In the gaming industry, there are always games that are called "niche" that break people's imagination.
Among the many niche categories, the soul game known for its high difficulty and abuse can be said to be the most special existence. Despite the difficulty of dissuading many players, the Cumulative Sales of the Dark Souls series developed by FromSoftware is close to 30 million units.
After the end of the Dark Souls series, Hidetaka Miyazaki, president of FromSoftware, began his new journey, this time, the Elden Ring, which will be released worldwide on February 25, and although set in the Fantasy Middle Ages, it has little to do with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series. In an interview with EDGE, Hidetaka Miyazaki said it was the best game FromSoftware had ever done, and talked about the game's creativity, development and related stories.
On the eve of the game's official release, overseas media ratings were finally released, metacritic website, PS5 version of "Eldon's Ring of Law" has 45 media scores, the average score is as high as 97, is the highest score on PS5 this year, but also the highest score game in PS5 history, if you do not look at the platform, the score of the old man ring can even be compared to the only designated god in 2017 "Zelda Legend: Breath of the Wilderness".
"Eldon's Circle of Law" winning? Miyazaki Hidetaka is about to ascend to the altar again?
Here's the full content of a GameLook interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki:
Elden Ring creative director Hidetaka Miyazaki huddled in his office at Fromsoftware's Japanese headquarters, wrapped in a winter padded black vest. Although his face had always looked so young, tonight his demeanor was sober and alert. Behind his desk were bookshelves, filled with colorful books, which he didn't have time to browse. The gap between the bookshelves and the ceiling was piled high with board games he didn't even have time to take apart the box to play, and as the game was about to launch, his pressure piled up like a mountain.
Miyazaki's biggest achievement to date is Dark Souls, which was recently voted The Ultimate Game Of All Time at the Golden Joystick Awards, beating nominated Super Mario 64, Tetris and Half-Life 2. The Dark Souls series sold nearly 30 million copies, a surprising number for a game that is still classified as a niche category.
Not only does Elden Ring have the potential to expand the dark souls series' loyal fan base, adding the worldview-building talent of beloved fantasy writer George RR Martin, and possibly expanding the design footprint of the Dark Souls series itself. Players who were lucky enough to participate in the closed web test in November spent dozens of hours exploring the experience, and many still ran to Youtube and posting pages to see what resources, bosses, and hidden locations they inevitably missed.
The interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki seems to have gone through a similar process, starting with a lot of questions in hand, hoping to dig into the minds of the most fascinating producers in game development. However, when time runs out, you will find that there are still many shining places that have not been discovered. Happily, this time the scenes are less restrictive, and we have access to some of the news from Elden Ring, where there is a lot of rambling and exploring the creation, symbolism and design concept of FromSoftware's most ambitious project to date.
Creative Process: Elden Ring has nothing to do with The Lord of the Rings
Q: As the launch time draws closer, what is your current state of mind?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: I'll tell you, it's not a very good state. This is the difficulty in all game development, not just Elden Ring. At this juncture, it was time for me to really start to have regrets and doubts about whether the game should be released and see what everyone thought. I started thinking, "I could have done better... Maybe I could do it in a different way..."
At a critical moment before a game is about to be released, there are a lot of such ideas that involuntarily pile up, causing you a little trouble when you finish the project work, so it is very difficult. It's a tough time and it's not going to be easier to get through because you're more experienced. But specifically, from the work on the Elden Ring project, I would very much like to see people experience it and see how they react, which is a big moment in our R&D history.
Q: When you first spoke to George Martin [A Song of Ice and Fire] about it, what do you remember most?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: I have some good memories of these early discussions, not much in terms of content, just the overall feeling of my chat with George Martin, who actually knows about the Dark Souls series of games. He knows what these games are, so it makes me happy and gives me some encouragement. From my conversations with him, I immediately realized his skill and passion for fantasy and the obvious passion for the genre and the game.
