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How Joo described The First Descendant
In MP1st’s October 30, 2023 interview, Joo called The First Descendant a grinding game built around gathering currencies and materials. He described the appeal as more than accumulating resources: spending what players collect should feel rewarding. The game’s loop, as he explained it, connects resource gathering with character abilities, guns and boss challenges. Read the MP1st interview.
In a separate interview published by GodisaGeek on January 25, 2024, Joo described it as “a third-person cooperative RPG shooter game, a looter shooter.” He also said the team planned continuous updates as part of a live-service approach. That was a statement of intent in January 2024, not a guarantee of the game’s present or future release cadence. Read the GodisaGeek interview.
How much can players do solo?
Asked by BGR how much of the game required cooperative play and how much could be done alone, Joo said the developers tried to balance the two. He recommended playing cooperatively, but also said the game’s farming made it suitable for solo players. His answer describes intended flexibility rather than a claim that every activity or encounter works equally well alone. Read the BGR interview.
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Which games influenced its design?
Joo named Destiny, Warframe, Outriders and The Division as reference points for the team. In the interviews, those comparisons concern design ingredients—not an assertion that the games are interchangeable. Joo discussed Warframe in relation to character structure and Destiny 2 in relation to combat, alongside the broader looting, grinding and gun-focused framework.
That makes the useful comparison one of overlapping systems: character-led progression, shooting, co-op and repeatable loot-oriented play. Joo’s remarks establish which games the developers considered, but do not mean that a particular feature was copied wholesale or that the finished games share the same balance or progression.
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Why did the game use so many currencies and materials?
MP1st asked Joo whether the number of currencies and materials might overwhelm players. His response framed collecting them as part of the game’s intended appeal, with the aim that using gathered resources would feel worthwhile. That explains the design rationale; it does not establish that every player will find the system easy to follow.
What did the developers say about the cinematic opening?
The MP1st interview also asked whether the cinematic opening was an intentional design goal. It places that question within the team’s discussion of how the game presents itself, alongside questions about systems and influences. These interviews document the developers’ plans and design thinking at the time; they should not be read as a current overview of the game’s content or live-service operations.
What development context did Nexon provide?
A Nexon developer note dated February 5, 2024, draws on recent interviews with Joo and producer Lee Beom-jun. It describes the team moving from the crossplay open beta into launch planning, providing context for the period in which some of the interview comments were made. It is a development update, not a replacement for Joo’s interview answers. Read Nexon’s developer note.
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The interviews were published from October 2023 through June 2024, and the Nexon note dates to February 2024. Taken together, they are useful as a record of the developers’ design goals and plans around the game’s launch period. They do not establish the current state of the game, the exact content available now, or a continuing update schedule.
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