Elden Ring director calls Soulslike label “humbling” but won’t take full credit for genre

Elden Ring director and FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki discussed the studio’s influence on gaming and how he feels about his games inspiring the Soulslike genre.

Miyazaki explained his feelings on FromSoftware’s games inspiring a sub-genre, with the term Soulslike itself paying homage to the Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls series during an interview with Rolling Stone.

Though he and the FromSoftware team seem honored by the term, Miyazaki refused to take full credit for inventing a new genre since the core mechanics already existed.

Instead, he attributes the Soulslike moniker and its success to luck, saying “We just happened to release [Demon’s Souls] into the market at the right time.”

FromSoftware

Miyazaki went on to say, “So as happy as it makes us, I think it’s also very humbling to know that there has been a lot of credit given to us for naming a genre.”

Since Demon’s Souls was released in 2009, FromSoftware has become known for its style of punishing gameplay and challenging bosses that players expect to die to over and over again as they learn their attacks and how to perfectly counter them.

Plenty of other developers have clearly been inspired, with experiences such as Lies of P and the Nioh series following the same basic formula, albeit with their own twists.

In the same interview, Miyazaki admitted that he plays other Soulslikes, though more for research than as a fan. “It’s very stimulating for me to be able to see it from many different angles, because we’re all working within the same sandbox, in a way,” he explained.

What FromSoftware works on next following Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is a mystery, though Miyazaki did express an interest in experimenting with different kinds of games and eventually making a traditional JRPG.

For now, fans of the genre have plenty of content to enjoy, with Shadow of the Erdtree breaking records and shocking players with its difficulty.