Elden Ring's director says both himself and FromSoftware at large don't feel pressured by other games in the 'Souls-like' genre.
The Souls-like genre, or difficult third-person action games that use a specific type of checkpointing as others might call them, have been on the rise over the last few years in particular. We've had the likes of the great Lies of P, the excellent Remnant 2, and the enthralling Lords of the Fallen reboot, to name just a few stellar Souls-like games from 2023 alone.
Despite this, FromSoftware isn't feeling pressured by new games entering the space it carved out with the likes of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. "What we have seen is that players seem to enjoy our games," FromSoftware studio head Hidetaka Miyazaki says in a new interview with Eurogamer. "And so they're giving us that chance to continue making what we enjoy and what we like. And it helps us to not have that feeling of being trapped.
"I think once you go down that avenue of making something purely because it's successful, that's when you may start to see less success," the Elden Ring director continues. No one can accuse FromSoftware of repeatedly going back to its biggest successes purely for the sake of it - Bloodborne trends basically every other week on Twitter at this point, and there still hasn't been a PS5 remaster for the game or a sequel.
Speaking of, though, Miyazaki comments elsewhere that he's "very happy" people want a Bloodborne remake, even if he couldn't actually confirm it was happening. It seems that since Sony owns the IP to Bloodborne, whether anything happens with the game at all in the future is entirely out of FromSoftware's hands.
We've still got other Souls-likes on the horizon for the near future, including Black Myth: Wukong, which is due out later this year on August 20. As for FromSoftware itself, Shadow of the Erdtree releases on June 21, which marks the next huge venture for the studio in the form of the Elden Ring DLC. What the future holds for the studio beyond that is anyone's guess.
Take a look at our new games 2024 guide for an overview of all the upcoming Souls-likes you should have an eye on.
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