Warriors: Abyss, a top-down rogue-lite spinoff of Koei Tecmo’s famous hack-and-slash series was shadow-dropped on February 13th after Sony’s State of Play. Abyss features many fan-favorite characters from both Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series, up to exactly 100 playable heroes. However, franchise followers might notice a similarity with another crossover spinoff which boasts an even bigger number of playable units, at 145 characters. But do both side games actually have a connection with each other?
Speaking with Japanese media Famitsu, producer Koutarou Hirata admits that the concept of ‘collecting heroes’ is similar to Warriors Orochi. In that game, warlords of the Chinese Three Kingdoms and Japanese Warring States are transported into another reality ruled by the evil king Orochi. They must join forces and get help from mystical beings like Sun Wukong and other gaming icons like Ryu Hayabusa to break free.
However, both Warriors: Abyss and Warriors Orochi had ‘nothing to do’ with each other. Even releasing the game on the series’ 25th anniversary together with Dynasty Warriors: Origins was just a coincidence. Koei Tecmo always planned to release this roguelite project ‘as soon as it’s complete.’
“Yes, the Warriors Orochi series has nothing to do with it. When I think about which characters are most familiar to the Warriors fans, [I thought] Dynasty Warriors 8 and Samurai Warriors 4 have been released on various platforms and are loved by fans,” explained Hirata. “Because of that, we decided to bring the most popular characters from said numbered series to Warriors: Abyss.”
The team also thought that being able to mix and match ‘affinities’ for 100 characters was fun. That’s why they decided to add only 100 playable characters to the game — at least for now.
For the first free update of the game, Warriors: Abyss will be getting characters from Dynasty Warriors‘s Jin faction. Aside from more heroes of Dynasty Warriors 8 and Samurai Warriors 4, the game will also get characters from ‘other titles.’ Hirata didn’t specify which Jin characters will get in and if Warriors: Abyss is open to crossover characters.
“We want people to play the game for a long time, and there will be times when they want to try something new,” he explained. “So we are planning to add more characters through free updates.”
Hirata then added that despite reusing assets from previous entries, some things still needed to be adjusted to ‘lighten’ the development. Since Warriors: Abyss is a multiplatform PC and console release aimed at a wide range of hardware, the team ensured they could accommodate that requirement.
“It was a lot of work for the programmers, but we made adjustments so that [Warriors: Abyss] can be played smoothly on any hardware,” said the man who also worked as Wild Heart‘s director.