There's a generation gap between us, so I was a little apprehensive when I went into these discussions, but after a lot of talking, it was like talking to an old friend. Having these conversations with someone who is passionate about the same things and showing pure joy and curiosity about these fantasy worlds feels very fresh to me. That's what really got me to care in our conversation, and I'm very excited to work with him.
Q: What was the location of the initial meeting?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Usually we go to the United States and go to his hometown or the base of operations, and I remember the first conversation was in a tavern, and we went out to find him, went to his home stadium, and had a face-to-face conversation with him.
Q: Before he worked on the basics of the backstory of Elden Ring, can you tell us what the creative outline you gave him was?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: In the beginning, we had a respectful relationship with each other, both personally and at work, which was important for the foundation of game development because Mr. Martin respected the fact that we didn't want him to write game stories or in-game texts. Because we felt it would actually limit his creative output. If in this way it would be limited to a game or something that already had a concept, it would limit the inspiration we might get from him. So we decided early on that he would write the basis of the backstory, the historical elements of the game, some of the things that happened long before the game's story took place. This way, he is freer to be creative and offer something unrestricted.
We started by giving him very vague and broad themes, and mythological ideas about the wandering in my head, and the types of games we usually do, and the themes we want to explore in our games. So everything is very loose and very vague, and then he gives us a lot of ideas: how about this, how about that? We began this exchange of ideas that came and went.
Q: What was the form of his Elden Ring myth when it came to you? Short stories, or character sketches?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: There was nothing visual at the time, it was all text. But these texts are not short stories, but rather words that depict setting or setting the scene for the game and the world, detailing the flow of history and who appeared during this period. There's a short, background story, of course, but it's more of an introduction to the world and a natural series of activities in which these characters engage.
That's what the team and I get, and then we understand it in our own way and provide something visual, and do it in the game. Many of the elements in the game are human relationships, including those between parents and children, and these elements drive my creative thinking. Mr. Martin's handling of a lot of the problems he writes also provides a theme for the game itself, so I'm very grateful.
Q: In the past, you've mentioned that British mythology was the touchstone of Dark Souls, so were there any books or films that inspired you in the process of creating the world of Elden Ring?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: It's hard to name an inspiration that had a major influence on Elden Ring, there are a lot of different works that influenced the creative process in many ways, like The Lord of the Rings, Michael Moorcock's Eternal Warrior series of novels, and board game RPGs like RuneQuest. I have selected a large number of themes and inspirations from these works, and I have had some influence on the development of Elden Ring.
The biggest difference from the Dark Souls series is that I can often draw inspiration and motivation from George Martin and the myths he created. This is perhaps the biggest impact on the game because it's a way we've never used before, and it allows us to connect the history of new myths, create something very new, and provide a lot of creative motivation and a lot of ongoing inspiration.
Q: Your office seems to be full of creative inspiration and other things.
Hidetaka Miyazaki: I put a refrigerator here, there are books and games, and I basically live in the office. At the peak of any project, I like to do something that is to retreat into my office and go all out, surround myself with all that inspiration and stimulation, and just bury me deep in the idea.
It had everything I needed, except not being able to take a shower, so I would go home and take a shower or take a shower. But outside of that, especially in the covid-19 pandemic and remote work environment, it's easy for me to lock myself into these ideas, especially at the peak of R&D.
Q: Can you talk about Godfrey, who appeared on the cover of Edge's "Elden Ring" version?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: When we talked to George Martin, we had these themes and ideas for creating boss art for the central characters of the story. He then wrote these myths, and we invited him to create these game stories that take place long before the heroes of ancient mythology. These dramatic hero characters never appeared in our previous games, so how he described the mystery and heroic qualities of these characters was fascinating to me. Godfrey is the embodiment of it all, and he is one of the main player characters in the game.
In Elden Ring, one of the player characters' goals is to become Lords of Elden, and they want to go to The Lands Between and become the next Lords of Elden. In the golden age of The Lands Between there were two Lords of Elden, and Godfrey was the first. He was the first Lord of Elden and married the Eternal Queen Marika, who is described in detail in many of the resources we have published so far. He was a representative of this heyday, he represented all the great things of The Elden Ring and The Lands Between of that era.
