Elden Ring is considered one of the most revered modern titles from the hood of FromSoftware. The studio, which has been enjoying a great run since the early 2000s with games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, released Elden Ring in 2022.
The game received critical acclaim for its open world, gameplay systems, and setting, and it even won multiple Game of the Year awards. Two years later, the game is scheduled to get a downloadable content expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, in June 2024.
Before the release of Elden Ring, the man behind the game, Hidetaka Miyazaki, had shared some interesting details about the game.
Elden Ring‘s most amazing feature according to Miyazaki
During a PlayStation exclusive interview ahead of Elden Ring‘s launch in 2022, Hidetaka Miyazaki spilled the beans about what was special about his new project. He was asked about what the one element of Elden Ring he wanted to ensure that did not go unnoticed by the community.
Miyazaki replied,
“There’s not one specific area from the network test that players overlooked or a part of the game that we want to push on them. Mainly, we want players to feel the importance of the level of freedom that we’re focusing on this time.”
He adds that they wanted players to enjoy the game in their own way and feel liberated in the new open world that Elden Ring offers. Something that players can explore at their own pace. He adds,
“If possible, we want players to try and steer clear of spoilers or guides and go in with a completely fresh, open mind and enjoy that initial sense of adventure. That’s how we’d want to experience the game if we were going into it for the first time.”
Thus, he revealed that they wanted their players to experience Elden Ring comfortably at their own pace with this renewed sense of wonder.
How did Sekiro impact Elden Ring?
Miyazaki also revealed how the development of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice overlapped with the development of Elden Ring. He was asked how Sekiro impacted his philosophy while developing Elden Ring. To this, he revealed,
“I’d have to say that, considering Sekiro’s development overlapped with Elden Ring’s to an extent, there’s nothing that directly came through from that project. But there were several indirect examples there. For instance, the enemy stance break mechanic in Elden Ring is similar to Sekiro’s successful posture system.”
Miyazaki also added how they even referenced Sekiro’s player traversal for the horse mounting system and how maps are traversed in Elden Ring. He also shed light on the difference between the narrative and characters of Sekiro and Elden Ring saying,
“Also, in terms of the narrative and how we tell character stories, Sekiro was a lot more direct than our previous Souls-like titles. While we’re still maintaining Elden Ring’s world with a sense of depth and a fragmented narrative–we’re still upholding our storytelling philosophy–there’s more focus on human elements and drama than before. We definitely took some inspiration from how Sekiro handled that and tried to apply the good parts to Elden Ring.”
Along with this, Miyazaki shared that there were two major challenges that the team faced while making Elden Ring. The first was expanding upon the level of freedom, while the second challenge was the tempo and pacing of the player’s progression.
