Ninja Gaiden 4: Legacy Evolved for a New Era | Official Xbox Podcast

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JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Hello and welcome to the official Xbox podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox, and we are at Xbox Japan once again, and I've got to tell you, I have been looking forward to this one. Now, you know, you could say it's been the year of Ninja Gaiden. We kicked off the year with the surprise drop of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. And then, this summer, we saw a take on classic Tecmo titles in the series with Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. And coming up in just a few short weeks, we've got the headliner Ninja Gaiden 4. During Tokyo Game Show, players in Japan are getting their very first chance to get on the sticks with this future classic, and we're getting the chance to speak with the leads on the project from Team Ninja Director Masakazu Hirayama and also from Platinum Games Director and Producer Yuji Nakao. Thank you so much for joining us. I would think that people might recognize you, Hirayama-san, as the director of Wo Long Fallen Dynasty. And Nakao-san, you were most recently credited as producer on Bayonetta 3. So we have some notable action game experience here today. So please tell us a little bit about your roles on Ninja Gaiden 4.

YUJI NAKAO: Yeah, so Ninja Gaiden 4, the overall development is being handled by Platinum Games. And me as Director and Producer, you know, I kind of oversee the development of the title comprehensively. And I, you know, speak very closely with Hirayama-san on a daily basis while sharing the builds of the game and discuss how we brush up the game going forward.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: So as a longtime fan of both the Ninja Gaiden series, going all the way back to the original arcade game back when I was little and also the works of PlatinumGames, I'd love to hear how the two teams came together and a little bit more about the day-to-day collaboration.

MASAKAZU HIRAYAMA: Yeah, so the impetus for the development of Ninja Gaiden 4 actually started with a conversation that was held between the president of Koei Tecmo, Koinuma, and the president of PlatinumGames, Inaba, who are friends. And they were talking about, wouldn't it be great to make something together? And that's when the idea of working together to create a new Ninja Gaiden came about. And when that conversation happened, Phil Spencer from Xbox caught wind of that conversation and threw his backing behind the project, and that's what helped it get off the ground.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: So tell me, what does it mean to bring Ninja Gaiden back to Tokyo Game Show and to show the game off to the Japanese community for the first time in probably a long time since we've had a Ninja Gaiden game at Tokyo Game Show?

MASAKAZU HIRAYAMA: Yeah, so like you said, it's been a long time since the last Ninja Gaiden game came out, and we had wanted to make one for a long time. So being able to collaborate with Microsoft, as well as PlatinumGames to make this happen, you know, we're really happy. And then also just being -- we're Japanese developers, so being able to share this game with the general public at Tokyo Game Show is really exciting.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: We know this series is all about action, but I'd love to hear about how you're thinking about storytelling and cinematic moments.

YUJI NAKAO: Yes. So with Ninja Gaiden 4, we're introducing a new protagonist in the form of Yakumo. And with Yakumo, we wanted to create a character that contrasts with Ryu Hayabusa, not just in terms of his appearance, but his action gameplay and just his overall setting. And, you know, Ryu Hayabusa is the apex of what it means to be a ninja. In these past games, he's really, you know, conquered all of the foes that have come up against him. Whereas Yakumo is really this ninja that's starting to climb the ranks. He's developing as a character through Ninja Gaiden 4. And this is reflected in that intro where the cityscape of Tokyo comes into view and showing the player that this is the Tokyo that he will have to conquer, and he'll have to climb to the apex of Tokyo in order to accomplish his goal. So we reflected that aspect and that contrast with Ryu Hayabusa within those kind of cinematic elements.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I would love to hear a little bit more about what it was like to -- obviously, Ryu Hayabusa is a legendary character in all the video games. What it was like to design someone to stand toe to toe with Ryu? And what do we need to know about Yakumo that maybe we haven't picked up on already from different interviews or different trailers? I always think it's very interesting whenever he puts his swords away. Blood is coming out everywhere. So what do we need to know about Yakumo?

