The Dark Souls franchise and all of FromSoftware’s library of games might have their punishing difficulty in common, but the studio likes to go in directions that are interesting to it instead of sticking to a script, per president Hidetaka Miyazaki’s recent interview with The Guardian.
The legendary director touched on what the future of FromSoftware will be once The Duskbloods is out. While he’s typically secretive about what’s next, Miyazaki shed light on how the studio has crafted experiences that share many similarities but are vastly different. Apparently, preventing boredom works wonders for the studio, and it manages this by not adhering to a template or formula when approaching a new project.
“There’s no intentional FromSoftware [mantra] – ‘this is the way we make our games’ – because if you start to do that it becomes stale and conservative, and you start having to adhere to a set of rules and philosophies, and it just doesn’t become interesting; you can’t make anything that’s as fun. So I feel like at least what’s worked for us philosophically is trying to adhere to what we find interesting first. I think that has created a good throughline through our games, and that’s what we concentrate on to [conceive] a new title.”
Well, we’re not sure some of the bosses we’ve faced across the studio’s games might fit the average person’s idea of fun, but it is inspiring to see one of modern gaming’s finest strive to innovate in a space where copies of its work spring up quite consistently. Here’s to hoping FromSoftware continues finding interesting paths to take, and that those eventually lead back to a second outing in Yharnam (at some point).
As for the immediate future, The Duskbloods launches this year for Nintendo Switch 2. A release date hasn’t been announced, but we could learn more at the upcoming Nintendo Direct on September 9th.
