What Elden Ring developer From Software learned from working with Nintendo | The Verge

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The Elden Ring studio continues to chart new paths through games like The Duskbloods.

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There’s something just a little bit different about From Software’s office in Tokyo. Like with any other successful video game studio, there’s extensive security to get in the door, a minimalist lobby with framed posters from the studio’s most recent releases, and a large glass display case filled with statues from ceremonies ranging from the BAFTAs to The Game Awards. But the hallways are painted black, a fitting theme for a developer known for crafting dark, gothic worlds and a hint at what new creations are lurking inside.

While it has largely become known for a singular style of action game — dubbed “Soulslike,” after the massively influential Dark Souls series — From Soft has steadily continued to try new things, pushing its signature style into new genres. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the studio’s next release: The Duskbloods, a competitive multiplayer game set in a world of vampires that will be exclusive to the Switch 2 and published by Nintendo when it launches later this year. It’s a new genre, new setting, new platform, and new publisher all rolled into one game. But after Elden Ring, which has sold more than 30 million copies since it launched in 2022, the team at From Soft now also feels more assured in expanding their horizons.

We played The Duskbloods, the Switch 2’s wildest new exclusive

“With the success of Elden Ring, as a company it has definitely allowed us to explore, I wouldn’t say risky ideas, but things that we might not have had the confidence for,” From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki, who also directed both Elden Ring and The Duskbloods, told me during a recent hands-on event at the studio’s office.

The studio’s rise to this point has been slow and steady. From Soft’s first release was the dungeon crawling RPG King’s Field in 1994, and while it launched a consistent stream of titles after that — including the cult-hit mech battling Armored Core series — it was more than a decade later when the studio really started making its mark with the release of Demon’s Souls in 2009. Directed by Miyazaki, the game thrust players into a harsh fantasy world, one where death was a constant and the combat was punishing. It was an experience that demanded a lot from players, but also rewarded their patience with thrilling victories and a story that gradually revealed itself.

It was an unlikely hit that spawned a new genre of action games, and was followed up by a number of successors, including a trilogy of Dark Souls titles and the Victorian-era-inspired Bloodborne in 2015. Those games were all successes, selling millions of copies, but it wasn’t until Elden Ring that the studio had its first blockbuster hit. The game not only sold well, but spawned a large-scale expansion, a co-op spinoff called Nightreign, and an upcoming film adaptation from A24 and director Alex Garland. Part of what made Elden Ring a hit was that it took what From Soft had become known for — relentless action, subtle storytelling, and immersive worlds — and translated it into an open-world adventure and gave players more freedom to explore its bleak and beautiful fantastical realm.

Even with its signature game style cemented, From Soft was continuously experimenting. Sandwiched in between the launches of Dark Souls 3 (2016) and Elden Ring (2022) were a pair of one-off games — a solemn VR story called Déraciné in 2018, and a ninja action game called Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice a year later — that showed the studio expanding its range. At the time, Miyazaki, who directed both games, explained From Soft’s approach to taking on new projects.

“I think one of the studio’s characteristics is to embrace wholeheartedly what we feel is interesting; what we perceive to be worthwhile, cool, or beautiful; and to place these ideals at the foundation of the games we make,” he told me in 2019. “Part of those things we feel may deviate slightly from what is considered to have mass appeal. This ‘unorthodox’ nature could well be what ties our games and our culture together.”

The Duskbloods may seem like a big departure, but it also fits neatly into this philosophy. Over the years, From Soft had steadily been injecting multiplayer elements into its largely single-player games; in Elden Ring, for instance, you can summon other players to help you in battle. As the studio experimented in this realm, a number of multiplayer-centric ideas were filed away. “There are a lot of ideas that we had wanted to try that didn’t necessarily fit in that context of a single-player game,” Miyazaki said during the Duskbloods preview in Tokyo. “Those pile up over the years.” That eventually culminated into The Duskbloods.

Development on The Duskbloods began in 2021 and originated on the first Switch before eventually migrating to its successor. The game consists of matches where eight players, each controlling a vampiric fighter, have to both fight against the monsters prowling the level as well as compete with each other. The combat is faster than a traditional From Soft game, and the exploration is much more vertical — you can triple-jump your way up large towers — but it also has many of the studio’s telltale characteristics, from its dark, haunting world to the fact that players will die repeatedly. (For more on how The Duskbloods plays, check out my hands-on right here.)

“We really just want as many players to enjoy our games as possible.”

But all of those new elements also made the development process difficult, and Miyazaki says that working with Nintendo has been extremely helpful in this regard. “The Duskbloods is a challenging game for us,” he says. “There are a lot of new things in terms of designing the systems and the rules, and it requires a lot of fine-tuning and adjustments, and Nintendo has provided a lot of support in that regard. Things like onboarding and tutorials for players are something that we are historically not great at, so the support they’ve provided in that regard has been very, very good and we think that it’s been a great relationship in that sense.”

On a technical level, Miyazaki notes that the team initially struggled with getting The Duskbloods to work on Nintendo’s previous console, so the reveal of the Switch 2 came as something of a relief. “We were definitely very happy when we heard about the Switch 2, because we were thinking, ‘How are we going to do this?’” Miyazaki says. “The Switch 2 came along and all of those problems were solved.”

The game is being designed in part to appeal to players who might not traditionally be interested in competitive multiplayer, a genre that can be intimidating to a lot of people. While The Duskbloods does involve fighting against other players, it also gives them other things to do, whether it’s killing minor enemies to gain experience or exploring the landscape in search of helpful items or sidekicks that can aid in battle.

“We really just want as many players to enjoy our games as possible,” Miyazaki says. “Not just having it be solely [player vs. player], but having more indirect ways that you can compete in the match and enjoy it, is definitely something that we wanted to implement to accommodate players. From a role-playing and story aspect as well, we didn’t want it to be something where you had to always win every single match to enjoy the game. We wanted you to be able to unlock aspects of the story and enjoy it at your own pace, even if you’re not necessarily doing great in every match. And if [players] go in wanting to know more about the story and that’s what interests them, that’s great. And as they reveal that and play more of the game, they might find that they do like the Pv P more than they thought. We’re hoping that is an entryway.”

It might look like a shift in strategy, particularly as the studio’s last two releases have both focused on multiplayer play. But The Duskbloods is actually an extension of how the studio has worked for years: a big departure that builds off of the developer’s previous work in natural ways. It’s still set in a dark fantasy world, it still stars a cast of eclectic weirdos, and it still thrusts players into a space where they have to master complex systems in order to survive. It just puts these ideas in a new, multiplayer-specific context.

Because of this, Miyazaki says that The Duskbloods doesn’t necessarily represent any kind of change in how the studio operates. From Soft has always made whatever it wanted, and Elden Ring’s success has only made it bolder. “We’re not super rigid,” he says. “It’s more just, if we find something that we want to make and we think it’s a great idea, we’ll make it.”

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