FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods is set for a busy week with its closed network test starting on August 21st. Hands-on previews have also dropped, revealing tons of new information on the gameplay loop and how PvP intertwines with PvE. But lest you think this is the studio’s future, especially since this is its second consecutive multiplayer title, director Hidetaka Miyazaki reiterated that single-player is still important.
“It’s not necessarily some big reveal saying this is the direction we plan to go in moving forward. We still have a heavy focus on single-player content as well. This is just something that happened to work out the way it did,” he told IGN. “It’s funny because there was never really any big plan that these two games would both release next to each other.”
When conceiving of The Duskbloods, tabletop role-playing games and board games were the main influence. Which sounds great on paper, but throwing these into a single-player experience felt more challenging. “These things seemed like great ideas but didn’t really fit the context of a single-player game.” Hence, multiplayer.
Of course, FromSoftware isn’t one to follow trends either, and so seeing player reactions to such games is always intriguing. “Personally, it’s very fun to make a multiplayer game like this. It’s not something we’ve done a lot, and we’re looking forward to seeing players’ reactions and getting feedback.”
And for those wondering when the developer will return to the single-player space, Miyazaki admitted that, “If anything, it’s like the more you work on something multiplayer for a long time, it scratches that itch, only to want to make something single-player again.” Perhaps we’ll see something to that effect in the coming years? One can certainly hope.
The Duskbloods launches this year for Nintendo Switch 2. It’s the first Nintendo-exclusive title by FromSoftware since Lost Kingdoms (and its sequel) was released for the GameCube back in the early 2000s.
As a PvEvP game, players control one of over a dozen Bloodsworn, each competing for the First Blood during the Twilight of Humanity. A release date has yet to be announced, but insider NateTheHate claims that it won’t be this Summer.