YUJI NAKAO: So building upon my previous comments with regards to creating a contrast with Ryu Hayabusa, with Yakumo, we wanted to create a character that really inherits that quintessential Ninja Gaiden feel but also has his own systems and his own mechanics to evolve the Ninja Gaiden formula. And in terms of his background, Ryu Hayabusa is part of the Hayabusa clan, whereas Yakumo is part of the Raven clan. So the Raven clan is a separate clan from the Hayabusa clan that operates in the shadows of the Hayabusa clan, and Yakumo contrasts with Ryu Hayabusa in that although he is a masterful ninja, he has mastery over his techniques, he is on his ascent towards master ninja status, and he uses different abilities to accomplish his missions. His different abilities are best represented in the Bloodraven form, which is shown in the things that you mentioned where, you know, when he puts a sword away, you see all those blood effects. And with the Bloodraven form, what we wanted to do was take advantage of this collaboration with Team Ninja and inject our own approach as PlatinumGames. And so, it comes through in the form of the Bloodraven form, which contrasts from Ryu Hayabusa's abilities and has his really distinct approach to accomplishing his missions and his objectives in combat.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I'd love to spend some time talking about difficulty settings. Like I had said before, I've been playing Ninja Gaiden for literally decades at this point. My very first Xbox game ever, I unwrap the box; it was the original Ninja Gaiden back in the day. And back then, Ninja Gaiden was hard by default. And then, you can make it even harder if you wanted to. But when I first started playing this Ninja Gaiden 4 for the first time, I actually started with hero mode until I got my bearings, got a feel for the game's speed. It is very fast. And then, I started sort of taking the training wheels, if you will, off as I played more and more. So I'm curious, how did you balance out the game's difficulty for those that expect it to be hard, but also allowing those that are new to the series; or maybe they'll see it while they're browsing Game Pass and go, yeah, I want to give that a try?

MASAKAZU HIRAYAMA: So with Ninja Gaiden 4, first and foremost, we can assure veteran players that they will be able to experience that signature intensity and challenge that they expect from a Ninja Gaiden game, and that's especially apparent in the Master Ninja difficulty setting, which is the highest difficulty in the game. With that said, it has been quite a long time since the last Ninja Gaiden game, and we wanted to create an experience that even new players, as well as fans of action games in general, can jump into and enjoy. And to that end, we've provided a wide array of difficulty options. One of those options is in the form of Hero Mode, which you mentioned. And Hero Mode isn't just about giving enemies less health and making it so you deal more damage. There's also assists that are automatically enabled when you select Hero Mode. These include Auto Guard and Auto Dodge, and these assists can actually be toggled on and off at any time in the game. So when you feel like you've acclimated yourself to the general flow of combat, you can turn off some of these training wheels, like you said, and curate your experience to allow you to continue to progress. And in addition to that, in your first playthrough in Ninja Gaiden 4, you can actually change the difficulty midway through the story. So in your first playthrough, there's three difficulty options that are available. There's Hero Mode, there's Normal Mode, and there's Hard Mode. So in Chapter 1, when you start out the game, you can select Hero Mode. And then, when you feel like you've gotten better, you take off the assists. And then, when you hit Chapter 2, you feel like you want a little more intensity, a little more bite in your combat, so you can change it to Normal Mode. And then, if you feel like things are getting a little too easy, then you can step it up and change to Hard. And if you feel like that was a little too much, you can adjust back to Normal. So we've really made sure that we provided options to allow players to level up in their own way and really curate their combat and their difficulty experience based on their own progression as a player.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: That was exactly my experience. I felt as if I can handle the dodges now, and so I turned off that. So it was really cool to be able to make the game fit exactly the way that I want it to. I can see that you also had a lot of really granular options to fine-tune the experience, everything from enemy position notification, how lock-on works. There were four options for how lock-on works. You could change the color of enemies and characters. There's a ton of stuff. Is there anything that you're particularly proud of or want to call out?

