Dark Souls creator doesn’t consider himself the father of the new action RPG genre

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As a huge fan of these games, everyone always says FromSoftware basically created the whole ‘Souls-like’ genre, you know, because of games like Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. But it’s really interesting – even Hidetaka Miyazaki, the lead designer behind those amazing titles, isn’t convinced they deserve all the credit. It’s cool to see him be so humble about it, honestly.

The game’s creator notes that incorporating character death and the resulting lessons into the gameplay wasn’t a completely original concept. Hidetaka Miyazaki believes players have been wanting this kind of experience for some time, and FromSoftware successfully delivered with a game that truly resonated with that desire.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DM@x89yytq

I’ve been a huge fan of Hidetaka Miyazaki for years, and it’s fascinating to learn about how he really shaped FromSoftware’s success. A lot of people don’t realize he didn’t join the company at the very beginning – he started in 2004 and spent a good chunk of time working on the Armored Core games. When they started experimenting with a fantasy title – what eventually became Demon’s Souls – things weren’t going well at all. Management honestly thought it would flop! But then Miyazaki stepped up as leader and completely turned it around. He brought in ideas from the older King’s Field series, added online play, and this really cool death system where you could try to reclaim lost rewards if you didn’t die again before getting back to where you fell. It was a gamble, but it totally paid off, and the rest, as they say, is history!

As Hidetaka Miyazaki explains:

We found that games can be designed around the idea of death being a central part of how they’re played, and people seem to really like this concept.

This isn’t a revolutionary solution, but rather a natural fit. It blends the core elements of FromSoftware’s games with our project, filling a gap we saw in the current market.

It’s common for popular games to build upon existing ideas rather than being completely original. Often, these hits aren’t revolutionary, but instead refine interesting concepts in a new way, sparking a wave of imitators. Real-time strategy (RTS) games are a good example. While games like The Ancient Art of War, Nether Earth, and Herzog Zwei existed in the 1980s, the RTS genre didn’t truly take off until Westwood Studios combined those concepts in a fresh approach with Dune II and the original Command & Conquer.

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2025-12-30 16:03