, creatures for some extra coin to fill their pockets. But that’s not all, as they can be picked up and petted too. What more could you want?
“I’m also a fan of cats. I own a cat myself and there are other members within our team that own cats and we’ve spoken with other media who have enjoyed that aspect of the game. And, of course, we were very particular about the movements that you know about cats in the animations. I wouldn’t say it was too difficult, but maybe we got a little too obsessed with it,” Yasuda confessed.
So it seems as though merely being obsessed with cats in real life just isn’t enough and that obsession has seeped into the gaming world for Team Ninja, although we certainly can’t blame them. Along with players wanting to know if they can pet the dog, petting cats is just as high on the list, next to ‘is there a secret place under the waterfall?’.
Rise of the Ronin may not have reached the heights that Dragon’s Dogma 2 has, but it’s stilldoing pretty well in Japanas it has sat in the top ten since its release, bringing its physical total up to 97,000 sales.