Eventually, he is banished from this land, he himself is corrupted, and has a deep connection with the corrupted (the player character). Godfrey is the embodiment of their long history and struggles, he represents many things about the player character, has a deep relationship with the player, and the person who was once radiant is now eclipsed.
Q: Godfrey's tomahawk blade has a tentacle pattern on it, which indicates that it is connected to the ocean, is this part of the world we can see in the final game?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: I would say that he is a character who has a high number of appearances in this story, and he represents not only a large part of the player character, but also the world and the large part of its story. So, in order not to spoil too much, I would say that as a character who represents so much of the game, he is a character that I think is very attractive. I think when players experience the game, they have a lot to explore, they can see what Godfrey presents and then discover how deep his story really is.
Q: When mentioning a Ring of Abilities in a fantasy setting, it's hard not to think of Tolkien's famous One Ring, and what's surprising is that when you unleash the Holy Ground skill in Elden Ring, there will be cursive characters on the ground, and the words used in the game are specially developed for the game, or are there no design symbols for any text translation?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: As a subject or an inspiration, observers are likely to associate it with Elden Ring, but in reality it has nothing to do with The Lord of the Rings or any of Tolkien's works. In terms of creative differences, the Ring of The Lord is a real object and can be worn on the hand, the Elden Ring is more abstract, it represents something metaphysical, so the inspiration for The Elden Ring is not directly related to the Ring of the Ring and Tolkien's work.
Some of the scriptures and languages used in the game are actually rune letters or verses used by many forces, and the Holy Ground scriptures actually represent the Two Fingers forces, rather than directly representing the Elden Ring itself.
Q: The cover art of Elden Ring has a lot of overlapping gold rings, do these shapes have anything to do with the different camps you describe?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: The ring you see in the logo doesn't represent a lot of things in these camps, but more of the laws, rules, and orders of the world. The Golden Order used to be something that the Elden Ring once stood for, but it wasn't directly related. It's more about how you apply these rules, how they are implemented in the physical world, and what effects they have.
So it's more about the influence of these demigods, who have been around for a long time, including how they apply these concepts of order and discipline, which is what the Elden Ring and these overlapping and interesting rings represent, and are actually a little more complicated, but that's all I can say now.
Game development: Visual effects are not the top priority
Q: Let's talk about the development of Elden Ring, when you create a space as big as The Lands Between, how do you spread the tasks within a manageable range?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: It's a very challenging process because it's the first time we've done such a big world. So we don't know if we're doing it right, but we're generally consistent with the way we've done games before, like in terms of physical layout and how to spread the mission around the game world. Subsequently, during development, it depends entirely on the needs of the game and our requirements and the situation of the game.
We always put the game first, we have to draw the essence of these maps, we have to draw the elements that shape this map, and what helps the game.
So in terms of building the game world, in general, in addition to the scale has increased a lot, but our approach has not changed. One of the benefits of this increase in scale and the new format is that it actually allows us to pass on a lot of details and elements that we couldn't do in the previous smaller game world, so that's a challenge and a blessing in itself, because it allows us to do a lot of things.
Q: What made you decide to postpone the game's original release date?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: The degree of freedom we ultimately wanted to achieve in Elden Ring far exceeded our initial plan, and the complexity was accumulating, and it took a lot of work and time to do debug and QA.
Q: Considering the size and complexity of the overall project, is there some special gameplay or mechanics that are difficult to do well?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Of course, in such a big game and world, there are a lot of challenges, and in many areas we have to use the trial-and-error approach that has been in the Dark Souls series, iterating on these mechanics, expanding to new scales, a lot of which is related to the rhythm of the game, so that players are not bored, so that they can keep them interested, exploring and having fun.
