Sekiro was so influential, even the next big BioWare and Obsidian RPGs are adding parries and stagger meters

I don’t know if we’ll ever get another Sekiro game, but FromSoftware’s 2019 ninja sim lives on in everybody cribbing off its notes. We’ve already seen fellow soulslikes Wo Long and Lies of P borrow its signature moves, and the Resident Evil 4 Remake used a Sekiro-style parry system to great effect. But it feels like a whole new frontier altogether to see RPG old guards BioWare and Obsidian spice up their upcoming games with some of Sekiro’s signature moves.

For a quick rundown of what I’m talking about, I’d say Sekiro’s big innovations over Dark Souls were its emphasis on parrying over dodging, and its stagger meter in parallel to player and enemy HP. The former lent this wonderfully crisp, satisfying cadence to the combat (and was critically more forgiving than Dark Souls’ parries), while the latter rewarded aggression and precise timing, with a stagger break letting you wipe out one of your enemy’s health bars.