Boss SPOILERS Ahead. No Story Spoilers are detailed. As a Soulslike game, Lies of P's boss designs get a lot of attention. While some fans may feel that the constant two-phase boss fights, each with their corresponding health bar, may be overwhelming, there is little denying that Lies of P's boss design is top-notch. It takes all the ferocity that Soulslike bosses are known for and channels them into the world of magic and puppetry found in Krat. Of course, getting a boss balanced and tuned right, especially a difficult boss, is always challenging.
The Best War Games recently spoke with Lies of P game director Jiwon Choi about a couple of bosses in the game, specifically asking which one was the hardest to design and which was the hardest to balance. The answer may not be too surprising, but the answers were Lies of P's King of Puppets and Laxasia boss fights, respectively.
Lies of P Dev Explains Benefits of Launching Day One With Xbox Game Pass
In a post-launch interview with The Best War Games, Lies of P director Jiwon Choi details how the team benefited from launching day one on Xbox Game Pass.
King of Puppets managed to stump a lot of Lies of P players because the boss essentially signals a major paradigm shift in combat. Like many main bosses beforehand, the King of Puppets is massive, telegraphs its attacks, and can be managed by focusing on movement, well-timed punishments, and a little luck as many bosses beforehand, but when it comes to its second phase, all of that goes out the window. The King of Puppets is much faster, making even its telegraph attacks hard to manage, and much smaller.
In this way, it's almost like the many optional bosses in Lies of P in terms of size, but with a lot more power complemented by incredible speed. As Jiwon Choi described the King of Puppets, the design concept was meant "to showcase the opposite concepts as the phase change." As such, designing both phases and incorporating these differing concepts ended up costing a lot of money and manpower.
The design concept of King of Puppets is to showcase the opposite concepts as the phase change. He is a single boss, but his look, combat experience, environment, moods, and others must be distinctive overall in each phase. It actually cost us more than creating two separate bosses.
King of Puppets
Laxasia
While King of Puppets required the most to design, Laxasia proved to be the hardest to balance in Lies of P. Part of her design, as she appears in the game, is to "maintain tension and a comparable level of difficulty even after showcasing a noticeable change in her attack pattern." Designing her to meet this criteria, while fulfilling her role both in the story and as a relatively late-game boss in Lies of P, required a lot of time and a "huge amount of feedback from testers to achieve it." In fact, it seems even developers were split over her difficulty at one point:
"In the early stage of making Laxasia, developers' feedback was also split, so it was quite challenging to reflect and reconcile feedback to balance her to the level we wanted."
Now, Round8 and Neowiz are working on DLC for Lies of P, as well as a sequel. It'll be interesting for all fans involved to see how the base game's boss design translates to, presumably, new locations, new themes, and new story beats. It's clear, nonetheless, how much the developers poured into nailing the essence of a Soulslike game.
Lies of P
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 82 /100 Critics Rec: 88%
WHERE TO PLAY
Lies of P is a thrilling soulslike that takes the story of Pinocchio, turns it on its head, and sets it against the darkly elegant backdrop of the Belle Epoque era.
You are a puppet created by Geppetto who’s caught in a web of lies with unimaginable monsters and untrustworthy figures standing between you and the events that have befallen the world of Lies of P.
You are awakened by a mysterious voice that guides you through the plagued city of Krat - a once lively place that has been poisoned by madness and bloodlust. In our soulslike, you must adapt yourself and your weapons to face untold horrors, untangle the unfathomable secrets of the city's elites and choose whether to confront predicaments with the truth or weave lies to overcome them on the journey to find yourself.
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One
- Genre(s)
- Soulslike
- Metascore
- 84