Of course, in this new big world we've created, we want to prioritize fun and player freedom, which is more important than anything. So there's a lot of characters, a lot of activity, and you don't want anything to clash with anything else, you want it all to merge with the player's motivation, but where you want them to be, and hopefully it's going to provide an incentive to progress and explore, so that's probably the biggest challenge.
Q: Given that open-world games require more visual assets than your previous projects, do you have to expand your team size? Or more to seek outsourcing cooperation?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Yes, of course, team size and outsourcing need to expand as the game world and content grow. But we've explored some systematic processes that allow us to automatically generate some content without the need for a human hand, so we can not only use our existing teams, but also expand our skills, and there are many ways to solve the new challenges of this new world.
A simple case might be that there are a lot of things in the game world, like trees and plants, and a lot of these things are done with procedural systems, which account for 80% of the workload of these kinds of tasks, and then our artists will do some things manually, so this is a very good new way of working.
Conquer the Hardware: Telecommuting, FromSoftware's best game
Q: Given the challenges posed by the pandemic, how can you work remotely without your R&D schedules being affected?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Yeah, especially in the beginning, everything changed. If that didn't affect the development of Elden Ring, it would be absolutely deceitful, and we had to change many aspects of game development, including team communication, which was a big part. It was difficult to adapt at first, but with the efforts of the team, we did it.
We had a tough time, especially in the beginning, with the help of our employees and team, we found new ways to deal with R&D in a new situation, which allowed us to work smoothly and comfortably under various constraints, and we are grateful to them.
A lot of employees and I are used to working remotely and communicating. You know, we have a culture of remote communication, like email, phone or video chat, so it's just extending them to a company-wide level, and we've adapted well in difficult times.
Q: You've said before that you wanted to create new Dark Fantasy action RPGs in the Elden Ring that the Dark Souls series didn't implement, what are these things exactly?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: I think it's best to re-tease out what we said before, that Elden Ring is the pinnacle of everything we've done in the Dark Souls series and all the games, and that's the best way to understand that. So, it's not necessarily that we couldn't do it before and can do it now, it's more that the development of these games has led us to make Elden Ring.
So at that level, it's not going to be the first to come out, but there are a lot of differences between these games, and Elden Ring represents the pinnacle of our R&D experience and knowledge, creating things that we couldn't have done before.
Q: Demon Souls was the beginning of your journey, and then we saw other developers redone the game without you being directly involved, what was it like to experience a remake of the game that you did ten years ago?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: As you said, I wasn't directly involved in it, I didn't even play Demon's Soul Remake, but it was because I didn't like to play games that I had done before, which evoked a lot of old emotions, a lot of memories, which was a little hard to accept, so I didn't like to play games that I made a long time ago. But I'm happy to see that it has a new look, it's an old game, so it makes me happy to be able to experience it with more advanced graphics for new players.
It used to be a rough game and the development was relatively rudimentary, so I was nervous about whether new players could like it as much as before, which was one of my concerns about the remake, but in the end, I was happy to see so many players enjoying it.
It's interesting to see Bluepoint Games do something that we didn't think about, like some visual effects and gameplay that we couldn't do or didn't do at the time, so it was nice and interesting for me to see them research and apply new processes and technologies.
Q: Did the fidelity of Demon's Souls Remake put extra pressure on the Elden Ring team? After all, it is a game logged into the PS5.
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Yeah, I'm pretty sure our art staff felt more stressed than anybody else, not just elden Ring, but all the games we were making. Picture quality fidelity is not our top priority, our requirements for graphics depend on the system and the game itself, compared to other factors in R&D, graphics are not the highest priority for us.
So, it's always something I'm sorry for the graphics team because I know they work really hard and our graphics systems team and programmers do a lot of features to create the best looking games, but you know, it's not the highest priority for me personally and for our games as a whole.
