Elden Ring Interview

Citing Weekly Famitsu, a Japanese video game magazine, Frontline Gaming Japan brings us a transcript of sorts of a recent interview with FromSoftware’s game director Hidetaka Miyazaki (Part 1, Part 2). The interview covers plenty of topics, including the challenges of creating a fully open-world Souls game, FromSoftware’s collaboration with George R. R. Martin, the game’s lore and themes, and more.

Here’s a couple of sample paragraphs, and you take things from there:

In regards to the size of the game, which is greater than any of their previous titles, Miyazaki says that they started work on the game with the intention to make it their largest game. The primary reason for them choosing to do so at this time is because the staff at From Software have grown and there are now more excellent members that can be entrusted with various things. That being said, the game did end up being even larger and more complex than initially planned, but the staff were able to live up to expectations and handle the development.

When asked if he had any trouble as director of a game of this size, Miyazaki says that compared to previous titles, he did have to delegate things to others more than usual. As such, when directing things, he took care to not just tell others how things should be concluded, but also share his logic, philosophies, and thought processes as well.

The interviewer comments on how they felt that Elden Ring was influenced by Sekiro to some degree, and Miyazaki says that he actually feels that there is not a lot of direct feedback from Sekiro, as the two titles were being worked on at the same time. As he was director on both games, though, there is of course some influence on each other.