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Despite Elden Ring's triumphs, director Hidetaka Miyazaki still hasn't made his 'ideal fantasy RPG' - so how much better can FromSoftware games get?
Hidetaka Miyazaki, the visionary behind FromSoftware's genre-defining games, aspires to create his ideal fantasy RPG, even as Elden Ring's immense success surpasses 25 million copies sold.
FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki has said he still hasn't created his "ideal fantasy RPG" - despite putting out groundbreaking future-classics over and over - which begs the question: how much better can these games get?
Hidetaka Miyazaki is one of gaming's most recognizable names for a reason. FromSoftware practically kickstarted an entire subgenre with Miyazaki in the director's chair for Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and most recently, the studio's magnum opus, Elden Ring. One hell of a resume, huh?
The games proved popular enough to influence countless other 'Soulslikes' - action-RPGs that borrow FromSoft's stamina-based combat or brutal difficulty or 'retrieve your corpse' loop or all of the above - which come out with more frequency than the studio's own output now. The whole thing then reached a fever pitch in the open-world Elden Ring, a game that's both impossibly large and painfully packed with detail, helping it to pass 25 million copies sold.
Despite reaching those dizzying heights, on the eve of the Elden Ring DLC Miyazaki said he's "still in the process of making my ideal fantasy RPG." In an interview with PC Gamer, the influential director explained that "while Elden Ring is not quite it, it's pretty close. It's getting close."
So what does that dream project need to do to satisfy Miyazaki? "It's hard to say without giving spoilers for my next idea or our next games," he continued. "But I think one thing that's not necessarily missing but makes it difficult to achieve my ideal, is that when I play it, I know everything's going to happen. I already know everything that's going on. So in terms of enjoying the game from a player's perspective, I'd love to not know that, and for somebody else to make my ideal fantasy game, please, if possible. Then I can enjoy it just as a player."