MASAKAZU HIRAYAMA: Yeah, first and foremost, I can say that we really put a lot of effort in terms of providing as many options as possible for players to really customize their gameplay experience to suit their preferences. So it's been many years since the last Ninja Gaiden came out, and there's been many evolutions and developments in terms of the standards of games and what kind of options they present to players, and we met this need by providing accessibility options, but also other options such as being able to turn on and off the hit-stop, as well as those athletic kind of platforming elements that are in the game, so wall running and such. There are options available to allow you to perform those automatically if there are certain players that are having a hard time getting through those parts of the game. There's also a plethora of options in terms of how you can customize the UI experience. You can turn off some of those warning indicators, like you mentioned, as well as a lot of options in terms of how you can customize the camera. So you can customize the camera to pull out in certain ways or bring in the camera, depending on how cinematic you want your experience. So we really provided as many options as possible for players to create the experience that matches their preferences but also made sure that those options include options for veteran players so they can experience Ninja Gaiden 4 in a similar fashion that they experienced the prior titles as well.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: There's also an option for emphasized dismemberment, which I thought was a very descriptive term, and I definitely left that one on. So early on, I got to a place where I could spend Ninja Coin to acquire new moves, like the iconic Zuna drop, and it immediately put me into a training mode, and it let me figure out my timing and really get proficient with the move before I dropped back into the game. I would love to hear about what went into creating that.

MASAKAZU HIRAYAMA: Yeah, so with regards to skill progression, acquiring techniques, and then having a training mode available for you to practice those techniques, like we mentioned earlier in terms of bringing Ninja Gaiden to a wider audience, with veteran players, whether it's myself or Nakao-san, when playing a Ninja Gaiden game, the first thing we do when we pick up a controller is try to do the command for a Izuna drop. But that's second nature for us, but not necessarily for new-time players, so we wanted to create a system and an avenue for new players to really familiarize themselves with those types of legacy techniques and allow them to level up as a player while enjoying those distinct aspects of Ninja Gaiden. So throughout the game, you acquire Ninja Coin, which you acquire just through general progression and defeating enemies, and then, you can unlock legacy techniques, whether that's the Izuna drop or the Flying Swallow, by using that Ninja Coin. And Yakumo has all of those legacy techniques that you would expect from a Ninja Gaiden game, but because those are kind of like the bread-and-butter Ninja Gaiden techniques, we made sure that players would be able to acquire those from an early point in the game. And to that end, we made sure that the price of acquiring those was low, so you can acquire them from very early points in the game. So with that training mode and this kind of progression system that we've incorporated, it allows players to really familiarize themselves with each of these individual techniques as they unlock them and develop their arsenal so they can really dish them out in the heat of battle freely.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: So we've talked a lot about the things that are going to help somebody like me get back up to speed and sort of smooth out that progression, but let's talk about the other end of the spectrum when it comes to difficulty. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the speedrunning community. Are there any benchmarks that the QA testers are hitting that you can challenge the community with when the game's finally available?

YUJI NAKAO: Yeah, so one example is the ranking system, which returns from prior Ninja Gaiden titles. With the ranking system in Ninja Gaiden 4, we set out to evolve the ranking system even further with more transparency in terms of how these parameters work in the game and what will allow you to reach higher ranks. And with Ninja Gaiden 4, we really wanted to make sure that there's something for players to really dig into after they beat the game. So those hardcore users who want to continue to explore, what they can do and how well they can perform in the levels, they can really dig into that ranking system to experience that. In addition to the ranking system, there's also the training mode. We touched upon it before in terms of how it provides an avenue for new players to familiarize themselves with techniques. But the training mode is also something that we designed in a way to appeal to hardcore players as well. So there are options for players to kind of explore what kind of combos are possible, what the animation cancel routes are for what's just possible in the combat system. So they can really dig in and lab their arsenal out, and there's also options to change the enemies and their behavior as well. So there's a lot available for hardcore players to dig into in the training mode as well.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Changing gears a little bit here, Ninja Gaiden historically featured a variety of weapons, swords, flails, and nunchucks. The sword is, in my opinion, the most iconic. So I saw this morning that Ryu and Yakumo's swords have been brought into real life. Have you had a chance to see them yet, and I'm curious what it has felt like to see these legendary weapons being turned into reality?

