Two Years After Elden Ring, Miyazaki Trusts the Players to Figure It All Out
If Elden Ring and Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyzaki had to put a name to the genre of games FromSoftware has become synonymous with over the past decade-plus years, it’d be “Souls-ish.” But even then, he would much prefer to call them “those dark fantasy third-person action games with a higher focus on melee combat and sense of accomplishment.” That’s not quite as catchy as ‘Soulslike’, but it does capture the renowned creator’s specificity. And we got even more of that specificity in our recent interview with Miyazaki ahead of the premiere of the long-awaited trailer for the first Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree.
Along with answering all the questions IGN had about the trailer, Miyazaki looked back on the past two years since the release of Elden Ring, a defining achievement for FromSoftware given its tremendous critical and commercial success.
It’d be an understatement to say that the hype around Elden Ring prior to its launch was bigger than any FromSoftware game before it, with fans even creating their own lore for the game in between official news and trailer drops. When Elden Ring finally launched, fans were treated to something truly spectacular: a masterful, open-world version of the famed Soulslike formula FromSoft popularized, complete with beautiful, hidden narratives, intricate world and dungeon designs, and of course, incredibly challenging fights.
When asked if there was any concern within the studio about creating an open world RPG without helpful tools like quest markers which in turn might turn off the format’s traditional fans, Miyazaki admitted there was some hesitation. But ultimately it goes back to something Miyazaki has in both the players and his team: trust.
“It would be a lie to say there was no concern about that from any of the dev team,” Miyazaki says. “But what I want to stress is that we didn’t set out with the goal to make an open world game in the traditional sense.” Instead, the director says his approach to open world design
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