Hidetaka Miyazaki became a popular name in the gaming industry for his contribution to the Dark Souls series. He further solidified his place in the industry by serving as the director of many popular Soulslike games like Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring. Without a doubt, Miyazaki is perfect at everything he does. However, he believes that he has a weakness: characterization.
In one of his past interviews, Miyazaki talked about his 2015 action role-playing game, Bloodborne, another outstanding game he has worked on. While talking about Master Willem, Miyazaki admitted that he is not very good at characterization so his dialogue is in flashback form. However, that became one of the small details that made Bloodborne an exciting video game.
Hidetaka Miyazaki says he is not good at characterization
Last year, Hidetaka Miyazaki appeared for an interview with Future Press (via Bloodborne Wiki) to talk about his 2015 video game Bloodborne. The game featured a character called Master Willem, who doesn’t directly talk to players as his dialogues are in flashback form. Despite being a creative genius, Miyazaki admitted that he is not good at characterization but the dialogue being in flashback form served a purpose,
“Well, not to go back to my old crutch of being not so great at characterization, but if we had him speaking directly to you about all the supreme truths of the world or whatnot, it would’ve wound up really hackneyed. In a general way, I wanted the text we wrote to be as protective as possible of his dignity, his way of thinking. That was the approach I took. Really, whether it comes to Willem or the Choir or the School of Mensis, each of them has a certain background philosophy that drives them.”
Although Miyazaki says this was done because he is not good at characterization, this flashback dialogue was a small little detail that helped Bloodborne stand out, as it was a unique way of storytelling. Willem is a memorable character but is not Miyazaki’s favorite.
Miyazaki explained that he and Bloodborne’s team had a forum where he would share his ideas and the rest of the team would browse through them. Using Miyazaki’s ideas, the rest of the team brainstormed further, coming up with fresh things that could be added to the game.
Hidetaka Miyazaki isn’t a huge fan of storytelling as he prefers players to interpret it for themselves
Miyazaki has stated in the past that he designs his game in a way that players unfold the story themselves. With architectural designs and side characters, Miyazaki does all the storytelling. He said in an interview with Wired,
“I don’t dislike direct storytelling – people seem to think that about my games! Actually, the truth is, I’m just not good at implementing direct narrative in my games. Another side is, I want to leave the interpretation of the world’s stories to the player. That’s actually my biggest reason for focusing on environmental and subtle storytelling. Rather than the game itself automatically telling the story, the player gets more value from it when they themselves find out hints of plot from items or side-characters they encounter in the world.”
As per Alphr, Hidetaka Miyazaki is also inspired by architecture, especially of European origin cathedrals as it is quite evident in his video games. Bloodborne was released for PlayStation 4 on March 24, 2015, and sold 7.46 million units by February 2022. It is labeled as one of the best video games ever made.
