While the release of Elden Ring is now set for February 2022, tidbits have been coming out for its director, like how Hidetaka Miyazaki hasn’t played the Demon’s Souls Remake.
The news that Miyazaki hasn’t played the Demon’s Souls Remake comes via the latest EDGE magazine (via VGC). Miyazaki confirmed he hasn’t played the remake due to a combination of being overwhelmed by its visuals – and that he generally doesn’t like playing his own games.
“As you say, I was not directly involved in it, and I haven’t actually played the Demon’s remake,” Miyazaki said. “But this is because I just don’t enjoy playing the games that I’ve made in the past,” he explained. “It brings up a lot of old emotions, a lot of old memories, and this gets a little bit overwhelming, and it doesn’t feel like playing any more. So I have not played the Demon’s remake, but I am very glad to see it get this fresh look, these brand-new current-gen graphics.”
Miyazaki followed up with saying he is happy to see the game that truly launched his career as a major game developer be updated for modern audiences. As the game’s development wasn’t exactly smooth, he said he was a bit nervous about the game being received by a new generation of players.
“It was an old game, so to see it get remade in this way and have new players playing it was obviously something that made me very happy,” Miyzaki said. “It was a rough game back in the day, with a relatively rough development, so I was anxious that new players would not enjoy it in that same way. That was a cause of concern for me when it was re-released but, you know, in the end, I’m just happy to see the reaction and happy to see people enjoying it.
“One thing that was really fun was seeing [Bluepoint Games] come up with things we didn’t consider and to approach certain elements of the game its visuals and its mechanics in a way that we either couldn’t or didn’t back in the day. So to see them researching and applying these new thought processes and new techniques, this was something that was really exciting and interesting for me.”
Another recent tidbit from Miyazaki is that he probably won’t play Elden Ring either – due to the same policy of him generally not enjoying actually playing his own games.
Lastly, Miyazaki talked up the impressive yet different visuals in the Demon’s Souls Remake, noting FromSoftware doesn’t focus on cutting-edge visuals – and the Demon’s Souls Remake made them feel more pressure.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure our graphics-creation staff felt that pressure more than anyone else,” he said when asked if the remake gave them extra pressure while making Elden Ring.
“And not just with Elden Ring, but with all the games we make,” Miyazaki said. “Graphical fidelity is not something we put as the top priority. What we ask for on the graphics side depends on the systems and requirements of the game itself, and it takes less priority compared to the other elements of development.
“So this is always an area where I feel a little bit apologetic towards my graphics team because I know they work extremely hard. And they’ve worked extremely hard on Elden Ring – our graphics-systems team and our programmers have been pushing a lot of new features to create the best-looking games we’ve ever made.”
Elden Ring is launching on February 25th, 2022 across Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