Q: How did Elden Ring help from your previous games, and do you think it's The best game from FromSoftware to date?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: It's a difficult question to answer, we're always outpacing ourselves, making the best games possible, and trying to make the best game we've ever had. It's not just for Elden Ring, it's also for all of our games, new games wouldn't have been available without previous experience, and our team has grown a lot in the development of these projects. After going through so much, we can only make Elden Ring, so in this sense, I think it will be our best game so far.
Q: An elden Ring social media post said, "Like Erdtree itself, a Tarnished road connects branches of heaven and hovers deep in the earth.". The worlds of the Dark Souls series are vertical, will Elden Ring be the same?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Yes, these terms that mention the depth and height of the world are places where you can really explore, and we want to create a world full of the joy of exploring the unknown. So, we wanted to create a lot of compelling things, a lot of mysterious environments that players wanted to find, explore, diversity was something we were very focused on when we created this game, and that's something that I think we've achieved.
Q: When it comes to the topic of Erdtree, word and symbol trees appear in many of your games, why does the concept of trees have such a strong influence in your imagination?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: In Dark Souls, the tree pattern already appears, but fire is the most visually recognizable element in that game. For Elden Ring, the trees are more obvious, and I don't want to say too many spoilers, but the trees are better and more complex, there's a lot to explore, and players will find a lot of things in the game.
First of all, as something that has visual impact and appeal in the game world, something that grabs your attention and stands out, a tree with gold leaves is the one I think is the most ideal, it will burn those imaginations into your mind, but also represent the rules and world order that we talked about before.
What can represent these rules and orders but not so absolutely? That's something I've been thinking about when I created this picture, and the tree is obviously a good fit because it's alive, growing, and eventually withering and dying. It really fits the role of something that can give that order, control these rules, and enforce them in the world. Because these are things that grow, change, wither and die. So I feel that this tree fits these elements both visually and thematically. But if you say more, there will definitely be spoilers.
Q: Considering the name of the game, it is surprising that the rings are items that cannot be worn, especially in previous Dark Souls games.
Hidetaka Miyazaki: This choice was made for several reasons. First of all, we explored the method of using the ring as an equippable item in the previous game, especially Dark Souls, so this time we wanted to do it in a different way, with a more diversified design; second, the ring in this world also has a physical object that can be worn on the finger, but more as a unique item in the story and character activities, so we want the ring to have a special place in the World of Elden Ring, different from the design of the amulet.
Q: Riding and slashing combat on horseback is obviously a new feature, is there more enemy encounters specifically designed for Torrent in addition to network testing?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: We don't want to force the player to ride a horse or ride a slash battle at any time, instead, we just create these scenarios or make the player feel that the ride and slash battle is an optional strategy, but whether or not to do it depends on the player. We would never force players to fight like this, considering the size of the world, this is a way to encourage players to use Torrent teleportation, we want cavalry combat to be one of the players' multiple choices, giving them the freedom to choose multiple options in different environments, that's what we designed with it in mind.
Q: Open World RPGs have had a lot of blockbusters in recent years, including Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 and Skyrim, and in terms of the design of Elden Ring, what do you think is the biggest opportunity to leave your mark in this category?
Hidetaka Miyazaki: I don't want to use such an exaggerated statement, I don't want to say, "This is the mark I want to leave for the industry." Conversely, if I want to play a game, or if I have an ideal world of games, Elden Ring is close. The games I create are all very personal: tight combat, fantasy Middle-earth settings, dungeons and stuff like that that I can explore, and that's just something I love, so Elden Ring has everything I like.
Maybe I won't end up playing Elden Ring because it's a game I made myself, and it's my personal rule. You won't get any unknowns that new players will have to go through. Like I said before, I don't want to play. But if I do play it, it's close to the game I want to play.
I don't want to say, "This is the kind of open world I want to do," it's just an open world that enriches the experience I want to achieve. According to some simple examples, if I explore the world, I don't want a map, and if I see something, I can explore it. If I want to fight dragons in an epic arena, I can go and fight, it's a very simple thing. But Elden Ring implemented a lot of those ideas for me, creating something close to my ideal game.
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