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Director Miyazaki speaks to what drives development of Dark Souls 3
"What we want to communicate to the fans is that there's an inherent beauty that can be found within everything," said Dark Souls 3 director. "Beyond all the withering and decay."
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"We emphasise sadness and loneliness, too, which can be seen in both the environments and life forms within the game. What we want to communicate to the fans is that there's an inherent beauty that can be found within everything, beyond all the withering and decay."
- From Software's Hidetaka Miyazaki on Dark Souls 3.
With From Software set to release Dark Souls 3 this month (in Japan, at least) game director and studio chief Hidetaka Miyazaki is getting out in front of press to talk a bit about where the game comes from, and where From (and Miyazaki) might go next.
Many game makers celebrate the Souls games (and their spiritual kin Bloodborne) as masterworks of game design, so it's interesting to see Miyazaki telling Vice at a recent preview event in Germany that he's aware of how popular they've become -- and leery of letting that popularity tie his hands.
"It's quite obvious that the Dark Souls franchise is reaching a turning point, and I'm happy that I have a greater budget for the third game, as well as the creative freedom to make my own decisions," Miyazaki told Vice. "But if there were some restrictions about what I was creating, I definitely wouldn't want to work on it."
Much of the interview, in fact, revolves around what sort of From projects Miyazaki might like to work on besides Dark Souls -- a new Metal Wolf Chaos game, for example, or some sort of new mech game mixing the design sensibilities of From's Dark Souls and Armored Core games.
"You know, we actually released a Dreamcast game pretty similar to that concept, named Frame Gride," Miyazaki told Vice. "It's a mix of fantasy and mecha genres, both of which I love working on. I'd love to work on a game that evokes the same themes as anime series like Aura Battler Dunbine and The Vision of Escaflowne, but it would be incredibly difficult to do so. I want to work on a game like that, but other people at From Software would think that would be an impossible idea."
These comments are true to form for Miyazaki, who noted last November that he's concerned about keeping game creation fresh at From Software.
"I'm considering Dark Souls III to be the big closure on the series," he said in an interview with GameSpot. "That's not just limited to me, but From Software and myself together want to aggressively make new things in the future."
For more comments on what, exactly, they might make next and how they've designed Dark Souls 3 to convey a sense of loss to the player, check out the full Vice feature.
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