Elden Ring Director Hidetaka Miyazaki on Fans Thinking He’s “Being Trapped” into Only Making Soulslike Games

Game director Hidetaka Miyazaki is a very well-known figure in the gaming industry right now. Gamers everywhere can’t help but appreciate his efforts over the years. He gave gaming a brand-new genre, which is now commonly known as soulslike. And to take things even further, FromSoftware is now almost synonymous with the term soulslike. And this popularity was established long before the Elden Ring was a thing.

Ever since his first game, Demon Souls, Hidetaka Miyazaki has worked primarily on soulslike titles, barring Sekiro. Fans do not see Sekiro as a soulslike. But does he get pressured by his fans to keep working on these games, or does he still want to work on soulslike games?

Hidetaka Miyazaki reveals his opinion on soulslike genre after the success of Elden Ring

When he was working on Demon Souls, no one was expecting that title to be successful. Once it was finished, the playtesters were not very enthusiastic about dying and losing their souls again and again. Publisher Sony too decided that this game was not worth their time, as they wanted an Elder Scrolls killer, not a super hard JRPG.

But Demon Souls eventually became a cult hit. The word-of-mouth for this game was so strong that people in the West were importing Japanese copies of Demon Souls to try it out. And that’s how this genre finally saw the light of day.

After some time, Hidetaka Miyazaki was given a chance to work on a game called Dark Souls. This was the game he worked on from top to bottom, but this one was developed with a time constraint. Due to this, its later half was not as good as its start and mid. Still, it became successful and kicked off a franchise.

He then went on to work on the first-ever Soulslike game, which actually gave him full freedom, both in budget and creativity. This game was none other than Bloodborne, and it was a massive hit. To this day, some fans call Bloodborne the best game in FromSoftware’s catalog. Dark Souls 2 was also released just a while before Bloodborne, but that game was directed by Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura.

It is pretty evident that for most of his career, Hidetaka Miyazaki has worked on soulslike games. And when he decided to do something different, that being a massive open-world game, that too ended up being an open-world take on his own Dark Souls series called Elden Ring.

After making so many soulslike titles, one must wonder if Hidetaka Miyazaki might be tired of this genre. He was even asked this a while ago, and his answer was pretty straightforward “We don’t like to feel pressured by what other studios are creating, or what is considered the next big game, or the next big Soulslike. We simply want to continue to make games that we enjoy in our own way.”

He was then asked how he and his team feel about being called the creators of a brand new genre; he simply said, “We felt a little bit honoured, but also there was a lot of trepidation there. We thought ‘is this really ok? Is this really what we are making? And is this really what we want to be known for?”

Let’s be pretty honest here: when FromSoftware decided to make games that were not soulslike, they were pretty good. Be it Sekiro or Armored Core VI, there’s no pressure, Miyazaki; you do you, and your fans will be there to support your work.

All the eyes are on Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Whatever might come in the future, currently most of Elden Ring and FromSoftware’s fanbase is focused on Shadow of the Erdtree. This DLC was announced a while ago, and fans only got its first trailer very recently. The DLC would bring a brand new area to the game and add a significant amount of lore to an already expansive story.

Only after this DLC’s launch can fans expect to find out what FromSoftware will be working on next. Let’s hope it’s the open-world iteration of Bloodborne.