Boss Encounter
Elden Ring’s creative director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, is hunkered down in his office at FromSoftware’s Japanese HQ, bundled up in a black padded winter vest. Despite a perennially youthful face, his demeanour this evening is unmistakably sober, alert. Behind his desk are shelves lined with the colourful spines of books he has no time to browse, the gap between his shelves and the ceiling stacked with board games he has no time to unbox and play. Crunch has arrived. There are just over two months left before launch, and pressure is mounting.
Miyazaki’s crowning achievement up until now, Dark Souls, was recently honoured via public vote as The Ultimate Game Of All Time at the Golden Joystick Awards, besting nominees such as Super Mario 64, Tetris and Half-Life 2. The Dark Souls franchise has sold close to 30 million copies, a surprising figure for a series that people continue to suggest, apparently without irony, caters to a niche audience.
Elden Ring not only has the potential to expand the ranks of the Dark Souls faithful, enlisting the worldbuilding talents of beloved fantasy author George RR Martin, it expands the design canvas of the Dark Souls franchise itself. Players lucky enough to land a spot in November’s closed network test spent dozens of hours exploring it and still flocked to YouTube and message boards to see what loot, bosses and tucked-away caverns they had inevitably missed.
Interviews with Miyazaki tend to conclude with a similar pang. You arrive with a scroll of questions in hand, hoping to excavate the recesses of one of the most fascinating minds in game development. Yet when time runs out, you know there’s a vast store of gold left behind, untouched. To our delight, this occasion is to be less constrained, and we are able to reach far into Elden Ring’s corners. Plenty of freedom to roam and explore the creation, symbolism and design philosophy of FromSoft’s most ambitious work to date.
Game Elden Ring
Developer FromSoftware
Publisher Bandai Namco
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Origin Japan
Release February 25
With the launch getting close, what’s your state of mind right now?
It’s not a pretty state of mind, I will tell you that [laughs]. This is a tough point in the development of any game, not just Elden Ring. At this point, just a couple of months from release, this is when I really start to have regrets and doubts about releasing the game into the wild, and seeing what everybody thinks. I start thinking, ‘I could have maybe done this better… I could have maybe approached this in a different way…’
There’s a lot of these thoughts that build up just on the cusp of a game’s release that are involuntary and they plague your mind a little bit as you’re finishing off work on the project. So it is quite tough. It’s a tough time, and it doesn’t get easier with experience. But particularly, looking at as its own piece of work, I’m really looking forward to people playing it and seeing
