The well-known Japanese game creator Hidetaka Miyazaki is the mind behind titles like Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and Sekiro. As they provided players with a novel experience through high degrees of difficulty and an emphasis on environmental storytelling, usually in a dark fantasy atmosphere, these games have become critical and commercial successes.
A new genre known as Soulslike emerged from the Dark Souls series as players all over the world began to appreciate these games. The Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls game by Miyazaki is credited with establishing this genre. With slight modifications, each of these games attempted to borrow gameplay elements from the Dark Souls series.
Hidetaka Miyazaki is not bothered by other Soulslike games
The trend of making Soulslike games that started with the release of Demon’s Souls in 2009 continues even today. Over all these years, many games have come out that got the tag of being Soulslike with the latest being Lords of the Fallen that came out in 2023.
This change in the gameplay of different titles has to do a lot with Hidetaka Miyazaki and his way of game development. Since the release of Demon’s Souls, the scenario of the action RPG has seen a change where many studios are trying to replicate the same formulas used in Miyazaki’s games.
During an interview with GameSpot in 2015, Miyazaki was asked how he felt about the Souls games changing the landscape of the RPG genre. To this, he replied, ‘We don’t really feel our games have created a standard”.
He was further asked about his thoughts on other games taking inspiration from games made by FromSoftware. His reply to this was “I have no concern over others making similar games”. This is because it means that players now want to get their hands on games that come with difficult gameplay.
He also added that they are completely fine with other games borrowing their aspects because,
Our main focus is keeping game creation fresh for ourselves
He also went on the say that he wanted other developers to start making games that challenge the players and help them achieve a similar level of satisfaction as FromSoftware’s games. And moreover, since all of these games turn out to be different from each other, it is exciting to see more and more such games come out.
Demon’s Souls 3 marked the end of the series
During the same interview, Miyazaki also said that Demon’s Souls would be the last game in the series as he believed it would be sensible to keep making Souls and Bloodborne games forever.
He added,
I’m considering Dark Souls 3 to be the big closure on the series
This is because he and FromSoftware want to divert their focus to actively create new games for the future. He also added that Dark Soul 3 is an important point in the evolution of FromSoftware and that future games will draw inspiration from it.
Moreover, by the time Demon Souls 3 came out, Miyazaki became the President of FromSoftware and therefore after this game, he went on to work on a game that was conceived after he took the new position.
