Ruin and decay bring a chance of rebirth’: Hidetaka Miyazaki on uniting players

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InterviewKirk McKeandAs FromSoftware’s new multiplayer game The Duskbloods nears release, the legendary game director behind Dark Souls talks connection, pessimism and of course, feetSince 2009’s Demon’s Souls, Japanese video game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has shown the world a different way to think about game design. His games defy convention with punishing fights, obscure rules, and unknowable, inhospitable worlds. The “Soulslike” genre – named after Demon’s Souls and its sequel Dark Souls – is now ubiquitous, influencing multimillion-sellers from God of War and Star Wars: Jedi to Hollow Knight. Miyazaki’s most recent success, 2022’s Elden Ring, which credited Game of Thrones author George RR Martin as a co-creator, sold over 30m copies and inspired Alex Garland to adapt it for the big screen at A24.

It earned Miyazaki a spot on Time magazine’s “most influential” list, an accolade he shares with just one other game developer: Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto.Miyazaki is now 51 and has been FromSoftware’s president since 2014, elevated from game designer to CEO after the success of the Souls series. He has a cherubic face that could pass for 35. He rarely speaks publicly, and never on camera. When he does speak, he answers questions like one of his characters – softly, sadly, his head bowed, making eye-contact only when I am speaking. Outside the studio where we speak is the sprawl of Tokyo’s Shinjuku, an ever-changing maze where tourists get lost and pop-up stores appear and vanish without a trace.

Today, a J-pop band performs in the square as the cicadas scream from the trees. A gilded statue of Malania, one of Elden Ring’s toughest bosses, looms over this dimly lit conference room inside From’s headquarters, a bonfire checkpoint away from the chaos.FromSoftware’s in-game universes are filled with clues – enemies, places and scraps of information from item descriptions paint a vague image of the world, and the player fills the blank space. You never fully understand these domains, although countless YouTube video game theorists have tried – as have other developers in awe of his work.

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“Of all the many things Miyazaki and his team do well, creating a sense of mystery is the greatest,” explains Dishonored director Harvey Smith, who has more than 40 days’ playtime in Elden Ring. “It’s so incredibly hard to do in video games, which are technical systems … But Miyazaki somehow creates an atmosphere of wonder. Even when finishing, you are left ruminating on fun, murky elements that feel half understood. It’s a delicious sense of intrigue.”Rather than the single-player action game that Miyazaki’s audience craves (fans are desperate for a sequel to his 2015 gothic masterpiece Bloodborne, for instance), his latest project The Duskbloods is a multiplayer Switch 2 exclusive.

Eight players face off against ghoulish horrors, fighting each other to avoid being culled at the end of each round. The survivors are whittled down over three phases culminating in a final three-way battle. The Duskbloods is releasing to an audience with shifting tastes and trends, and it is certainly a risk. “I’m very nervous,” Miyazaki says. “With every title we release there is this mounting tension.”The game opens with an arresting image: one hand reaching out for another. A male character is slumped on a chair, dejected; the shot moves in close to focus on their draped fingers.

From below the frame, a pale hand slowly reaches out and caresses them before gently clasping his wrist. Hands are a recurring motif in Miyazaki’s games; in Elden Ring, massive crawling hands burrow up from underground to attack you, and hand-like giants are revered as deities.“It’s not necessarily something I’m consistently aware of – maybe it’s something subconscious coming through,” Miyazaki says when I ask about this imagery. “Take a look online and there’s a rumour that I have a bit of a thing for feet, but I’m not honestly sure where this comes from.

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I feel like I’m trying to depict some side of human nature or the human existence that is difficult to describe.” (His games have featured, by my count, at least six barefoot female characters.)Perhaps all the hands and feet are symbolic of human connection. One hand reaches for another; bare feet connect skin with earth. Miyazaki has been exploring that theme since Demon’s Souls, whose novel, stranger-centric multiplayer was inspired by a time his car slipped on an icy hill and a stranger helped to push him to safety.