YUJI NAKAO: Yeah, so with the real-life swords, I didn't get a chance to see them being made, but I did have a chance to see the finished swords. And being able to see Yakumo's sword, of course, we were really happy because as PlatinumGames, and that being the new character introduced with Ninja Gaiden 4, that was great to see that. But as a Ninja Gaiden fan myself, and as someone who's been playing these games for I don't know how long, being able to see the dragon sword, a real-life dragon sword, was an incredible experience. It was kind of just a milestone feeling for me when I first saw it. So I was deeply moved when I saw the real-life dragon sword.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Very cool. Do either of you have a dream weapon you would love to see Yakumo or Ryu wield? I'm not asking you to commit to putting anything in the game or anything, but just, you know, if your imagination runs wild.

YUJI NAKAO: Yeah, that's a good question. With Yakumo, his weapons that he has are really distinct to his character and what he's able to do with his Bloodraven form, and he has these really expressive attacks. But with that said, each of his weapons do retain this kind of Japanese sensibility, and you can see that in the Assassin's Tools kit, the weapon that was most recently introduced or revealed in the opening night live trailer. So within the Assassin's Tools kit, it includes this arsenal of Japanese weapons. You know, it would be interesting to see Yakumo wield something that's, you know, more modern. That's something that I think could be interesting.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Speaking of modern, I've been privileged enough to be able to try out Ninja Gaiden 4 on the ROG Xbox Ally. Literally, this one, if you turn it on, you will see most recently played is Ninja Gaiden 4. Have you given this a go yet?

MASAKAZU HIRAYAMA: Yeah, so, you know, I did have a chance to play it on the Xbox Ally, and I think it's really great that there is this device that will allow people to really experience that core action game experience on the go, separate, you know, from that console or PC experience. And I think with this system, it really retains the action gameplay feel. So, you know, I'm really excited for people to be able to experience it in this format as well.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: We're officially into the show-and-tell part of this episode, because something else very cool that is coming out alongside Ninja Gaiden 4 are, bear with me, these new standard and elite controller -- I'm just going to be handing you all kinds of stuff here. These designs are something new for veterans and newcomers alike, featuring both Ryu and Yakumo's new katana as well. What do you think about these?

YUJI NAKAO: Yeah, so this design was something that came about in collaboration with Team Ninja and Xbox Game Studios. And you can see that one side has Ryu's dragon sword, and then the other has Yakumo's sword. So they're on both sides, so when you're holding the controller, you feel like you're holding both, you know, swords while you're playing the game, and I think it's a really great design. There is the elite version, as well as the standard version, and you can customize some of the buttons as well. So I really invite players out there to get their hands on one and enjoy the game with it.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: That's right. These are going into Design Lab so that you can change the buttons, you can change the sticks, there's a lot of different customization you can do. And sort of that Ninja Gaiden 4 top case is really cool. Those are not mine, so if they don't come home, they don't come back, that's fine. I hope you enjoy those. All right, so by the time that we watch this, if I timed it out correctly, you have just announced what is next for Ninja Gaiden 4. Can you elaborate on the DLC?

MASAKAZU HIRAYAMA: So the Two Masters DLC, which will be available in early 2026, contains new weapons for Yakumo and Ryu. And you can see from the key visual that Yakumo's new weapon captures his personality and his approach to combat with, you know, his expressive abilities. Whereas Ryu's weapon, as you can probably glean from the key visual, has a more precise look to it and will allow you to perform powerful and high-speed abilities. Each of these weapons will have its own distinct qualities and a plethora of mechanics for players to dig into. So we invite players to look forward to it. In addition to these weapons, there's also going to be new story content that's included in the Two Masters DLC, and this story content takes place after the events of the base game and unfolds from the perspective of both of these characters. In addition to the story content, there will also be post-game challenge content that exists separate from the Ninja Trials that are in the base game. There's a lot of content for players to dig into, and we can't wait to share more details with players as they become available.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Awesome. We look forward to seeing more of that, but of course, we've got to get into release dates. So Nakao-san, Hiroyama-san, thank you so much for joining us today. We really are just a few short weeks away. Ninja Gaiden 4 arrives on October 21st for Xbox Series X and S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, it's Xbox Play Anywhere. And of course, you can play it day one with Game Pass. You know, we've recorded a few different episodes here during our trip to Japan, including a special on all things Tokyo Game Show. You can find that wherever you're watching this, so thank you for watching. We'll see you on the next one. [ Xbox Sound ]